Taking the US Culture Wars global

Rick Warren, the anti-gay (and self-professed not-anti-gay) pastor who turned Barack Obama's presidential inauguration into a gay sideshow, is not a stupid man. A jovial bigot, sure. But not stupid. He understands that subscription to Judeo-Christian faith in the West is on the decline, and that's a huge impediment to winning his (homophobic) culture war. At least here in America. But the rest of the world? It's fertile ground to the Saddleback Church leader and other religious conservatives. And they're making the African continent their own Ground Zero to persecute, and sometimes eliminate, queers.

"Last Sunday there were more Christians who went to church in China than all of Europe combined," Warren, 55, told an audience this month at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

(He added: "If I thought politicians could change people's hearts, I would go into government. If I thought laws could change people's hearts, I would go into government. But I don't, so I'm not.")

Uganda’s new anti-homosexuality law currently on the table, before Parliament, is an especially vicious piece of legislation that seeks to impose life imprisonment and the death penalty upon those who are involved in  “homosexual crimes.”. In this era of growing rights, in the United States, for LGBT individuals, one may be excused for thinking that laws like the one in Uganda are completely unrelated to the Christian, religious right in the U.S., responsible in large part for the onslaught of attacks against LGBT equal rights in this country. 

However, according to “Globalizing the Culture Wars”, a new report produced by Political Research Associates and released today, laws like the one in Uganda can be seen as the direct result of a campaign by United States neoconservative religious groups to use Africa as another player in the culture wars they have fomented on American soil for many years.

After a rigorous 16-month research and on-the-ground investigative period, Zambian Anglican priest Kapya Kaoma, author of the PRA report, found that U.S. conservatives are working in collusion with African clerics (specifically, the report focuses on Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya.), in three denominations (The Episcopal Church, The United Methodist Church and The Presbyterian Church), to counter any progress mainline U.S. churches are working towards, around LGBT issues, as well as to stir increased homophobia in Africa.