Homosexual activists in Africa are increasingly upset with the immense pressure put on African countries by the United States to normalize homosexuality.
They say U.S. governmental and non-governmental pressure has brought a backlash in both laws and on the streets.
In the past three years the Obama administration has made spreading the gospel of homosexuality around the world a major foreign policy goal with a special emphasis on Africa, which remains the most recalcitrant continent when it comes to the gay agenda.
Since 2012 the Obama administration has spent nearly a billion dollars with almost half of it going to pressure on Sub-Saharan Africa.
A Nigerian university student named Mike told the New York Times, “The U.S. support is making matter worse. There’s more resistance now. It’s triggered people’s defense mechanism.” Activists blame the U.S. on a year-old Nigerian law making homosexual activity a felony.
One activist who runs a homosexual rights group in Nigeria said before the U.S. pressure, people in Africa had only a vague notion that homosexuals even existed. “But now they know and now they are outraged. Now they hear that America is bringing all these foreign life-styles.”
Of particular concern is that under President Obama’s direction, U.S. aid to poor African counties is being tied to acceptance of homosexual rights. Uganda’s president signed a harsh homosexual law a year ago and the Obama administration announced cuts in health money. The U.S. also halted a common military training exercise with the Ugandan military even though Uganda is a U.S. ally in fighting Islamist in nearby South Sudan.
Almost two years ago Foreign Policy Magazine ran a long piece making much the same argument being made now, that the Ugandan law would never have passed except for American pressure in spreading a sexual ideology that is offensive to Africans.
Pope Francis even mentioned the issue in his UN address last September when he condemned what he calls “ideological colonialism.” It is a subject the African bishops have repeatedly brought up in public fora including at the recent Synod on the family in the Vatican.
Besides government pressure on the homosexual agenda, non-governmental groups are deeply involved in pushing the homosexual agenda in Africa. The George Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative is among them. The group’s senior legal adviser also complained about western pressure, “The Nigerian law was blowback.”
Conservative Nigerian activist Theresa Okafor, who is close to a number of American and European pro-family groups, told the New York Times, “In the same way that we don’t try to impose our culture on anyone, we also expect that people should respect our culture in return.”
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse