Kapya Kaoma

Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma was a Senior Research Analyst at PRA (2008-2018). He was the original researcher to expose the ties between U.S. right-wing evangelicals and the anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda, and has testified before Congress and the United Nations. He is the author of “Globalizing the Culture Wars” and “Colonizing African Values,” and appears as an expert voice in the 2013 documentary God Loves Uganda. He received his doctorate in Ethics from Boston University.

The People’s Pope?

How the Vatican's Position on Gender Threatens Human Rights

In September 2016, Sharon Slater of the U.S.-based Christian Right group Family Watch International issued a special appeal to a crowd of African conservatives, including Kenya’s Catholic Conference of Bishops, which was sponsoring the gathering.…

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Journal of Theology for Southern Africa: Special Issue on Sexuality in Africa

Co-edited by Dr. Kapya Kaoma

In July 2016, the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s highly reputable and peer-reviewed academic Journal of Theology in Southern Africa (JTSA) published its…

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The Vatican's Hypocrisy Endangers LGBTQ People Worldwide

“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” Pope Francis told reporters in July 2013. In January 2015, Pope Francis…

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California’s “Shoot the Gays” Ballot Initiative Serves as Permission Slip for African Conservatives

The news that a Christian lawyer named Matt McLaughlin submitted a proposed ballot initiative in California that would require the execution of all LGBTQ people may sound laughable in the United States, but McLaughlin’s goal might not actually be to…

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Christian Right Culture Warriors Don’t Understand the Word “Family”

Sexual minorities are not pleading for special rights or benefits. They are just seeking to take their own family’s rightful place at the table, free from fear or persecution. It is this family value that we must all protect, defend and uphold—for…

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Top Uganda Politician: Western Gays Adopting Children to Turn Them Gay

As Uganda awaits the passage of the new Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Speaker of the Parliament Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, one the nation’s biggest political powerhouses, is ramping up her U.S. conservative-fed talking points. Her recent speech resulted in…

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Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Law A Copy of U.S. Right-Backed Laws in Russia/Nigeria

Reports of the new anti-gay bill—“Prohibition of the Promotion of Unnatural Sexual Practices Bill of 2014” being considered in Uganda have caught the world unaware. Supporters of Uganda’s LGBTQ community had hoped that the Uganda court’s…

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Christian Right's Historical Repetition

CAUTION: BEWARE OF [HOMOS]

It’s like watching history repeat itself: African governments copying the tricks of the past, using propaganda to deny the plight of sexual minorities in their countries, while running full steam to destroy them.

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Conversion Therapy: A Bigger Threat to Africa Than Scott Lively

Conversion therapy, also known as ex-gay or reparative therapy, is the biggest obstacle to LGBTQ liberation in Africa. An idea promoted heavily in African nations by U.S. conservative Evangelicals who hold tremendous power and sway, many African…

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Museveni Plays Politics with Human Rights

On Friday, Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) on procedural grounds. While this ruling is a significant victory for Uganda’s LGBTI community, the road forward remains rocky and steep.

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Archbishop Tells Africa Homosexuality is a Human Rights Issue, Will American Culture War Exporters Listen?

The Archbishop’s courageous words came at the time when Zambians were awaiting the ruling on a same-sex couple James Mwape and Phillip Mubiana, who were pulled from their home and arrested on charges of being homosexual in May, 2013.

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Meet Seyoum Antonios, Ethiopia’s Martin Ssempa

As has become a standard for these persecutors of sexual minorities and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), Antonios criticized and blamed Western influence (for the existence of sexual minorities in Africa), while hiding the…

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LGBTQ Rights - African Politicians' Biggest Scapegoat

The ultimate irony of this sad tale is that it is not LGBTQ people who are foreign to Africa, but rather the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that is being used against them.

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Beyond Lively & Warren

U.S. Conservative Legal Groups Changing African Law to Persecute Sexual Minorities & Women

While the exposure of the direct involvement of U.S. conservative culture warriors like Scott Lively, Lou Engle, and Rick Warren in draconian anti-gay laws in Russia, Uganda and Nigeria has put many in the Religious Right on the defensive, there are…

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Only Fools Believe?

Pastor Rick Warren and Global Homophobia

The recent passage of highly punitive anti-LGBTQ legislation in Nigeria, Uganda, and Russia has brought renewed media scrutiny to certain conservative American evangelicals known for campaigning against homosexuality abroad. Pastors Scott Lively and…

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WARNING: U.S. LGBTQ Organizations Falling Into Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Trap

Various human rights organizations in both the U.S. and Uganda are demanding a recall of the U.S. Ambassadors to Uganda and Nigeria. These organizations are falling right into the well-organized trap set by U.S. conservatives.

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Uganda President Museveni Will Likely Sign Anti-Homosexuality Law

While international media praises Ugandan President Museveni for “blocking” the Anti-Homosexuality bill—in reality he’s politically weak, trying to appease both sides, and will likely sign the bill.

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Long Walk To Freedom

What African Sexual Minorities Can Learn from Tata Mandela

Mandela’s vision extended to all those who continue to pursue long walks to freedom. Mandela championed the human rights of all people, whether Black, White, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or intersex. He lived to see the day when…

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Zambia First Lady Deserves Praise for Pro-LGBT Speech? Think Again.

The global North LGBTI and Human rights groups have heralded Zambia’s First Lady Christine Kaseba’s “positive” statement on homosexuality. But if you read her full remarks in context, there’s isn’t anything praiseworthy about it.

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American 'Ex-Gay' Movement Paves Way for Global Harm

This post was originally published on The Advocate on May 2, 2013. Is the “ex-gay” movement over yet? Certainly not at the global level. Though the movement shows signs of weakening in the United States, international organizations like Exodus…

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Zambian Government Cracks Down on Gay Rights Advocates

Following the arrest of a gay rights advocate in Zambia, Political Research Associates’ religious and sexuality researcher Rev. Canon Dr. Kapya Kaoma writes about the attacks on gay people in his home country for the Lukasa Times. Zambian LGBTQ…

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Making Anti-Gay Christian Right Views Law, at Home and Abroad

Did you know that the same Christian-right legal organization responsible for drafting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bans federal recognition of same-sex marriage in the U.S., also supports the constitutional criminalization of…

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Major Christian Right Actors Seek to Criminalize Homosexuality in Africa

On Friday, Andy Kroll at Mother Jones reported that Jay Sekulow and Jordan Sekulow, the father-son team leading the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) — high-profile social conservatives and advisers and supporters of Republican Presidential…

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The Culture Wars Come to Zambia

Intercepting the International Human Rights Agenda

On a visit to Zambia in February 2012, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on African countries to stop treating LGBT people as less than human or as second class citizens. He explicitly asked Zambian lawmakers to stop…

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Colonizing African Values

How the U.S. Christian Right Is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa

While U.S. Christian Right leaders made headlines when international pressure forced them to retract support for Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, a new report by Political Research Associates shows that U.S. Christian Right groups…

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Who’s Colonialist?

African Anti-Gay Politics In The Global Discourse

In August 2010, more than 400 African Anglican Bishops gathered in Entebbe, Uganda, for their second All-Africa Bishops Conference, which attracted global media attention because of the debates on LGBT rights.

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The U.S. Christian Right and the Attack on Gays in Africa

For two days in early March 2009, Ugandans flocked to the Kampala Triangle Hotel for the Family Life Network’s “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda.” The seminar’s very title revealed its claim: LGBT people and activists are engaged in a…

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Globalizing the Culture Wars

U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia

A groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates discovered that sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars. U.S. conservative evangelicals are promoting an agenda in Africa…

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Kapya Kaoma

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