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.
This commentary is also posted on The
Grio.
