Global Right

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.

Last week, in the wake of Russian-led investigation, it was reported that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in Russia he was, in fact, more eager to wage war than the Islamist contacts he had traveled to find. Accounts reveal that he arrived in Russia with “an avid interest in waging jihad.”

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 continent.

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 people are currently hiding out in fear of a government crack-down, triggered, officials claim, by attempts by two same-sex couples to receive marriage recognition. Rev. Kaoma wrote about the situation in August 2012 in a Public Eye article, “The Culture Wars Come to Zambia.”

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 site for homosexuality.”

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 people to homosexuality.”

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 believed there was a “cure” to homosexuality. This allegedly put an end to the organization’s 35-year effort to “convert…LGBTQ people to heterosexuality through ‘submission to Jesus Christ.’” However, a new report by the social justice think tank Political Research Associates, The “Ex-Gay” Movement in Latin America: Therapy and Ministry in the Exodus Network, finds that the global network remains divided in its stance on harmful “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ individuals, particularly in Latin America.

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 homosexuality in Kenya and Zimbabwe and has now set its sight on Brazil, home of the world’s largest LGBTQ Pride parade?

As Brazil’s evangelical population continues to rise a religious right has begun to consolidate power, bringing the church into the state and in some cases threatening to roll back hard won human rights advances.