In late November, Ugandan police rounded up people in a gay-friendly bar in the capital, Kampala, dozens of whom now face charges. In Nigeria last week, 47 men pleaded innocent to charges of public displays of affection with the same-sex. They had been detained during a police raid on a Lagos hotel in Such cases are triggering heated debates around gay rights on the African continent where homosexuality has become a decisive issue.
There are many reasons, but colonial laws, religious morality, and the idea that homosexuality is imported by the West are among the most influential, scholars say. Of the 72 countries worldwide that criminalize homosexuality, 32 of them are in Africa, where punishments range from imprisonment to the death penalty in countries such as Mauritania and Sudan.
More than half of these are former British colonies where colonial administrators introduced laws prohibiting "unnatural acts". Activists celebrate in court in May after Botswana overturned its British-era law criminalizing same-sex relations.
The degree to which the laws are enforced varies greatly. Uganda has seen a flurry of recent anti-gay arrests while The Gambia hasn't prosecuted anyone under its anti-sodomy laws since the change of government in Even when not enforced, such laws prolong the stigma attached to homosexuality and provide a "justification" for homophobic behavior, Alan Msosa, a Malawian researcher for the University of Bergen in Norway, told DW.
When a large proportion of people are highly dedicated to their religion, everyone within the country tends to develop more conservative views. Muslim and Christian leaders are often vocally opposed to gay sex, and studies show that African media often quote a religious official when discussing homosexuality — much more so than in countries such as the United States.
Some researchers also believe that American evangelical Christians are playing a significant role in shaping negative attitudes to homosexuality in countries such as Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe by deliberately promoting conservative religious agendas. Africa's elites, which include political, religious and community leaders, often claim that homosexual practices are an imported Western evil.
Long-term Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe called homosexuality "un-African" and a "white disease". In the aftermath of the recent sentencing of the two Zambian gay men which saw the US Ambassador to Zambia saying he was "horrified" by year jail term , a Zambian bishop called for fellow citizens to protect their own values and culture from outside influences.
But homosexuality existed in Africa long before the continent was colonized. Extensive evidence collected by anthropologists and other scholars shows that same-sex practices and diverse sexualities can be found all over the continent and predate colonization. It depends on the context and exact media content. Media portrayals may arrive in contexts already somewhat open to gay and lesbian people, or in contexts where discrimination and hostility hold sway.
In addition, given media portrayal can highlight more or less sensational or controversial aspects of gay life, and indeed often neglects the broad array of issues experienced by members of this diverse community.
The takeaway of our research is that as the liberalization of attitudes towards gays and lesbians has occurred in many countries across the globe since the s, change has been encouraged in part by communications climates — within and across nations — that allow for the free transmission of minority viewpoints.
Yet gaps in tolerance and freedom of expression remain between free countries and those that restrict the sharing of controversial content or minority viewpoints. To close gaps in tolerance and cultural change, movements and leaders must encourage various forms of media to tell more accurate stories about lesbian and gay people. Promoting a more inclusive and representative depiction of queer people in the media may expand tolerance toward all kinds of stigmatized minorities, even across national boundaries.
Our findings support the claim that free media are essential for advancing gay rights and suggests that media freedom may need to precede efforts to secure gay rights legislation.
In corners of the globe where homosexual rights are still highly contentious, both personal and virtual contacts conveying positive images of lesbians and gays can lead to constructive change. SSN Key Findings. Share pdf twitter facebook. Phillip M. Occidental College. While there continue to be sizable partisan differences in opinions about gay parenting, there has been an across-the-board decline in negative views.
Negative views among whites and Hispanics have fallen 17 points and 14 points, respectively, over this period. The political typology found that issues relating to homosexuality and gay rights are more divisive among core Democratic groups than among GOP groups.
Solid Liberals are white, well-educated and less religious than most other typology groups. By contrast, the two other Democratic groups — Hard-Pressed Democrats and New Coalition Democrats, who are much more religious and less well-educated than Solid Liberals — are divided over whether homosexuality should be accepted or discouraged.
In both groups, large majorities say that homosexuality should be discouraged and oppose gay marriage. The three independent groups differ widely in their views of whether homosexuality should be accepted and if same-sex marriage should be legal. Republican-leaning Libertarians have very conservative attitudes on economic issues, though much more liberal views on social issues.
Disaffecteds, another GOP-leaning group, are highly religious and express conservative views on social issues. Post-Moderns, who lean Democratic, are young, well-educated and not highly religious. There are similar differences among typology groups in opinions about more gays and lesbians raising children.
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