Bring up the topic of gay rights in conversation and if you’ve got a good sampling of the population listening in, the garnered responses will be mostly positive and in favour of them with a few ignorant people grumbling to themselves in the corner at best. But as with anything, you’ll also get the extreme outliers who are vehemently against equality like equality insulted their mother, robbed the food out of their mouths and TP’d their house for good measure too.
Consider then, the attitudes of many African nations who still hold on to sodomy laws left like a bitter aftertaste from the Colonial Era along with anti-gay opinions from people who haven’t been influenced by high profile LGBT shows such as Glee or The L Word. We can blame the TV networks and the language barrier all we want but the fact is, the anti-LGBT epithet in these countries is stifling (and often incredibly life threatening) to LGBT folks (or those thought to be LGBT – ignorant people are surprisingly lackadaisical about the facts would you believe) which is why it’s great news that the Malawi Catholic conference has chosen to address it at a recent meeting.
Inside Africa or not, the general consensus is that same-gender marriages are not supported by the Catholic Church and up until Pope Francis (the current Pope) got his place at the top of the Catholic food chain, we’d be lucky to hear so much as a kind word sent in the LGBT community’s direction. This is something that has been a struggle for both Catholic leadership and their followers across the world as the changing pace of opinion and the Catholic church’s inability (or unwillingness) to change means that many are leaving the church.
Father Andrew Kaufa, a member of the Association of Member Episcopal Conference in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) said as much in a recent statement about the conference,
“The church has observed that there are a number of challenges that many families from different African countries are facing which is affecting the preaching of the gospel. Many rich countries are imposing strange cultures in poor nations, an issue that calls for discussion and intervention. As we try to search for solutions in regard to family matters, the Bishops will also pay attention to the issue of same sex which is at the helm.”
His words are correct; countries such as the United States and England should not expect countries in Africa (or anywhere else) to fall in line with their social values just because they said so, especially when these rich countries have had the benefits of mass media and million dollar social projects to get these viewpoints where they are today (and keep in mind, even the support for same gender marriage sits at just 50-60% in the US). That doesn’t mean that countries like Malawi can’t take some solid cues though as their law that same sex sexual activity is punishable by up to 14 years in jail isn’t really helping anyone.
The country did recently say that it would stop arresting people for having same sex sexual relations and would review this law so at least one socially conservative country is doing its bit to become a little bit more progressive.