Righteous Crusades? Imperialism, homophobia and the danger of simplification in God Loves Uganda (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
directed by Roger Ross Williams(US Documentary Competition)Many people in the US know that extensive violence has been directed against homosexuals in Uganda, and they may also know that a bill was introduced in the Parliament there to criminalize homosexual acts, recommending life imprisonment, and the death penalty for repeat offenders. This has created an international backlash and has been a source of horror to those who work for gay rights. What is not well known, and what this film makes clear, is that much of the homophobia there is a direct result of conservative American Christian missionaries and their work in the country.Conservative Christian groups such as the International House of Prayer have been training and sending missionaries to Uganda for many years, viewing it as a place full of possible converts to be won for Christ. Their efforts have been rewarded by the conversion of many Ugandans. But these groups also have made sexual ethics their primary focus for conver...
The Catalyst: A Multidisciplinary Review of Undergraduate Scholarship at The University of Southern Mississippi, 2013
Across Africa, the persecution of gay people is gaining momentum. Gay people have been denied health care, detained, tortured, and killed. In 2009, the Ugandan parliament drafted The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which has accrued significant attention, mostly negative, from the international community. However, it seems that any attention, positive or negative, only serves to fan the flames from which the laws were created. Anti-homosexuality laws, both formal and informal, have existed for decades within Uganda, but the current laws being drafted are by far the most formal and comprehensive. This paper will examine the political and religious context in which Uganda's anti-homosexuality laws were created and discuss some of the present and potential implications of the bill.
Theology and Sexuality, 2011
This article examines the shifting interpretations of homosexuality in colonial and post-colonial contexts in east Africa. In 1886, Mwanga II, the king of the Baganda kingdom, executed forty-five male pages of his court. All forty-five were recent converts to Christianity and many accounts of the execution highlight the pages' refusal to submit to the king's sexual demands as the cause of their execution. Over the last one hundred and twenty-five years, the story of the martyrs has been used to support a broad spectrum of political, cultural, and religious claims. By examining the event in both historical and contemporary contexts, this paper identifies broader fault lines within those contexts in relation to Christianity, Islam, colonial power, and post-colonial politics in east Africa.
Porn in church: moral geographies of homosexuality in Uganda
Porn Studies, 2015
This case-study based paper on Uganda critically engages with the strategic visual representation of homosexuality as socially dysfunctional and non-productive, reflecting what in queer studies is called Ôqueer social negativityÕ. This depiction ensues from current popular Ugandan understandings of sexuality that are deeply rooted in the socio-moral order of family and kinship promoted by Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. The
Porn Studies, forthcoming
This case-study based paper on Uganda critically engages with the strategic visual representation of homosexuality as socially dysfunctional and non-productive, reflecting what in queer studies is called ‘queer social negativity’. This depiction ensues from current popular Ugandan understandings of sexuality that are deeply rooted in the socio-moral order of family and kinship promoted by Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. The Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa – leader of the Interfaith Rainbow Coalition against Homosexuality and successful campaigner for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill – has become internationally known due to his infamous presentation at a press conference in his church where he screened graphic gay porn material. The video of Ssempa’s presentation has become an epitome of the moral and religious politics of homosexuality in Uganda generating worldwide controversy. Despite recent scholarship on anti-homosexual rhetoric and politics in Uganda, in which the name of Ssempa is often mentioned, the specific significance of the use of pornographic images by this prominent religious leader has not yet been analysed in depth. The discussion of the reconstructed reality of homosexuality and the modern witch-hunt for homosexuals in Uganda urges us to think about the deep-seated socio-political dynamics and the broader transnational context of religion.
Homophobic Nationalism: The Development of Sodomy Legislation in Uganda
Literature on sexuality and citizenship has demonstrated the myriad of ways that states use legislation to produce, regulate, and protect a sexually and racially " pure " citizen. In the context of the European imperial powers, this citizen is heterosexual, monogamous, and white. In the postcolonial Ugandan context, the development of sodomy legislation shows that this ideal citizen is heterosexual, monogamous, and yet untarnished by contemporary Western ideals (which is undoubtedly paradoxical). This work engages with colonial legislative texts, most notably the Ugandan Penal Code Act of 1950. The author then triangulates this with an analysis of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and Act and parliamentary record from 1999-2013. With this data, it is argued that the Ugandan construct of an ideal citizen is not only a reactionary result of colonial-ism, but that it is also demonstrative of the anti-globalization ideology that has heightened in the wake of rapid NGOization of the global LGBTI rights movement.
Spirits of oppression; Christian missionaries and homosexuality in Uganda
Many Africans claim that homosexuality is un-African, but the first person to write about this issue was not an African or had ever been to Africa himself. Sir Edward Gibbon, an English historian wrote in 1781 that Africans were "exempt from this moral pestilence" 1 ; a thought that has been repeated regularly long after it was first written. What are the implications of such ideas? What was the role of Christian missionaries of the 19 th century in the formation of those ideas in Uganda and can we compare the neo-missionaries of the 21 st century to them? Are Ugandans victims of America"s exported intolerance by Pentecostal missionaries or are they participants in a clash between western modernity and traditional ethics?