White
Christian nationalists are exporting their
American culture wars to
Africa and getting people killed with “kill
the gays” laws, and
we see what they are doing.
Uganda
- which had already criminalized sexual
relations between members of
the same sex - has passed one of the most
draconian anti-LGBTQIA laws
in the world. The law punishes the crime
of homosexuality with up to
life in prison and the death penalty for
aggravated homosexuality,
which is same-sex relations with children,
HIV-positive people or
other vulnerable people. Attempted
aggravated homosexuality
is punishable by up to 14 years in prison
by the law signed by
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. And
while more than 30 African
countries prohibit same-sex marriage,
Uganda has gone further in
punishing gay people than any of these
nations with its latest
legislation, even in
its now watered-down form.
But
the recent law enacted in Uganda to imprison
and execute LGBTQIA
people did not happen in a vacuum. White
Christian nationalists,
including those who support Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis, have spent
millions of dollars in Uganda to pass that
law. White fundamentalists
have been spending years in Uganda to pass
laws that punish gay
people, and they are taking it to other
African countries.
Ugandan
media have been weaponized
to promote a homophobic narrative and
accuse LGBTQ+ organizations of
luring and recruiting young children. And
while antigay laws can be
traced back to European colonization, with
anti-sodomy laws
punishable by death, white Christian
nationalists from the U.S. are
exporting a type of fake anticolonial
homophobic narrative that
paints homosexuality as uniquely Western,
part of the moral decadence
of the West and associated with pedophilia
and the targeting of
children to justify the use of
government-sponsored violence.
Between
2007 and 2020, more than 20
American evangelical Christian
groups
spent $54
million in Africa
- $20
million
in Uganda - “to influence laws, policies,
and public opinion
against sexual and reproductive rights,”
including fighting against
sex education, abortion rights,
contraception and LGBTQIA rights. The
amount spent in Africa is part of a $280
million
“dark money” empire
the Christian Right has built around the
world.
And
these white evangelical groups have power.
Evangelical
NGOs
made up 20% of nonprofits in Uganda in
2014 and controlled $2
billion. Since the days of the AIDS crisis
that claimed millions of
lives in Uganda and other African nations,
white missionaries have
influenced attitudes towards homosexuality
as deviant sexual
behavior.
Among
those evangelicals who kicked off the
antigay effort in Uganda in the
early 2000s is Scott
Lively.
Lively, who was highlighted in the 2013
PBS documentary “God
Loves
Uganda,”
blames the Holocaust
on homosexuality in the Nazi Party and has
written books about
“pro-homosexual indoctrination” of
children. And Lively spoke to
the Ugandan
parliament
in 2009 on legislation to target its
LGBTQIA community.
Meanwhile,
such
laws are endangering the lives of
Ugandans, causing people to
flee
for
their lives
and go
into hiding.
What is taking place in Uganda and other
African countries is nothing
short of neocolonialism.
“When
the missionaries came to Africa, they had
the Bible and we had the
land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed
our eyes. When we opened
them we had the Bible and they had the
land,” said Desmond
Tutu.
White Christian nationalists interfering
in the domestic affairs of
African countries and destroying the human
rights of African people -
similar to how they are making the lives
of Black folks in America a
living hell - is very much about the white
man’s Bible.
Imperialism
isn’t only colonization and extraction of
resources, and the white
man’s Bible was always instrumental in
softening up the minds of
Black and indigenous people while the White
colonizers took the land
and resources.
This
time around, the evangelicals have
actually rebranded their
oppressive anti-decolonization
policies as being in opposition
to
neocolonialism.
Criminalizing and scapegoating LGBTQIA
people as a legacy of Western
sinfulness, white fundamentalists are
assisting African leaders in
opening the door for other human rights
violations and deprivations
for African people.
And
there is no question that in the U.S. -
where a MAGA U.S. Supreme
Court just endorsed discrimination
against
same-sex couples
while Republican politicians,
insurrectionist Proud Boys and the Ku
Klux Karens at Moms for Liberty target trans
children
and mobilize against LGBTQ
events
- the right has a taste for homophobic and
transphobic genocide.
Pastor
Tom
Ascol
of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral,
Fla., who delivered the
invocation at Gov. DeSantis’ second
inauguration, approved of the
Ugandan law on Twitter. “If a man lies
with a male as with a woman,
both of them have committed an
abomination; they shall surely be put
to death; their blood is upon them.
-Leviticus 20:13” Ascol
tweeted, adding “Was this law God gave to
His old covenant people
‘horrific and wrong’?”
History
shows us that these laws stripping people of
their rights and
humanity and criminalizing their identity do
not stop with the
LGBTQIA community. Leaders in Uganda and
throughout Africa should not
collaborate with white supremacist
interlopers or participate in the
oppression of their people. The folks who
never meant us any good in
America are taking it worldwide, and they
are staying true to form in
Uganda.
