The West inspired Africa’s violent homophobia

last updated 8 January 2015

Many African countries view homosexuality as an import from the immoral West, said Thomas Hofnung in France’s Libération. In northern Nigeria, under sharia law, gay sex can be punished by stoning to death; even in comparatively westernized Kenya it incurs long jail sentences. But the worst offender these days is Uganda, where state, church, and media all collude in a vicious homophobic campaign. “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” declares James Nsaba Buturo, the country’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity. And a Kampala magazine named Rolling Stone recently published the names and addresses of gays under a banner headline: “Hang them!” Gay-rights activists sued, and last month the rag was ordered to pay damages. Too late, alas, for gay activist David Kato, who recently was found bludgeoned to death—a killing that sparked outrage around the world.

Many blame American evangelical Christians for whipping up a hate campaign on a visit to Uganda two years ago, said Jeffrey Gettleman in Nigeria’s Next. They told audiences that gays aimed to “defeat the marriage-based society,” and explained how gays could be made to go straight. Politicians who heard this subsequently drafted a punitive law that orders death for anyone convicted of multiple gay sex acts. The vendetta has revealed a truly shocking absence of compassion in Uganda’s Anglican Church, said Mark Jordahl in GlobalVoicesOnline.org. The preacher at Kato’s funeral launched into a hideous anti-gay rant, “condemning him to hell” and calling on all homosexuals to “repent or face the wrath of God.” He carried on even after distraught mourners had wrested the microphone from his hands. Uganda’s Anglican leaders are just as bad; some bishops even supported the preacher’s rant. How do these monsters sleep at night?

Why get so worked up? asked Uganda’s New Vision in an editorial. Journalists came from far and wide to attend Kato’s funeral; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the murder; the EU lectures us on human rights. Yet the police say this was a simple robbery, and there’s not a shred of evidence that Kato was killed for being gay. The fact that Kato’s picture was published in the press beneath an incitement to murder is pretty good evidence to me, said Senthorun Raj in Australia’s National Times. But it’s worth recalling that Africa’s first sodomy laws were passed by colonial rulers, and that gays in many Western countries are still subjected to legal harassment and told that their desire to marry is “unnatural.” The world, not just Africa, has a long way to go to root out homophobia.