American Culture Warriors Exporting Homophobia

This blog has frequently noted the hatred and homophobia that is being exported abroad by American Christofascists who are slowly but steadily losing the culture wars in America.  As always, their favorite targets for their exported hate and bigotry is focused largely on backward and ignorant regions, especially in Africa, since ignorance and low levels of education are essential for the embrace of the American Christofascists' version of fundamentalist Christianity.  A piece in Religion Dispatches recaps the efforts of American Christofascists to export homophobia.  Note the blood on the hands of both Catholic and Anglican clerics in Africa.  The real message, of course, is that the "godly Christians" are NOT nice and decent people.  They are horrid people and the "good Christians" who sit on their hands silently are little better than the "good Germans" who were complicit in Hitler's rise to power. Here are selected article excerpts:

A couple articles this past week look at the work of anti-gay religious groups overseas.  The National Journal’s Alex Seitz-Wald gives an overview of American evangelicals’ efforts to encourage passage of anti-gay laws around the world. Among the items mentioned is the work of Scott Lively and others to launch an anti-gay group in Latvia that believes “there is a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

At the Religion News Service, Gay Clark Jennings, an Episcopal priest, examines “Homophobia in Christian Africa.” Jennings notes that many political and diplomatic leaders have criticized passage of anti-gay bills in Uganda and Nigeria, but says, “Many Christian leaders around the world, regrettably, have been largely unwilling to criticize Christian leaders in Africa who cheered the passage of these punitive laws.” She notes with sadness that Anglican leaders in Uganda and Nigeria “enthusiastically support” anti-gay legislation.

Western Christians cannot ignore the homophobia of these church officials or the peril in which they place Ugandan and Nigerian LGBT people. The legacy of colonial-era Christian missionaries and infusions of cash from modern-day American conservatives have helped to create it.

She quotes Zimbabwean biblical scholar Masiiwa Ragies Gunda saying that it is “far-fetched to look beyond the activities of Western missionaries” when considering the role of the Bible in Africa. Jennings says missionaries promoted a particular literalist approach to reading the Bible.

The Toronto Star also considers rising homophobia and anti-gay violence in Africa, suggesting that it reflects, in addition to the work of American evangelicals, a backlash by conservative forces against increasingly open advocacy for LGBT equality.

As we reported last week, Catholic officials in Nigeria, including a Cardinal, have praised the draconian anti-gay law that is generating persecution and violence against gay people in that country.  In India, in contrast, Cardinal Oswald Gracias has opposed the Supreme Court ruling that recriminalized homosexuality.

Catholics and others have also protested remarks by a newly-named cardinal, Fernando Sebastián of Spain. Colegas, an LGBT rights group, has filed a complaint charging that Sebastián’s comments violate Spanish law against acts that provoke discrimination, hate or violence against groups based on their sexual orientation.
In Washington, D.C. this week, Katrina Lantos Swett, Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, mentioned the infamous anti-gay “propaganda” law as one of many repressive, anti-democratic laws that have been adopted in Putin’s Russia. She said that laws on “religious freedom” and “extremism” grant special favor to the Orthodox Church while giving the government wide latitude to discriminate against minority religions. That favored status is evident in the construction of new high-profile Russian Orthodox churches around the world whose construction costs are being paid by the Russian government.

The propaganda law has most recently been used to fine the editor of a newspaper in Khabarovsk in northeastern Russia for printing an interview with a local geography teacher who is gay; the court ruled that the teacher’s assertion that homosexuality is normal violated the law.

 We reported last week on the surge in arrests and trials in Shariah courts in the wake of [Nigerian] President Goodluck Jonathan’s January 7 signing of a draconian anti-gay law there. Last Thursday, Associated Press reported, “Thousands of protesters threw stones into the Shariah court in a north Nigerian city Wednesday, urging the speedy convictions and executions of 11 men arrested for belonging to gay organizations.” This week, Agence French Press reports that two Islamic courts “have been forced to suspend the trials of 10 men accused of homosexuality because of fears of mob violence.”

There is much more in the article.  The overall take away?  Religion is a pervasive evil that deserves no deference and certainly no favored status - or tax exemption - under the civil laws.