It’s a contemporary version of Canada’s two solitudes. Here and elsewhere in the West, the general assumption is that LGBTQ equality is advancing and it’s all getting better, often much better. In the Caribbean, Russia, Africa and much of the Middle East, however, it’s actually getting worse – much worse.
Events in Uganda in the past two weeks have once again underlined this fact.
A year after the overturning of a law requiring homosexuals be jailed for life, a gay pride event was raided by Ugandan police at the beginning of August and 20 people arrested. One man was seriously hurt when, justifiably terrified, he tried to escape by jumping out a window. Those detained were intimidated, interrogated and assaulted. It was in effect an official warning, a reminder from the bitingly homophobic government to “know your place” and remember that homosexuality in Uganda is detested and illegal.
When I was writing my book about Christianity and equal marriage I interviewed Bobby, a 27-year-old lesbian from Kampala. Her young lover was murdered, yet the police insisted the death was a road accident and refused to investigate. That, tragically, is entirely typical in other countries.
Kenya and Nigeria, for example, have recently introduced anti-gay legislation. It’s part of a familiar pattern: African governments – many of them struggling to stay in power – cater to prejudice and play the anti-colonial card by claiming that homosexuality is a Western import. That societal prejudice is something fundamentalist Christian groups in North America and Europe are eager to aid and abet with evangelical money and other support.
Conservative Christians from the U.S. and to a lesser extent Canada have sent missionaries, advisers and money to Africa and elsewhere to aid what they see as an international crusade against “immorality.” As they lose their battles here and in Europe, they transfer their energies to other continents.
Evangelical leaders claim publicly that they reject the extreme violence and persecution that take place abroad, but that’s a pretty thin disavowal.
In Uganda, women are raped to “cure” them of their lesbianism. And AIDS centres have been closed down for “leading people into homosexuality.” Openly gay men and women live in constant fear of attack and arrest.
Zambian priest Kapya Kaoma recently told the Independent in Britain that while homophobia always existed in Uganda, “Nobody was ever arrested or prosecuted based on those old laws.” That all changed, he believes, when in 2009 the American pastor Scott Lively and a group of U.S. evangelicals began to lecture in the country about the “gay movement” and the “evil institution” of homosexuality that would “prey upon local children.”
Until it was exposed in 2013, the Canadian evangelical group Crossroads Christian Communications stated on its website that homosexuality was a “sin” and a “perversion” and called for gays to “repent.” It listed homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality as “sexual sins” and argued that “God cares too much for you (and all of His children) to leave such tampering and spiritual abuse unpunished.”
The organization received $544,813 in funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for its work in Uganda.
The page discussing homosexuality disappeared from its website almost immediately after it was discovered. But one wonders how much has really changed. Two years later, the television show 100 Huntley Street – produced by the same Crossroads Christian Communications – fired me as a guest host because of “the high public profile you have in media and social networking in relation to gay marriage.”
Leading Canadian evangelicals have also spoken in Africa and the Caribbean about what they see as the “dangerous consequences” of same-sex marriage and how the freedom of Christians is limited by the advance of gay rights.
Outside Africa, the West Indies and Jamaica in particular have become vastly more homophobic in the past 25 years. And today gay teenagers are frequently thrown out of their homes, forced into prostitution to survive and find it difficult, if not impossible, to receive any medical treatment if they should become infected with STDs or AIDS. Once again, it’s Western right-wing Christians who are partly responsible.
American televangelists became a major force on Jamaican TV when broadcasting was expanded in the 1970s, and their hysterical opposition to gay relationships was soon replicated by local Christian television performers and church leaders. It worked, mingling with some of the rawer elements of rap music and the hangover of British colonial anti-gay legislation to infect society.
Toronto lawyer and activist Maurice Tomlinson was born in Jamaica and spent much of his life there. He has carried out important and sometimes dangerous work for LGBTQ people on the island. In 2012 he had to temporarily flee because of death threats after a local newspaper published a photograph of his wedding to his husband.
“I have sat in courtrooms and watched and heard people I know, who know my family, using the Bible and 19th-century British sodomy laws to persecute young gay men and women,” he says. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Refugees from this oppression are sometimes but not always accepted in Canada.
But ending homophobia requires far stronger pressure, even sanctions, from Western governments. A great deal can be achieved through Commonwealth links, tourism and economic relationships. Because anybody who thinks the struggle for gay rights is going so very well might need to look further afield.
State-sponsored homophobia
An abbreviated list of some of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ people
Countries where being LGBTQ is punishable by death
Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan
Countries where being LGBTQ is punishable by 14 years to life imprisonment
Guyana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, parts of Somalia, Maldives, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, parts of Indonesia
Source: International lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex association ilga.org
Author, columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren’s new book is Epiphany: A Christian’s Change Of Heart & Mind Over Same-Sex Marriage (Signal/Random House).
news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
