How the U.S. Christian Right Is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa

Colonizing African Values How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa A PUBLICATION OF POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES BY KAPYA JOHN KAOMA Political Research Associates (PRA) is a progressive think tank devoted to supporting movements that build a more just and inclusive democratic society. We expose movements, institutions, and ideologies that undermine human rights. PRA seeks to advance progressive thinking and action by providing research-based information, analysis, and referrals. Copyright ©2012 Political Research Associates Kaoma, Kapya John. ISBN-10: 0-915987-26-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-915987-26-9 Design by: Mindflash Advertising Photographs by: Religion Dispatches, Michele Siblioni/AFP/Getty Images, Mark Taylor/markn3tel/Flickr This research was made possible by the generous support of the Arcus Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund. Political Research Associates 1310 Broadway, Suite 201 Somerville, MA 02144-1837 www.publiceye.org Colonizing African Values How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa A PUBLICATION OF POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES BY KAPYA KAOMA POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES i Colonizing African Values - How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa Foreword ganda’s infamous 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill, onstrates in Colonizing African Values that the Ameri- which would institute the death penalty for a can culture wars in Africa are growing hotter. Tracing U new and surreal category of offenses dubbed conflicts over homosexuality and women’s repro- “aggravated homosexuality,” captured international ductive autonomy back to their sources, Kaoma has headlines for months. The human rights community uncovered the expanding influence of an interde- and the Obama administration responded forcefully, nominational cast of conservative American inter- the bill was tabled, and the story largely receded ests. Anti-gay legislation has passed in Malawi and from U.S. headlines. But as the Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma Nigeria and violence against sexual minorities is on reveals in this important exposé, the “Uganda the rise. Increasingly, anti-gay politics are wrapped problem” is continental in scale and its underlying in African colors, with church leaders and opportun- cause continues unabated: the U.S. Christian Right, istic politicians alike charging that homosexuality— which engineered Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” rather than the Christian Right agenda—is a Western bill, continues to open new fronts across the African neocolonial project. In short, the U.S. social justice continent in its distinctly American culture war community has much to do in order to interrupt against homosexuality and abortion. Colonizing the continuing export of the American culture wars. African Values serves as a clarion call to the human In this expanded examination of the Christian rights and social justice communities to counteract Right’s designs on the continent, Kaoma highlights such right-wing neocolonialism by increasing both the the role of several organizations that are steadily scale and sophistication of support for human rights building political networks and legal infrastructure promoters in Africa. across Africa. Emanating from right-wing Roman Kaoma has served as one of the principal chroni- Catholic, Mormon, and Protestant evangelical tra- clers and analysts of the unfolding politicization of ditions, groups like the American Center for Law & homophobia and abortion in Africa. He was an eye- Justice, Human Life International, and Family Watch witness to many of the events that precipitated the International work both separately and in tandem Uganda bill, including a March 2009 Kampala con- to renew and expand colonial-era proscriptions on ference at which U.S. evangelicals regaled political sexual rights. Some of these players may be familiar and civil society leaders with apocalyptic tales of a to U.S. audiences. The Pat Robertson-founded Ameri- coming collapse of the African family at the hands can Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) recently opened of the international “gay agenda.” The results of his offices in Kenya and Zimbabwe and actively intervenes investigation for Political Research Associates (PRA) in those countries’ constitution-making processes. were published in the groundbreaking report, Glo- ACLJ is run by Jay Sekulow, a prominent figure in balizing the Culture Wars, and Kaoma’s findings gar- anti-gay, -abortion, and -Muslim legal strategies, who nered deserved attention from news media outlets, advised the George W. Bush administration on activists, and policy makers on several continents. judicial nominees and is embraced by presidential Human rights advocates in both Africa and the Unit- hopeful Mitt Romney. Other players in this American ed States used PRA’s findings to hold American ac- crusade, such as Mormon activist Sharon Slater of tors accountable for their roles in orchestrating the Family Watch International, are little known outside demonization and political repression of African of international sexual health and rights circles, yet sexual minorities. Under pressure, U.S. anti-gay they wield influence well beyond their modest campaigners—including Holocaust revisionist Scott budgets. Lively and megachurch pastor Rick Warren—dis- Perhaps the most confounding trend Kaoma owned the legislation and apparently downscaled highlights is the force with which African politi- their engagement with Africa. In spring 2012, Sexual cians and newspapers have come to reframe the hu- Minorities Uganda—whose advocacy officer David man rights struggle of African sexual minorities as a Kato was murdered in 2011—underlined the foreign neocolonial import by Western powers. Kaoma origins of the anti-gay agenda by filing suit against reveals that opportunistic African politicians— Lively in U.S. courts, charging him with human rights particularly those heading authoritarian regimes –use violations. the myth of a foreign homosexual conspiracy to dis- Despite these critical interventions, Kaoma dem- credit opposition parties and divert attention from ii POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES Colonizing African Values - How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa their own inadequacies. In Black Skin, White Masks sexual minorities and their advocates be spared per- French-Algerian psychiatrist and anti-colonial activist secution through the intervention of Western powers Frantz Fanon famously wrote of the colonized Afri- and international human rights organizations? can’s aspiration to imitate the culture and manners Kaoma disrupts such ideas about perpetrators of White colonizers. Sixty years later, we find White and victims. His painstaking research— including ex- Christian Right neocolonialists seeking legitimacy clusive interviews with leading American and African through a process of Africanizing the local leadership Christian conservatives—conclusively demonstrates of their operations and leveling charges of neocolo- that the fury over sexuality in Africa has been or- nialism against Western governments and interna- chestrated by American figures and groups who con- tional human rights groups. This tactical inversion of tinue to systematically impose their theological views the colonial relationships described by Fanon might and public policy prescriptions on the continent. aptly be characterized as “White skin, Black masks.” The resultant persecution of those exercising their The neocolonialism charge leveled by U.S. Christian sexual freedoms has indeed claimed victims. How- conservatives and their African allies carries a ever, Kaoma, himself an Anglican priest from Zam- particularly bitter irony given the active support bia, urges the human rights community to stand in once provided by Pat Robertson and other Christian solidarity with the courageous leadership of African Right figures to White colonial regimes. Unfortu- LGBT and other human rights leaders who must and nately, few Africans are familiar with the U.S. groups will be the principal agents of their own liberation. profiled in this report and their campaign to im- Kaoma challenges human rights defenders in the pose a decidedly American conservative theological United States to focus our considerable resources understanding of family values onto Africa. where are they are most needed. We must stop the The alert U.S. observer will not fail to notice that insidious and deadly export of the American culture the targeting of African women and sexual minorities wars by our fellow countrymen and women. Fortu- parallels the increased racialization of domestic nately for us all, Colonizing African Values identifies culture war battles. The reproductive autonomy of practical opportunities for taking up that challenge. African-American and Latina women is increasingly being recast by conservative religious campaigners as Tarso Luís Ramos a population control conspiracy perpetrated by White Executive Director feminists. The recent leak of internal documents from Political Research Associates the Christian Right group National Organization for Marriage reveal a deliberate strategy to mobilize African-American ministers and congregants in opposition to the civil rights of LGBT people here at home. In the United States as in Africa, such strategies require popularizing the fiction that homosexuality is a “White thing,” and, in so doing, denying the very existence of African and African-diasporic sexual minorities, along with all LGBT people of color. The parallels between

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