US Evangelicals (Still) Exporting Homophobia...

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/petermontgomery/7865/us_evangelicals__still__exporting_homophobia_/

May 9, 2014 2:00pm
Post by PETER MONTGOMERY

MassResistance, an anti-gay organization based in Massachusetts, is bragging about its work with anti-gay activists in Hong Kong, Finland, Sweden, and Estonia, notes blogger Jeremy Hooper. We reported in January that Camenker had participated in an anti-gay conference in Jamaica, where he warned against a repeal in the colonial-era “buggery law,” saying, “a law that contradicts God’s law is the beginning of a slippery slope that you cannot imagine.”

Uganda: Two Men Charges with Crimes Against Nature Move Toward Trial

Two Ugandans under arrest since January faced a hearing this week after being charged with crimes against “the order of nature.” They are not being tried under the new Anti-Homosexuality Act, which is being challenged in court. CNN reported on Thursday that one of the men was released on bail; their trial is set for June 12.

Political Research Associates reprints an Al-Jazeera commentary by Sylvia Tamale, a law professor at Makerere University in Uganda, on the frequently heard claim that homosexuality is “un-African” and being imposed on Africa by westerners. Tamale discusses same-sex relationships in a number of African cultures in pre-colonial Africa, remarking, “It is ironic that an African dictator wearing a three-piece suit, caressing an iPhone, speaking in English and liberally quoting the Bible can dare indict anything for being un-African.”

Clearly, it is not homosexuality that is un-African but the laws that criminalized such relations. In other words, what is alien to the continent is legalized homophobia, exported to Africa by the imperialists where there had been indifference to and even tolerance of same-sex relations. In Uganda such laws were introduced by the British and have been part of our penal law since the late 19th century. The current wave of anti-homosexuality laws sweeping across the continent is therefore part of a thinly veiled and wider political attempt to entrench repressive and undemocratic regimes.

Equally alien to the continent are the Abrahamic religions (particularly Christianity and Islam) that often accompany and augment the “un-African” arguments against homosexuality. African traditional religions were (and still are) integrated into the people’s holistic and everyday existence. It was intricately tied to their culture, including sexuality…..

The homosexuality-is-un-African mantra negates everything that African history and tradition has transmitted to posterity. A tenet of African philosophy holds that “I am because you are.” In short, it matters little about the differences that each one of us displays but much about the essence of humanity that binds us together. What really matters is the respect for human dignity and diversity.

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[shenmue]

1. Aaaaaaaaack

When are people going to knock it off and just live and let live?