The following article is adapted from PRA’s 2012 report, Colonizing African Values. Sharon Slater co-founded Family Watch International (FWI) with the goal of defending “fundamental institutions and values that are so critical to any society.”
Though opponents of the discredited “ex gay” movement achieved a partial victory last week in the United States when Alan Chambers announced the closing of his organization, Exodus International, the battle over the legitimacy of a gay cure is only heating up in Brazil.
All eyes were on Uganda in 2009, when the Parliament tried to pass a bill making homosexuality punishable by death in certain cases. Since then, however, it has become increasingly evident that discrimination against LGBTQ people in Africa is far more widespread than an isolated legislative battle.
In January, I wrote in PRA’s Public Eye quarterly that Rev. Everaldo Dias Pereira, vice president of the conservative evangelical Christian Social Party (PSC), was being tapped by group of Brazilian pastors to run for president in 2014. Last month, that came to pass, when PSC publicly announced Dias’ presidency. But not all Brazilian conservative evangelical leaders are happy about it.
Jim Daly is President/CEO of the evangelical, socially conservative public policy nonprofit Focus on the Family (FOF), which was founded by one of America’s most influential and hard-line Right Wing Christian conservatives, James Dobson. In 2004 Dobson was described as “America’s most influential evangelical leader.” FOF was one of the largest and most prolific religious right organizations in the United States until its downsizing in 2008.
