The situation is getting worse for homosexuals in Nigeria by the day. The country has been taken over by a violent homophobia that led a few years ago to the enactment of a draconian law criminalizing homosexuality. Police recently have been arresting homosexuals and torturing them to name others for prosecution under the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which allows for ten years in jail. The law is not just about marriage. Called the “Jail the Gays” bill, it criminalizes homosexuality and threatens AIDS programs in the country. The question is that, as the recipient of a great deal of U.S. aid, why is it appropriate for us to indirectly support a nation that is abusing, and in some cases killing, gays and lesbians?
President Goodluck Jonathan supports this hateful law and signed it last week. It goes further than virtually any other African nation but criminalizing not just same-sex marriage, but homosexuality, gay organizations and even associations with them.
Some of the worst abuses came in Bauchi where rumors spread that the United States gave gay activists $20 million to promote same-sex marriage. That led to a spasm of violence and police abuse with dozens of arrests.
Local Muslim leaders are also fueling the attacks and the arrests. Chairman Mustapha Baba Ilela of Bauchi state Shariah Commission, which oversees regulation of Islamic law, said that Muslim were helping police “fish out” the homosexuals and their associates. He proudly said that “We are on the hunt for others.” Bauchi enforces Sharia law in a breakdown of separation of mosque and state as well as a deprivation of basic civil liberties inherent in such systems.
President Jonathan’s spokesman, Reuben Abati, also defended the law and the crackdown, saying “[t]his is a law that is in line with the people’s cultural and religious inclination. So it is a law that is a reflection of the beliefs and orientation of Nigerian people. … Nigerians are pleased with it.”
Well, not all Nigerians. Not those homosexuals . . . or their associates . . . or anyone who values the most basic notion of human rights and civil liberties. Besides those people, it is quite popular.
Source:
Some people think that gender identity differences threaten religious/cultural favoritism towards male dominance over women (not over other men). The basis of most religions is to promote male dominance over females i.e. a male god, male religious leaders, male preference for jobs, and male control of females. Acceptance of different gender orientations seems to be too much of a threat to that historic promise of superiority for just being born male.
Oh my….
There has to be some scam involved. Like “please send two hundred dollars to get me out of jail in Nigeria, signed your neighbor Jack.”
All those Cuban refugees from Communism got special consideration, why not gay people from gay hating countries?
ap,
That is a disturbing article that you linked to. Scary.
@nick spinelli “I could see in the near future the gay lobby in the US pushing for favored immigration status for gay people in those countries. That won’t fly, but I see that coming.”
What about requests for asylum from persecution? Do you think deserves special consideration or consideration at all?
Russia’s Putin is a closet gay Commie b#stard. That’s why they’re so anti gay. Many Nazi’s were gay. Self loathing is a mofo!
They don’t need to get another penny. Sadly no Equal Protection Clause or 14th Amendment there. I wondered too why Russia would be so anti gay, they aren’t particularly religious. Fundamentalist Christians here who don’t speak about about these abuses reveal that yes, it could happen here if they, the religious right, get into some serious power.
With the US going in the opposite direction of so many theocratic countries, I could see in the near future the gay lobby in the US pushing for favored immigration status for gay people in those countries. That won’t fly, but I see that coming.
Darren Smith
I would agree with Larry et al, but an unfortunate reality is the US imports a large portion of its petroleum from Nigeria so it remains to be seen how silent the US gov’t will be.
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Bingo.
If history is any indication of how Oil-Qaeda will handle this, you are spot on.
Remember 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian operatives so Oil-Qaeda protected them and the whole of Saudi Arabia.
For anyone who might be interested:
http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/
I wonder what “The Family” is up to these days. A 2010 article follows:
“Dangerous Liaisons”
By Jeff Sharlet
September 29, 2010
“American evangelicals are losing ground at home in the culture war against homosexuality, but they’ve exported their hate politics to Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and beyond.”
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/gender/1403/dangerous_liaisons/
Excerpt:
And now the Ugandan campaign is spreading, drawing on the resources not just of the Family but also an array of American backers, from fringe characters such as activist Scott Lively, author of a book blaming the Holocaust on homosexuality called The Pink Swastika, to a mainstream Las Vegas megachurch, Canyon Ridge, that subsidizes the work of Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, the most vicious leader within the antigay coalition. The coalition’s political wing has found politicians across the continent eager to fight “Western decadence” by joining Sudan, Mauritania, and sections of Nigeria and Somalia in making homosexuality a capital offense. When queer Senegalese fled an antigay crackdown in 2008, neighboring Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh proposed that the refugees be beheaded. Malawi, in southeastern Africa, looked positively liberal in comparison when it sentenced Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple, to 14 years in prison earlier this year for attempting to marry (the “criminals” were pardoned in response to international pressure). According to “Globalizing the Culture Wars,” a report for Political Research Associates by the Reverend Kapya Kaoma, U.S. activists have even been “ghostwriting African religious leaders’ statements,” using the African leaders as proxies in American cultural battles. If that seems like a long way round for Americans to make their point, consider the benefits: As the face of homophobia, instead of a smirking Pat Robertson, they get an African leader whose other work deals mostly with poverty.
Radical Islam also plays a significant role in the spread of African homophobia, as does the cynicism of leaders such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who learned that he could distract his people from the massive corruption of his regime by stoking their latent homophobia. But it’s American evangelicals, through naïveté in some cases and hate in others, who have done the most damage. That’s partly a reflection of economics: American evangelicals have more money to spend. It’s also linked to another phobia, that of Islam. The 80 million strong Anglican Communion (represented in the United States by the Episcopal Church) is on the verge of schism as right-wing American churches bolt their dioceses for the authority of men such as Nigeria’s recently retired Anglican primate Peter Akinola, who seemed to see his church as in competition with Sharia-law advocates for the most antigay position. There’s a tragic truth beneath such bigotry: In Africa “homosexuality” has become shorthand for the hypocrisy of Europe and America, powers that promote liberal social values even as they allow their corporations to plunder African resources.
I would agree with Larry et al, but an unfortunate reality is the US imports a large portion of its petroleum from Nigeria so it remains to be seen how silent the US gov’t will be.
Stop aid and any other support immediately to Nigeria and all other countries who oppress and brutalizes gays and women. Terminate all religious tax exemptions now in this country.
Apparently, this is what some Christians believe is God’s will.
There, you see. Some Christians and some Muslims really do have quite a bit in common after all. Intolerance, homophobia, bloodshed …
Does anyone feel better now?.
Stop the flow of aid immediately, period.
“Police recently have been arresting homosexuals and torturing them to name others for prosecution under the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which allows for ten years in jail.
…
President Jonathan’s spokesman, Reuben Abati, also defended the law and the crackdown, saying ‘[t]his is a law that is in line with the people’s cultural and religious inclination. So it is a law that is a reflection of the beliefs and orientation of Nigerian people. … Nigerians are pleased with it‘.” – JT (emphasis mine)
IMO this is more evidence for the hypothesis of a “cultural amygdala” which individual societies develop over time. It is like the notion of “character” in one individual.
They amygdala is notorious for stimulating torture behavior because fear can and does morph into hatred, then when the behavior finally emerges in public it manifests as sadism.
Recent studies show an up-tick in sadism in society, which is the eventual behavior to be expected once the cultural amygdala becomes overactive (How The Official Pleasure In Torture is Analyzed).
Religious extremism, phobias, power grabs, authoritarian systems, ignorance, bigotry and hate make for an evil combination that produces only harm, death and destruction. It has no good purpose and the results will be akin to genocide. Killing and punishing for some human concept of God is barbaric at best and shows how far so many religious zealots and power hungry ‘leaders’ are from being enlightened.
According to Roger Ross Williams, Jon Stewart’s guest on Monday night and the director of the documentary God Loves Uganda, this movement is being fueled and financed by American evangelical/fundamentalists who recognize that they have lost the culture wars in the United States and so are taking it to Africa, where pesky things like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights won’t get in their way. I guess they’re hoping that they can convince Jesus to stage his Second Coming in Africa instead of Israel.
And why is Russia following the Nigeria’s footsteps?
Is there some kind of subconscious bias in the masses of the world that emerge once people inhabit offices of power?