Global Right

PRA tracks the influence of the U.S. Right globally and the exchange of ideologies that threaten human rights. Most notable has been our research on how U.S.-based religious conservatives are building organizational strength to promote homophobia and attacks on reproductive rights in sub-Saharan Africa.

Considering #SochiProblems Beyond Russia

On Twitter, journalists are popularizing the “#SochiProblems” hashtag, documenting shoddy and ill-prepared accommodations. Yet the bigger concerns have more to do with human rights than broken doorknobs.

Article

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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National Journal: PRA Researchers Describe U.S. Evangelical Involvement in Russia & Uganda

Political Research Associates’ researchers Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma and Cole Parke discuss how U.S.-based conservatives are working directly with the governments of nations like Russia and Uganda to bring about anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Article

Different Countries, Common Threads

Connecting the dots in the global surge of anti-LGBTQ attacks

The passage of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill last Friday brings renewed attention to the plight of LGBTQ people in Africa.

Article

Marriage Equality Comes to New Mexico

New Mexico has become the 17th U.S. state to approve marriage equality, and the first state in the Southwest United States to do so.

Article

RELEASE: Uganda Passes Anti-Homosexuality Bill

The Uganda Parliament has passed the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill, first proposed in 2009 and condemned by the international human rights community, President Obama, and other international dignitaries.

Press Release

East vs. West? Russia, Ukraine, and the Anti-Gay Wedge

In the debates leading up to this current political moment, the LGBTQ community became a useful scapegoat for pro-Russia factions. Ukraine was the first post-Soviet country to decriminalize homosexuality following independence from the Soviet Union…

Article

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…

Article

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.

Article

While Sochi Olympics Spark Global Outrage Over Anti-LGBTQ Laws, Local Groups Fight for Real Change

Russia’s recent surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation has prompted responses from human rights defenders around the globe. The upcoming Winter Olympics (set to be hosted in Sochi, Russia) has become a significant platform from which to demonstrate and…

Article

The Scott Lively Trial

Where are we and what happened yesterday?

The African LGBTQ advocacy group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) has sued Lively for crimes against humanity, specifically for inciting the persecution of Ugandan LGBTQ people.

Article

Three men in suits and a woman holding a mic.

Though based in Illinois, the World Congress of Families (WCF) has a global mission. It seeks to spread anti-choice, anti-LGBTI policies and ideas worldwide, as well as a conservative definition of the family.

Profile on the Right

"Natural Family" Advocates Push Their Views in Russia

In 2007, Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and founder of the World Congress of Families (WCF), published The Natural Family: A Manifesto alongside Paul Mero, head of the conservative, Mormon-backed…

Article

U.S. Conservatives and Russian Anti-Gay Laws - The WCF

Earlier this week, representatives of anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ groups from Russia, Italy, Spain, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, France, Serbia, and the United States (including the infamous Scott Lively) convened in Moscow to make plans for…

Article

How Well-Meaning Social Justice Groups Are Misinterpreting Kuwait's "Gaydar Testing"

An interesting aspect of journalism and blogging is the filter through which the information is processed. Journalists have the ability to impact opinions about and perceptions of certain issues. Coming from a solid journalist, this can provide us…

Article

The Making of God Loves Uganda

A Web Exclusive Interview with Roger Ross Williams

A group of people in a room with their hands raised.

Roger Ross Williams is a television and film writer, director, and producer whose most recent project, the documentary God Loves Uganda, focuses on the work of American evangelical Christian missionaries in Africa. Williams decided to focus on…

Article

Profiles on the Right: Dr. Richard Land

Dubbed by Time Magazine as “God’s Lobbyist,” Dr. Richard Land is the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of Southern Baptist Convention, and serves as the Commissioner on…

Profile on the Right

Dangerous Liaisons: New SPLC Report on Danger to LGBTQ People in Belize

The influence of U.S.-based Christian Right groups on the criminalization of homophobia has recently expanded to Belize, which has become a hotbed for anti-LGBTQ activity, according to new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center: Dangerous…

Article

Zimbabwe's Upcoming Elections: Corruption, Homophobia, and U.S. Conservatives

On Wednesday, Zimbabweans will head to the polls to elect a new president. In May, current President Robert Mugabe, a dictator infamous for his human rights abuses, signed a new constitution that will usher in much-needed reforms, including a more…

Article

Profiles on the Right: Andrea Lafferty

Andrea Sheldon Lafferty is a former Reagan and Bush administration official and current Executive Director of the Anaheim, CA-…

Profile on the Right

Sharon Slater: Going Global with a “Pro-Family,” Antigay Agenda

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.”

Article

Brazilian Evangelical Lawmakers Push Gay Conversion Therapy Bill

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…

Article

New Report Details Human Rights Violations Against LGBTQ Africans

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…

Article

Brazilian Evangelical Presidental Candidate Meets Pushback

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,…

Article

International Day Against Homophobia: Have You Seen God Loves Uganda?

The documentary God Loves Uganda, which depicts the role of American conservative evangelicals in generating vicious antigay campaigns in Uganda, has received acclaim at film festivals across the…

Article

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…

Article

Ugandan Pastors Launch Antigay Campaign at David Kato's Grave

On Easter Sunday, Ugandan Pastors Solomon Male and Thomas Musoke launched their “Say No to Homosexuality” campaign outside the gravesite of slain gay rights activist David Kato–purposely selecting the spot to prevent it from becoming “a pilgrimage…

Article

New Report Finds Ex-Gay Movement in Latin America Divided, But Still of Concern

When the Executive Director of Exodus International, Alan Chambers, dramatically announced in January 2012 that he no longer believed there was a “cure” to homosexuality, he allegedly ended his organization’s 35-year-long effort to “convert … LGBTQ…

Article

Divided Ex-Gay Movement Still Encouraging “Conversion” Therapy in Latin America

Boston, MA, April 2, 2013: Exodus International, the U.S. network of Christian ministries prominent in the “ex-gay” movement, dramatically changed its position in January 2012 when Executive Director Alan Chambers announced that he no longer…

Article

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…

Article

Antigay Legal Group Targets Home of World's Largest Pride Parade

From a modest building in a central neighborhood in Goiânia, the capital of the Brazilian state of Goiás, Filipe Coelho is launching the American Center for Law and Justice’s (ACLJ) Brazilian branch, following the example of the Christian Right…

Article

Gospel of Intolerance

U.S. Evangelicals Fund Homophobia in Uganda

A black man in the foreground sitting in a grey chair, people behind him.

Yesterday, the New York Times’ released an eight-minute “Op-Doc” titled “Gospel of Intolerance,” from Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, exposing “how money donated by American evangelicals helps to finance a violent antigay movement in…

Article

Sundance Film Features PRA Researcher

Tomorrow in Park City, Utah, will be the world debut of God Loves Uganda, a documentary on the U.S. Christian Right spreading homophobia abroad that builds on Political Research Associates’ research.

Press Hit

Scott Lively Held to Account Back Home for Anti-Gay Persecution in Uganda

Yesterday, I and about 40 others crammed into the Springfield, MA, office of Arise for Social Justice, fresh from the first oral hearing of the lawsuit brought by Ugandan gay rights activists against Scott Lively–the notorious holocaust revisionist…

Article

Political Research Associates condemns the criminalization of sexual minorities and calls on American and international religious and political leaders to denounce the reintroduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which reportedly passed…

Statement

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…

Article

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…

Article

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…

Report

New Report Exposes U.S. Christian Right Agenda in Africa

Today, Political Research Associates (PRA) released its new report, Colonizing African Values: How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa (pdf), which exposes the U.S. Christian Right’s growing infrastructure for…

Press Release

The Norway Attacks: "Marketing" the Christian Right Culture Wars

On Friday, July 22, at least 76 people were killed in the Oslo bombing and the shooting rampage at a Labor Party summer training camp for young liberal political activists. Immediately following news of the Norway terrorism, the internet buzzed with…

Article

U.S. Conservatives Who Inspired Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill Must Act Immediately to Stop Its Passage

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill will be debated in Parliament today and voted on tomorrow, Wednesday May 11. The bill, thought by many to have been shelved, had in fact remained before a committee of Uganda’s parliament. There were hearings on…

Article

Lively's Lies

A Profile of Scott Lively

In March 2009, Scott Lively traveled more than 8,000 miles from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, to talk to a small audience at the Triangle Hotel in Kampala, Uganda, about homosexuality. “My name is Scott Lively,” he began. “I’m married. I…

Article

Political Research Associates Condemns the Brutal Murder of Ugandan Human Rights Activist David Kato

David Kato, an openly gay human rights activist and advocacy officer at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), was attacked in his home in Mukono, Uganda, on January 26, and died on his way to the hospital. Kato had received death threats since October,…

Statement

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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Uganda's Leading LGBT Activist, Frank Musgisha, Touring U.S. To Speak Out Against Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Law Backed By U.S. Right

Frank Musgisha, the spokesperson for Uganda’s leading LGBT rights organization, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), will tour the United States this month to speak about the human rights crisis currently facing queer Ugandans, and the role conservative…

Article

UN: Landmark Meeting Denounces Rights Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

(New York, December 11, 2009) – A United Nations General Assembly panel that met this week broke new ground and helped build new momentum for ending human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a coalition of sponsoring…

Statement

A White man with white hair in a grey suit and a man in a blue shirt.

In August, at the fifth World Congress of Families (WCF) in Amsterdam, Austin Ruse, president of the New York-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) warned “that UN radicals in alliance with radical lawyers and judges and other…

Article

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…

Article

A woman in the front of the frame holding a sign that reads "marching in solidarity with the Ugandan LGBTI Community"

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…

Article

Groundbreaking PRA Investigation Exposes Influence of U.S. Religious Conservatives in Promoting Homophobia in Africa

Sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars as U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American…

Press Release

Have you signed our petition? Let Rick Warren Know You Care!

Political Research Associates is calling on Pastor Rick Warren to oppose an antigay bill promoted by his allies that is currently being debated in the Ugandan legislature. In March 2008, Warren told Ugandans that homosexuality is not a natural way…

Press Release

Political Research Associates Calls on Rick Warren to Denounce Proposed Antigay Law in Uganda

In March 2008, U.S. evangelical leader Rick Warren told Ugandans that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. One year later, U.S. conservative evangelical and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively (a resident of…

Press Release

Globalizing the Culture Wars

U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia

Report

Scott Lively’s Quotes

Selections from Scott Lively’s presentations at a conference in Kampala, Uganda in March 2009

Article

A Growing Threat to Basic Human Rights

While gender-based discrimination and oppression are nothing new abroad, for the past decade the U.S. Christian Right has been aggressively exporting its campaigns against reproductive rights and gay rights to countries around the world. Recently,…

Article

Sexual Minorities Uganda Letter to Parliament Protesting Anti-Gay Witchhunt

RE: Launch of hate campaign against sexual minorities

Article

Ugandans oppose U.S. Christian Right interference in Africa's sexual politics

Efforts to mobilize Ugandans to hunt down and imprison Ugandan gays and lesbians received worldwide attention during a three-day Family Life Network conference held March 3-5 in Kampala. But the media haven’t caught up with the rest of the story:…

Press Release

The Culture Wars Are Still Not Over

The Religious Right in the States and Beyond

In the wake of pre-election punditry that the Religious Right is dead and that the so called Culture Wars are over, I wrote a piece for The Public Eye: “The Culture Wars Are Not Over: The Institutionalization of the Christian Right.”1 The year was…

Article

Political Research Associates Report Documents Growing Threat to Reproductive Health Programs at UN from Right-wing NGOs

A new report by the progressive think tank Political Research Associates documents the growing threat Christian Right NGOs based at the United Nations pose to international policies supporting women’s reproductive health.

Statement

The Globalization of an Agenda

The Right Targets the UN with its Anti-Choice Politics

A banner at a protest that says "Pro Choice, Pro Child, Pro Family"

This article is derived from the PRA report UNdoing Reproductive Freedom: Christian Right NGOs Target the United Nations. In June 2004…

Article

A woman with a scarf holding a sign that says "open the borders"

Parties of the extreme Right now have a role in the governments and/or the parliaments of several European countries, including Flanders (northern Belgium…

Article

Mussolini on the Corporate State

A Google(tm) search on January 12, 2005 turned up some 5,000 hits on the following quote: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini It is generally…

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For Faith and Family

Christian Right Advocacy at the United Nations

A cresent moon sculpture that says "Beijing '95"

Since the United Nations held the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in September 1995, women’s rights and human rights groups in the US and throughout the world have worked to “bring the Beijing platform home.” Adopted by consensus…

Article

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