How the US Christian right built an interfaith coalition against LGBTQ rights in Africa
Slater is a Mormon whose organisation has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a release on the academy's website, Slater described the mission of her organisation as protecting “the family institution in accordance with what all divine laws called for”, and praised the partnership as a vehicle for rallying religious institutions across faiths to that cause.
This week, Slater's organisation will co-convene the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family and Sovereignty in Accra, Ghana, a gathering that rights organisations have warned serves as a platform for advancing anti-LGBTQ legislation across the continent.
It comes as no surprise then that Ghana’s parliament hurriedly passed an anti-LGBTQ bill on 29 May, one that stipulates an up-to-10-year jail term for “promoting” LGBTQ activities and includes an extradition clause for queer Ghanaians abroad. The bill, which now awaits presidential assent, enjoys the support of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Christian Council of Ghana, and the Office of the National Chief Imam.
Over the years, the coalition between Christians and Muslims became one of the most influential anti-LGBTQ forces in Ghana, helping mobilise support for the closure of an EU-backed LGBTQ community centre in Accra, organising national prayer events against homosexuality and camps to cure homosexuality, and eventually backing the legislation that passed last week.
The same rhetoric has been used in a related pushback on women’s rights more broadly, and sexual and reproductive health rights specifically.
This week's conference in Accra, then, should not be understood as just another event in the well-documented pipeline of US-exported homophobia. It represents the culmination of an inter-faith coalition model that is, remarkably, more advanced in Africa than anywhere else in the world, including the United States.
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opini...hts-africa
Slater is a Mormon whose organisation has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a release on the academy's website, Slater described the mission of her organisation as protecting “the family institution in accordance with what all divine laws called for”, and praised the partnership as a vehicle for rallying religious institutions across faiths to that cause.
This week, Slater's organisation will co-convene the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family and Sovereignty in Accra, Ghana, a gathering that rights organisations have warned serves as a platform for advancing anti-LGBTQ legislation across the continent.
It comes as no surprise then that Ghana’s parliament hurriedly passed an anti-LGBTQ bill on 29 May, one that stipulates an up-to-10-year jail term for “promoting” LGBTQ activities and includes an extradition clause for queer Ghanaians abroad. The bill, which now awaits presidential assent, enjoys the support of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Christian Council of Ghana, and the Office of the National Chief Imam.
Over the years, the coalition between Christians and Muslims became one of the most influential anti-LGBTQ forces in Ghana, helping mobilise support for the closure of an EU-backed LGBTQ community centre in Accra, organising national prayer events against homosexuality and camps to cure homosexuality, and eventually backing the legislation that passed last week.
The same rhetoric has been used in a related pushback on women’s rights more broadly, and sexual and reproductive health rights specifically.
This week's conference in Accra, then, should not be understood as just another event in the well-documented pipeline of US-exported homophobia. It represents the culmination of an inter-faith coalition model that is, remarkably, more advanced in Africa than anywhere else in the world, including the United States.
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opini...hts-africa
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
