No, as a francophile and a comfortable speaker of French as a second language, who has spent time in North Africa, West Africa, and Haiti, I'm not surprised that levels of toxic homophobia are very high in most areas of Africa and many parts of the Caribbean.

I am dismayed, though, that instead of getting better, things seem to be getting rapidly worse. I'm also dismayed that U.S. Christians are working hard and spending hard to make things worse – which is something I hoped my readers would take away from this story.