I know some Prism & Pen readers will believe you are exaggerating for effect about the severity of homophobia in Africa, but I know you are not. Sadly, I've had far too much personal experience with LGBTQ people in Africa who fear for their safety and even their lives.
Years ago, Prism & Pen regularly published fiction by a young Nigerian man who centered LGBTQ characters in his stories. He was scared to death. He told me more times than I can count that he was realistically afraid that people would discover his real identity and come for him. He eventually lost his nerve and stopped writing stories with trans and gay characters.
I don't blame him.
For about five years, I've stayed in regular correspondence with LGBTQ refugees in Africa who fear for their lives after suffering threats of violence or actual violence from their families and/or neighbors.
One young man's family found out he was gay then tied him up and threw him in a river to drown. He lives in a refugee camp now, desperate and giving up hope. He can't go home for fear his family will finish the job they started, but life in the camp is brutal and awful. He doesn't have enough to eat, and other residents and camp staff beat him because he's gay.
He can't realistically seek refuge in the Europe or North America, because the vast majority of our political leadership refuses to offer sanctuary to oppressed and brutalized queer people from anywhere in the world —even though our culture created the problem to begin with. Hell, we keep sending right-wing Christian missionaries to Africa to strengthen homophobia. To my eternal shame, my own niece was once one of them.
My niece is an Evangelical Protestant, but the morally repugnant leadership of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches bear every bit as much blame as Evangelical fanatics for perpetuating and working to strengthen homophobia in Africa.
Catholic and Anglican bishops in Africa are among the most vile homophobes anywhere in the world, often speaking out in favor of strengthening laws to criminally punish queer people. Yet neither the Pope nor the Archbishop of Canterbury do anything to sanction these vicious, evil churchmen — let alone remove them from office and replace them with men who preach a more loving version of Christianity.
It's like we sent our missionaries with our colonizers to impose our culture, and now that a cancerous part of our culture —which most of us have long rejected — has entrenched itself, we wash our hands of the problem.
Progressive and liberal Americans and Europeans even argue against strong institutional anti-homophobia policy in Africa on the grounds that we should not impose our cultural values.
Facepalm! That horse left the barn centuries ago, and now innocent people are suffering and dying for it.
And our religious leaders? Well, Justin Welby, the head of the Anglican Church recently announced that he will not bless same-sex couples for fear of offending Anglican bishops in Africa.
How shocking is that? How utterly vile and disgusting is that?
Homophobia in Africa is an African problem, but global leaders like Welby could help (at the very very least) by modeling loving, decent behavior.
But they refuse.
And so it goes with exporting and perpetuating irrational homophobic hatred.
