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| Homophobic puppet: David Bahati of Uganda |
As a black man, it always breaks my heart when I witness how utterly and completely African nations have embraced Western notions of sexuality and bigotry toward said sexualities.
A popular narrative you'll hear from individuals like Farrakhan and others is that homosexuality is a perversion introduced to Africans by wicked Europeans and degenerate Arabs. The assertion is, of course, mythical. Increasingly, what scholars and researchers have found is that what Europeans actually introduced to Africans was the fear and hatred of homosexuality. African same-gender-loving sisters and brothers (and the societies in which they lived) were getting along just fine before Western and religious interference and indoctrination. Africans, in their efforts to appear "civilized" by imitating Western ideals, will, of course, deny this (read Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe for a more balanced recollection of history) and further, will overcompensate.
That's what's happening in Uganda with a bill that threatens any person caught in the act of homosexual sex with life imprisonment or execution. In the videos below, Rachel Maddow, of the Maddow Show on MSNBC, interviews the bill's author, David Bahati, who uses, among other things, God, to defend his nation's persecution of homosexuals.
It reminds me of the old footage of Alabama sheriffs and Ku Klux clergymen who used fearful stereotypes and the bible to justify their brutality against American blacks. So it shouldn't come as a great shock that Bahati is backed by an American organization called The Family, an organization that has tremendous influence on Capitol Hill.
Watch and be disgusted: