I was really inquisitive about this. Please delete if its off topic.
Currently, the LGBTI refugee crisis in Africa is at a higher increase. Africa is generally known for a lot of things and they include homophobia. Its on record that lots of queer people are killed and detained and others have ended up in refugee camps. This homophobia is much driven by religions, and culture.
Is there anything that American and Americans can do to ensure that Africa is a better place for lgbtiq people? Maybe to reduce all the costs like deaths, detentions, movement of queer people in dangerous Refugee camps, and so much more.
Let’s get to hear what we think about this.
20 comments
What can Americans do? Stop sending American missionaries that made this happen.
We really screwed then over.
Our missionaries really fucked them up. There may have been some level of hate there for untold ages, but Christian missionaries made it what it is today. It’ll take many decades for them to unfuck themselves. I don’t think the USA can or should take direct action about it other than being a good place to run to.
Definitely the best thing to do would be to stop Christian missionaries from ever going, well, anywhere. They do nothing good, and they bring so much pain, violence, racism, and homophobia with them when they try and force their views and their religion onto others.
What the I stand for
We can start by cleaning up at home. But unfortunately we’re backsliding on that. In a few years gay marriage will probably no longer be federally recognized. In the meantime the GOP is pushing hard to allow coaches to inspect children’s genitals, and reddit eats up the trans athlete hysteria. Once we can put these issues to rest in our own country, only then can we really even begin to try to help an entire continent with theirs.
Stop sending missionaries, full stop.
Also maybe support community-based initiatives to expand education, alleviate poverty, and help undo the damage caused by centuries of colonial and neocolonial extraction.
Queerphobia in much of the global south is a product of European (and later American) imperialism; maybe if the wealthy countries of the world stopped constantly fucking with the poorest, they’d be able to get shit fixed.
Stop missionaries from preaching hate. Especially any southern Baptist ones.
It’s hard to say how America should be involved in Africa without sounding like how America was involved in the middle east and latin america.
China is eager to build a “silk road” through Africa which would obviously not be good for the LGBTQ+ folks. And it’s smart to invest in Africa. It will be the most populated continent shortly, and has loads of resources needed to build semiconductors and other phone components.
China is building infrastructure in African countries in exchange of the rights to these resources and influence.
America not being more invested is a mistake but we’re really not able to do much about it.
Fuck china
Africa has been victimized by foreign interference for a millennia, I don’t see more of that improving the situation over the next few decades.
What Americans can do is leave Africa the fuck alone. The vast majority of problems in Africa stem from white people coming in to tell the black people what to do. Seriously, wasn’t the first round of colonialism enough for you? You want to meddle even MORE?
Africa isn’t a monolith. There are 50+ countries and I believe the most distinct languages of any continent.
I wouldn’t even begin to hazard a guess how to address any problem across all of Africa.
On the huge list of the most important issues in the country right now, this one isn’t even on the radar.
Considering Africa’s history with foreign influence I think it needs to be left alone for a while to work out its own issues. The best thing anyone else can do I think is to not make it worse by getting involved.
We either tell Africa what to do, and get accused of colonialism or we don’t, and let them do what they want. You can’t have it both ways.
So is it the US’s job to tell people how o run their country? I thought that was a bad thing?
Africa is beyond fucked, you got China (not a friend of the lgbtq community) heavily investing all over plus you got ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-shabaab, Al-qaeda etc etc etc then you got the countries in Africa that actively prosecute lgbtq people. Maby in like 500 years the tide will change but as long as the majority of Africa is under developed and has resources that are needed worldwide nothing is gonna stop the cycles of violence
People blaming missionaries are behind the times. [Established churches are also responsible for this,](https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-africa-religion-relationships-united-states-3b1115a1a9ed40a1211dd508ae996141 ) though that doesn’t mean American homophobes don’t also have a hand in it.
>Ghana… now faces scrutiny due to a bill in Parliament that would impose prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years for people identifying as LGBTQ or supporting that community. The bill has been denounced by human rights activists even as Ghanaian religious leaders rally behind it.
>The lawmakers proposing the bill said they consulted influential religious leaders while drafting it. Among those endorsing it are the Christian Council of Ghana, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the country’s chief imam.
>…
>Nigeria is home to one of the United Methodist bishops, John Wesley Yohanna, who says he plans to break away from the UMC and join the proposed Global Methodist Church. That new denomination, likely to be established next year, results from an alliance between Methodists in the United States and abroad who don’t support the LGBT-inclusive policies favored by many Methodists in the U.S.
>…
>Frank Mugisha, a prominent gay activist in Uganda, described church leaders as “the key drivers of homophobia in Africa.” Some Anglican leaders, he said, have deepened their hostility toward LGBTQ people in a bid to not lose followers to aggressively anti-LGBTQ Pentecostal churches.
The religious right help homophobia along [by spending money,](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/africa-us-christian-right-50m/) not so much by sending missionaries.
> More than 20 US Christian groups known for fighting against LGBT rights and access to safe abortion, contraceptives and comprehensive sexuality education have spent at least $54m in Africa since 2007. These are the results of a new investigation by openDemocracy, which documents the scale of this spending for the first time.
>The Fellowship Foundation, a secretive US religious group whose Ugandan associate, David Bahati, wrote Uganda’s infamous “Kill the Gays” bill, is the biggest spender in Africa. Between 2008 and 2018, this group sent more than $20m to Uganda alone.
>…
>Haley McEwen, a researcher at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, calls US religious Right groups a “well-resourced transnational network of conservative organisations”.
>…
>While same-sex marriage was legalised in the US in 2015, same-sex relationships of any kind remain criminalised in many African countries. Some African activists suspect this is what has drawn US conservatives to the continent.
>“They have lost support in their home country. Now they are looking for countries where they can dump their ideologies,” says Frank Mugisha, a Ugandan LGBT rights activist. “They do it somewhere else where they feel they have more power.”
No.
Africa is enormous. It’s 54 unique countries each with their different cultures, most of whom were subject to colonial influence in the past. Mixing with homophobia are ethnic battles, religious massacres… there isn’t an easy solve to Africa.
**The greatest way to change behavior is to change the economic incentives**. The only way we’ll positively influence Africa is by setting an example, using our corporations to drive policies for the businesses inside of Africa, and requiring these standards from the businesses in Africa that we interact with. “You can do business with us, but we have expectations for how you treat your people.” Only when people see that “to have a better life, working with these companies, I must also treat people with respect,” will they change.
Africa is dozens of countries and thousands of cultures, and most of the countries have weak central governments and no common culture through the countries. So that’s a situation where foreign influence on day to day life is very limited, no matter how much money is thrown into the pit.
Trying to make a culture change is even harder than making laws change. If there is no desire coming from within a society to change, they won’t. The US became less homophobic because of a general cultural attitude that tolerance is a good thing combined with decades of activism on the part of homosexual communities. It was not quick, it was not easy, and it was not imposed. Imposing culture has been done and can be done, but it’s destructive a d tragic at best and often involves genocide.
For homophobia to be reduced in Africa, then African homosexuals have to take action. In most countries, the weak central governments mean that any action they take will be limited in influences. The US can’t change that. About the extent of what the US can do is to give help to African activists, and honestly? Homophobia in Africa is seen as a much less significant problem than political instability, food insecurity, and other problems that threaten to kill millions.
Honestly I think we need to strengthen ties with many nations in Africa.
Africa is easily the place in the world with the most potential. From it’s people and from the land itself.
There’s definitely a solution that involves American influence without the blatant theft and rape of the land. And such influence would then lend itself to culture changes. A decrease in corruption, and steadying of government, and a shift in progressive attitude (and I say that as a rock-ribbed conservative).
In my mind, it would look like a business arrangement where American businesses are given tax incentives to do business in Africa, with conditions such as using local work forces and strict adherence to environmental and labor regulations. Similar or more strict than what exists in America (we all know how first world countries like to have strict regulations in their home country but then run rampant abroad).
Throw in travel subsidies and incentives for African entrepreneurship and we’ve got the makings of some strong ties between us and them.