US Anti-Gay Evangelicals and their role in Ugandan Anti-gay Violence
How Anti-gay evangelicals in the United Sates support and fund anti-gay rhetoric and violence in Uganda. IN THE LIFE exposes ties between an elite organization of American conservatives and a proposed anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda that would impose the death penalty on serial offenders of homosexual acts. Featuring the stories of gay Ugandans who risk their lives to speak out against the bill. Then Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," discusses the work of progressive faith leader Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, whose inclusive theology stresses the importance of the separation between religious institutions and the State. Trigger warning for mentions of rape and homophobic violence.
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This was especially interesting to me, because a lot of the history and rhetoric highlighted in the video can apply to Jamaica--where I live--and the Caribbean region as a whole. Our British colonial past is heavily responsible for many of the culturally wide-spread homophobic views we hold, largely because of how a specially designed brand of Christianity was coupled with slavery + legislation to control our African, Indian, and Asian forefathers during colonialism.
The irony is that most of us in these communities (Caribbean, African) often classify the 'spread' of homosexuality as 'Western countries forcing their immoral ways on us', when a lot of our deep-seated opposition is a result of systematic manipulation by those Western countries--manipulation which is obviously still practiced in a lot of 'developing' countries to differing degrees depending on how vulnerable they are. In Jamaica, the laws we have which criminalize 'sodomy' or 'buggery' were just carried over word for word from the original colonial constitutions that used to govern us before we gained independence in 1962.
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This was especially interesting to me, because a lot of the history and rhetoric highlighted in the video can apply to Jamaica--where I live--and the Caribbean region as a whole. Our British colonial past is heavily responsible for many of the culturally wide-spread homophobic views we hold, largely because of how a specially designed brand of Christianity was coupled with slavery + legislation to control our African, Indian, and Asian forefathers during colonialism.
The irony is that most of us in these communities (Caribbean, African) often classify the 'spread' of homosexuality as 'Western countries forcing their immoral ways on us', when a lot of our deep-seated opposition is a result of systematic manipulation by those Western countries--manipulation which is obviously still practiced in a lot of 'developing' countries to differing degrees depending on how vulnerable they are. In Jamaica, the laws we have which criminalize 'sodomy' or 'buggery' were just carried over word for word from the original colonial constitutions that used to govern us before we gained independence in 1962.