Africa: More Homophobic Than Antarctica

Simon Lokodo cannot imagine kissing a man. "I think I shall die," he said last week. "I would not exist. It is inhuman. I would be mad. Just imagine eating your faeces."

Lokodo is "ethics and integrity" minister in Uganda and a champion of the country's swingeing anti-homosexuality bill, which looked set to become law on Sunday until President Yoweri Museveni halted it, pending scientific advice. The delay was a small victory for activists dismayed a week ago when Museveni insisted that he would approve the legislation. That news prompted Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to tweet: "In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British colonial ban."

In 140 characters, Roth encapsulated a broad sweep of history and geography and one of the central paradoxes of Africa's new war on gay and lesbian people. It is a war marked by political opportunism, biblical fundamentalism and a clash between cultural relativism and universal human rights. But it is also a measure of conservatives' anxiety that every day more and more African homosexuals are coming out and losing their fear. Western liberals eager to see the best in Africa must face an inconvenient truth: this is the most homophobic continent on Earth. Same-sex relations are illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries, according to Amnesty International, and punishable by death in some states. Now a fresh crackdown is under way.

David Smith, the Observer's Africa correspondent.

A lengthy, thoughtful article.

Though its main thrust - that African homophobia is a legacy of Western colonialism, that's now being stirred up by American evangelical Christians - is simplistic and has become a media trope/truism.
For they are but passive agents, and all they have was given by us?

Further, it seems odd, cruelly ironic and rather insulting, that David Smith does not interview any LGBT Africans.

They do exist, and are campaigning in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda... *

Why are they not allowed a voice, why can they not speak for themselves?

Smith does however talk to that well-known self-appointed expert on Africa, and indeed on all things gay, Peter Tatchell.

It seems the colonial mindset still has quite a hold.

'The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards' - Frantz Fanon.

Saint Peter has started talking up his affiliations with the UK-based African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group. 
If so, why didn't he tell The Observer to talk to from someone from there?
Someone who knows what it's like to be black and African now.
Unless he just uses them for self-promoting photo-opportunities?

* Sexual Minorities Uganda. 

Nelson Mandela: Tributes Pour In

Fagburn would love to read some cuttings to see how the Dail Mail covered Nelson Mandela and the ANC during the apartheid years.
I get the feeling they weren't quite so gushing and respectful back then...

PS Cecil Williams, the gay English theatre director, arrested with Mandela in 1962.

PPS Conservatives branded hyporcites for heaping praise on Nelson Mandela - the man they branded a terrorist - Mirror

And finally...

I wonder if it was like this two thousand years ago. If it was, when Jesus died, Pontius Pilate would have appeared on Sky News moments after the cross was taken down and said “The world mourns today a man of great integrity. It was an honour to have known him, and even when I sentenced him to crucifixion, he showed great forgiveness, and that shows what a great figure he was.”

On the BBC the newsreader would say “With me here is one of his closest associates. Judas, what memories do you have of Jesus?”

And Judas would say he always displayed dignity and humility, and most importantly forgave those that betrayed him, and finish with an amusing anecdote, about how pernickety he could be about which bread to break at supper...

Mark Steel, Tributes Have Flooded In... 

Thought For The Day: Dr Jeffrey John

“In the Sixties the Church was in the forefront of the movement to decriminalise homosexuality. The Conservative Party realised ten years ago that the equal treatment of gay people had become a litmus test of basic human decency and changed its view, but it is a test the Church now spectacularly fails...
The fact that fifty years on [after the decriminalisation of homosexuality] the Church is seen as enemy No 1 of gay people is a disaster, both for our own morale and for our mission to the country. We have become the last refuge of prejudice.” 

Dr Jeffrey "Elton" John, Dean Of St Albans.
Quoted in The Times.
They don't say so, but I get the feeling* this must come from a talk he's given/giving, but it's currently UnGooglable.
It's a quiet day in the papers for once on the gay marriage front - thank feck - though it leads The Guardian letters page.
One reader brings up what I'm now calling "The South African Option";

"It involves two changes. The first would be to remove all legal significance from the word marriage and the second would be to make civil partnerships the only union recognised by the state. Those in such partnerships (a man and a woman, two men, or two women) would gain the present advantages given to those now married under the present system.
"The word marriage could then be defined and used by any of the groups without any conflict with a legal definition. Christian marriage and gay marriage are two possible usages that spring to mind, but the only relationship with legal significance that could be had would be a civil partnership. Each side would feel that they had lost something, but it could not be denied that there would be equality."

This is essentially what they did in South Africa - the oft-repeated claim that they introduced "gay marriage" is not strictly true.
I increasingly believe this would be the best option.
It's not a compromise - it just takes the matter out of the hands of both God and the state.

* Not least because The Times mentions the story about John suing the Church of England for discrimination - something he has never said - and don't ask about it.

Marriage: Around The World

The Independent has this handy cut-out-and-keep guide to gay marriage around the world.
Click here for a zoomable version.
They don't strictly have "gay marriage" in South Africa though, despite almost every commentator saying they do.

Marriage: A Modest Proposal

"Here’s my answer: my submission to the commission on “gay marriage” that the Prime Minister has promised. Do as they’ve done in South Africa. Make the partnership that two people of either sex may enter the same in law, regardless of their sex.
"Then remove the word “marriage” altogether from legal language. Amend the statute book. Call it (say) “civil union” (as they do in South Africa). Call the ceremony bilateral amatory pledge trothing, or pledging, or registering or declaring — take your pick. Call the union itself what you like: and make this the word that the State uses for the institution that it defines, polices and protects.
"But then let every church, mosque or synagogue use the word “marriage” as their own faith enjoins, using it differently, as they already do. And let couples with civil unions call their unions whatever they wish: marriage, partnership, union, whatever. Language will sort itself out. Language always does..."

Matthew Parris, The Times.
Mr Parris is civilly partnered to James Glover, David Cameron's speech writer.
Although he didn't officially get the job until the following month, I suspect it was Glover who put in the section about gay marriage being a Conservative value into David Cameron's leadership speech to Conservative party conference.
And perhaps it was only added during the last-minute rewrite when Team Cameron removed a highly patronising section telling people to pay off their credit card bills.

Update: The Christian Institute are extremely happy that another gayer and intellectual heavyweight of the right, Christopher Biggins, has been on Loose Women and said he doesn't want gay marriage. Read their report and watch the clip here.
Mr Biggins is also in a civil partnership.
Silly old queen... 

Kiss: Mark Dean Brown & Bjorn Czepan

"Car crash tragedy of gay couple in kiss photo that rocked South Africa"
"Theirs was a kiss that stunned a conservative town. When a moment of passion for two men was published on a newspaper front page it provoked fierce debate in one of South Africa's oldest communities.
"In a single photograph Bjorn Czepan and Mark Dean Brown became unwitting symbols for tolerance and gay rights at the predominantly Afrikaner, rugby-playing Stellenbosch University.
"Just a month later, there is a tragic postscript. Czepan is dead and Brown is critically ill in hospital..."

Here is Vanessa Smeets on how her photograph of Mark and Bjorn's kiss went viral.

Terre'blanche Murder: Don't panic?

Some can barely contain their excitement at the news that South African police investigating the murder of neo-Nazi bastard, Eugene Terre'blanche, have been told by lawyers acting for the two men who have been arrested that their defence will argue they acted in self-defence after Terre'blanche had tried to have sex with them.
Some love the idea that every homophobe - especially a far right homophobe - is a secret closet case.
Such men of course do exist; most infamously Hitler's "useful gay idiot" Ernst Rohm - a man who ultimately outlived his uses. Terrible Twin Jaroslaw Kaczynski - the closeted gay brother of dead man of the moment, Lech - former Polish PM and current chair of the Law and Justice Party has never been afraid of using homophobia to appeal to Catholic fundamentalist voters. And BNP leader Nick Griffin has recently denied that he was the bicha of the former NF senior cadre, Martin Webster...
Nonetheless alarm bells should sound whenever any lawyer cries; "Gay panic". Cold blooded killers of gay (and non-gay) men would often use such a "defence" in Britain knowing judges and juries would look more kindly on a man who'd murdered a "predatory" queer.
The official press in Zimbabwe seem keen to claim that Terre'blanche had tried to involved the two men in a "gay orgy" - and are now saying some former gay lover is about to come out of the woodwork. But it's almost an article of faith among the Mugabe regime that everyone they don't like - no matter how politically disparate - are part of some great secret gay conspiracy in legion against them.
For the record Terre'blanche was married, and had been outed before over an extra-marital affair with a woman.
Yes, I know that doesn't negate the idea that he was gay, or bisexual, so please don't write in.
But in a heated and politically-charged case like this I'd avoid jumping to conclusions about anything...