American evangelicals’ efforts to spread homophobia across Africa appear to be working. Knowing that they’ve already lost in the United States and other industrialized countries, they’re exploiting the taboos and customs of African countries to quash not only gay human rights, but gay existence.
Sharon Slater, President of Family Watch International (FWI), is at the forefront of this culture war, just one front in the broader struggle toward Dominionism. FWI has been actively fighting any potential effects on the continent by the U.N. declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality around the world. Slater has devoted her career to making sure gays and lesbians in Africa live in a state of fear. Her husband, Greg Slater, who serves as FWI’s legal adviser, recently laid out FWI’s vision in an e-mail to supporters:
As the most populous and one of the wealthiest African counties, Nigeria can serve as a strong role model for other governments in the region to follow on how to hold on to their family values despite intense international pressure. In fact, several days after the conference, the head of the Anglican Church called upon the Nigerian government to withdraw from the United Nations because of its push to further the cause of homosexuality.
That’s right: Nigeria, the country in which gays, if they’re lucky, face up to 14 years in prison, and if they’re unlucky enough to reside in the Sharia-dominated north, face a certain death by stoning, is the "role model" for the region.
The attempt by the Slaters and other American evangelicals associated with FWI and the larger Illinois-based World Congress of Families to keep the stigma attached to LGBT people worked (and continues to work) in Uganda, and it appears to be causing similar sentiment in Ghana. In July, Paul Evans Aidoo, the Western Regional Minister, issued an order calling for the immediate arrest of all gays and lesbians. While disputing the claim that 8,000 gays and lesbians reside in Ghana, he provided the assurance that “[a]ll efforts are being made to get rid of these people in society.” In August, it was reported that there is an unprecedented propaganda campaign aimed at stigmatizing gays and lesbians – headlines calling them “filthy” and “sinful” and demanding their imprisonment. In addition, the Presbyterian Church of Ghana announced in August that it would be stepping up its promotion of gay reparative therapy to stop the “spread” of homosexuality – therapy that includes “vigorous spiritual exercise” (which sounds a lot like exorcism).
Now, a former Deputy Minister, Sam P. Valley, is calling for the arrest and imprisonment of Ghana’s gays and lesbians, citing their “genocide” against the human race. He told reporters on Wednesday:
Genocide results in the extermination of the human race and if you expand the meaning of homosexuality to mean that a man cannot have a child with another man then it means that that practice would lead to the extermination of mankind and therefore for me if I am to charge anybody apart from having unnatural carnal knowledge, I would also charge him with genocide and see how he can get out of that situation.
[…]
If you are a man and you are having carnal knowledge with a man, how are you going to have a child?
This is a man who no longer holds much power or authority in Ghana. But what is really disturbing is the ease with which he can make this statement and go unchallenged. This type of rhetoric is not challenged – it is commonplace. These comments are not the ravings of a lone fanatic. They are instead indicative of a deep, seething anti-gay sentiment that has been awoken in Ghana and other African countries, in large part, by American evangelicals.
These comments follow remarks made recently by Ghana’s President, John Evans Atta Mills, warning the people of Ghana to fight moral vices, including homosexuality. From Care 2:
Last weekend saw Ghana’s President John Evans Atta Mills use a speech at a festival in Saltpond to urge the public to fight moral vices. He put “homosexuality and lesbianism” alongside child prostitution and drug abuse on the list of vices to be resisted.
The situation for LGBT people in Ghana is looking pretty dire. Homosexual activity is already illegal in Ghana. The sentence can only get more severe. This is an area of international concern. If the evangelicals associated with FWI and the World Congress of Families have their way, we might be seeing a repeat of Uganda in Ghana.