Africa's new colonists: rabid, anti-gay, American evangelical Christians
In the USA, recent shifts in public attitudes towards homosexuality, together with growing legislative permissiveness on issues like gay marriage and abortion, has left the American religious right “on the losing side of a battle that it now seems incapable of winning”, to quote a report released by civil rights NGO the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) in July.
And so their attention has shifted to other parts of the world, beyond US borders, where they believe they can still make an impact. They’re focusing on Africa and the Caribbean. Uganda is popular with US evangelicals today because it is already a religious country, with an estimated 85% of the population identifying as Christian, and because it is the youngest population in the world, with 50% under the age of 15. IHOP calls Uganda “the pearl of Africa”, and their missionaries encourage Ugandans to believe that their country is the most important nation in Africa – or could be, if Ugandans stick to strict Biblical principles.
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In his documentary, there is footage of US far-right preacher Scott Lively addressing an Ugandan audience, which was filmed by Kaoma. Writing on a flip chart, Lively instructs his audience that gays are pederasts, that gays were responsible for Nazi Germany, that gays have taken over the UN and that gays are coming to Uganda to “recruit your children”. But, Lively says, “Uganda can be the first country to stop them” if they implement “public policy that discourages homosexuality”.
On that same visit to Uganda, Lively was given permission to address the Ugandan parliament for five hours. It was after this that MP David Bahati introduced the kill-the-gays bill in October 2009. Bahati claims that after the bill was introduced, donations to Uganda from Western churches tripled. In 2010, Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper published the names, addresses and photos of “Uganda’s Top Homos” with an exhortation to “Hang them”. Less than six months later, Ugandan gay activist David Kato was murdered in his home.
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-09-16-africas-new-colonists-rabid-anti-gay-american-evangelical-christians/
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