Homophobia: hatred carried on a westerly wind

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/homophobia-hatred-westerly-wind-editorial


It doesn't take a team of experts to work out colonialists exported homophobia, in the form of anti-gay legislation

Homophobia and nationalism share a cynical root. They are both ways for demagogues to distract from real problems – be it a lack of democracy (Russia), an Islamist insurgency (Nigeria), or corruption (Uganda). In many of the 78 countries that currently ban homosexuality in some form, the demagogues even claim that decadent western societies created the vice that must now be eradicated. Come, let us save our nation by locking up the people who perform this threatening act!

Such rhetoric was used by President Jonathan's government in Nigeria before making gay sex punishable by 14 years in prison. That law was followed by anti-gay violence. Last month, the same logic was used in Uganda, as President Museveni signed a bill to impose life sentences. "In the past [gays] were stoned to death," said the ethics minister, Simon Lokodo, harking back to a straighter age. "In my own culture, they are fired on by the firing squad, because that is a total perversion."

It doesn't take a team of medical experts, such as that commissioned by Kampala, to establish that homosexuality predates western power in Africa, or to work out that far from encouraging homosexuality, the colonialists exported homophobia, in the form of anti-gay legislation then on European statute books. In the case of Buganda, the kingdom that formed the heart of present-day Uganda, the British deposed the male monarch on the pretext that he had a harem of page boys.

More recently, homophobia has travelled with a new band of westerners, the American evangelicals, exposed in the documentary God Loves Uganda, in which toothsome midwesterners preach their message to Africa. Their influence is immense. As the newly out Kenyan novelist Binyavanga Wainaina has noted, whether "in the media, or in conversation" one can "quickly hear almost the exact wording that has been distributed ... in the churches."

[theHandpuppet]

1. Archbishop Tutu concurs

Speaking out against homophobia and the notion that it is an intrinsic part of African culture, he said, "LGBTI Africans have lived peacefully and productively beside us throughout history."