It drives me crazy to watch American Christofascists play blacks - both here in America and in Africa - for suckers and, worse yet, to see blacks allow themselves to be played for fools due to a lack of knowledge of true history. Here in America, white Christofascists are the same group who used the Bible to justify segregation, bans on interracial marriage, racist views of blacks, and now back Republican Party efforts to disenfranchise blacks across the country. Any black citizen that knows who these folks are ought to run screaming away from them. Yet, here in Virginia, the racists and theocrats time and time again get black pastors to do their bidding like trained circus dogs. Now we see the same thing happening in Africa where American Christofascists have been busy exporting hate and homophobia even as they see themselves losing the war against gays in America. A piece in The Guardian looks at the fact that anti-gay violence and homophobia are NOT traditional to Africa. It's all an import brought by colonial rule and white missionaries, many of who are Christofascists. In my view, blacks who listen to American Christofascists would do well to have their foreheads tattooed with "I'm a cretin." Here are some story excerpts:
While the Sochi Olympics have understandably brought much needed attention to the prevalence of homophobia in Russia, the crisis for LGBT communities in African countries has only been given footnote status by comparison. Homosexuality is a crime in 38 of 54 sub-Saharan countries but even as tougher laws are being enacted in Uganda that would, for example, make it a crime not to report gay people to the police, there is a strain of cultural relativism often evident in debates on LGBT rights in Africa. This has allowed the apparent misconception among some people, both in Africa and the west, that homosexuality is an imperial import and that those opposed to the human rights of gay communities are simply reclaiming their pre-colonial cultural values.
Any person with the time to study the history of sexuality in traditional African cultures will discover that this claim is baseless. Indeed, the history of sexuality in traditional African societies has always been characterised by diversity in sexual practices and identities. Homosexual practices and identities are not new to Africa. What is new is the campaign for LGBT rights that has arisen in reaction to the revival of a homophobic legal and religious tradition inherited from European colonialism.
In the past few years, the movement against LGBT rights in Africa has brought together very strange bedfellows, African Muslim and Christian preachers with strong backing from rightwing American Christian organisations.
The dehumanisation of members of the gay community across Africa has been justified by invoking both God and traditional African culture. However, for over a century the same religious groups now claiming to be the custodians of traditional African cultures have been at the centre of programmes to systematically efface Africa's traditional cultures on grounds that, in their view, such cultures are un-Christian and un-Islamic. Thus, the position adopted by many of Africa's political and religious elites on issues relating to LGBT rights owes more to their colonial religious education than it does to their traditional African roots.
The very existence of "sodomy laws" imposed on many African cultures by British colonial rulers in an attempt to stem what they thought of as the sexual immorality of African cultures point to the presence of diversity in sexual practices among Africans prior to their encounter with Europeans.
I venture to suggest that indeed the absence of words for homosexuality in some African languages, if this is true, is in itself proof that gay people were never considered as existing outside of the norm in such traditional African societies. Thus, it is more likely that the language of "othering" now used to discuss and describe gay communities in Africa is a remnant of colonialism.
As I said, if blacks want to be true to their cultural history, it is the American Christofascists who need to be rejected and criminalized, not gays. I'd further add another reason that American Christofascists have focused on Africa: their poisonous version of Christianity needs ignorant, uneducated populations to flourish. African doing the bidding of these Christofascist are demonstrating their own ignorance and stupidity. Harsh statements? Yes, but all too true. Fundamentalist Christianity is nothing less than a pestilence that needs to be eradicated.
No comments:
Post a Comment