The Dictionary of Homophobia (8 page)

Association des parents gays et lesbians.
Petit guide bibliographique à l’usage des familles homoparentales et des autres
. Paris: APGL, 1997.

Borrillo, Daniel. “La protection juridique des nouvelles formes familiales; le cas des familles homoparentales”
Mouvements
, no. 8 (March–April 2000).

———, and Thierry Pitois. “Adoption et homosexualité; analyse critique de l’arrêt du Conseil d’Etat du 9 octobre 1996.” In
Homosexualités et droit
. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999.

Borrillo, Daniel, Eric Fassin, and Marcela Iacub, eds.
Au-delà du PaCS
. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999.

Formond, Thomas. “Les Discriminations fondées sur l’orientation sexuelle en droit privé.” Doctoral thesis on privacy rights. Université de Paris X-Nanterre (September 2002).

Gross, Martine, ed.
Homoparentalités, Etat des lieux
. Paris: ESF, 2000.

Leroy-Forgeot, Flora.
Les Enfants du PACS, réalités de l’homoparentalité
. Paris: L’Atelier de l’Archer, 1999.

Nadaud, Stéphane.
Homoparentalité, une nouvelle chance pour la famille?
Paris: Fayard, 2002.

—Discrimination; European Law; Family; Jurisprudence; Marriage; Parenting.

AFRICA.
See Africa, Central & Eastern; Africa, Southern; Africa, Western

AFRICA, CENTRAL & EASTERN

Because they were colonized by a variety of nations, the countries that make up Central and East Africa do not all have homophobic legislation. It is significant to note that, as a remnant of France’s influence, many former French colonies do not have sodomy laws; homophobia may be quite strong in these countries, but it is social rather than legal. Such is the case in the Central African Republic, the Gabonese Republic, the Republic of Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (but even though homosexual relations are not illegal in the DRC, its diplomats continue to profess that “the practice of homosexuality does not exist” in their country). Elsewhere in the region, the law criminalizes homosexuality, with varying degrees of severity.

As is common in the rest of the continent, homophobia in Central Africa is often linked to the idea that homosexuality is not part of the history of its societies. More recently, the taboo has been lifted, and ethnologists have remarked that while homosexuality as a permanent way of life was very rare in African societies—as a result of the condemnation of a sexual practice which does not lead to reproduction—instances of homosexual activity among young people were by contrast relatively frequent; for example, among the Tutsi and Hutu populations and notably in the royal court, where women were excluded. The Azande, who live primarily in the DRC but also make up about forty-five percent of the Central African Republic’s population, even had forms of homosexual marriage among warriors. Among the Lango of Uganda, there was a small class of men known as
jo apele
(“the impotents”) who could marry men, dress as women, and simulate female menstruation. It was believed that men who behaved in this manner were inhabited by the spirits of the ancients, and in this respect, they were considered useful to the community. More markedly, the issue of the Uganda Martyrs (a group of Ugandan Christians murdered by Mwanga II, the king between 1885 and 1887 of what was then Buganda) provides insight into the breadth of homosexuality in certain precolonial African courts and the acute crisis engendered by the homophobia of British missionaries: Mwanga II, who passionately loved young men, slept with his pages, but was outraged and had them massacred when they vehemently refused his advances after they converted to Christianity.

Laws are more homophobic in East Africa. As can be seen by looking at the map drawn by afrol News, the African news agency, homosexuality is currently illegal in almost every state of the region (Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania). It would seem that Christian (Ethiopia and Kenya) and Muslim influences account for part of the reason for this (Islamist thought is increasing throughout the region, as proven by Sudan and Somalia’s recent history). The question of the degree to which
Islam
influences African homophobia is unclear: for one thing, it appears that Muslims in Zanzibar—the principal leaders of East Africa’s economy prior to European colonization during the nineteenth century (they were particularly formidable slave traders)—actually contributed to the spreading of homosexual activity between older men and adolescents. With regard to the rest of the region, there is a linguistic term for the male couple in Swahili, the region’s dominant language:
basha
/
msenge
(erastes/ eromenos). It is even said that in present-day Tanzania, coastal Muslim populations are more tolerant of homosexuality than Christians or Animists in the interior. That being said, in Africa as elsewhere, homosexuality remains a taboo according to Islam. It may be easy enough to engage in homosexual relations, but it is understood that one does not discuss them, let alone make them the subject of demands; and the taboo is even greater with regard to lesbianism.

Sudan
Even though the various peoples of Sudan (notably the Nubas and the Azandes) have rich homosexual traditions, including forms of marriage between males, the country is one of the world’s most homophobic states, as exemplified by the particulars of its penal code and the actions of its representatives on international matters.

Subject to radical Islamism since a coup in 1989 brought the National Islamic Front to power, and long exhausted by the effects of a protracted civil war that preceded it (between the Islamist authorities in the north and the rebel forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the south), Sudan does not meet the legal standards of a democratic state, as revealed by its harsh penal code. Article 316 of the 1983 code that was based on
sharia
(the body of Islamic religious law) provides for the death penalty for married men who commit any act of sodomy (and 100 lashes for those who are unmarried). Even though it appears that the death penalty is actually not carried out for this crime, Sudanese homosexuals are nonetheless condemned to the spiral of silence (the fact that asserts that a person is less likely to be vocal on a subject for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority) that often prevails in Islamic countries. Further, in Sudan, the most obscurantist homophobia is accompanied by other dubious practices, such as a rather widespread
tolerance
of pedophilic violence, an active slave trade, and the ongoing sexual mutilation of young girls through female circumcision.

On the international front, in 2006, Sudan, as a member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, voted to deny UN consultative status to two gay rights organizations, the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), based in Brussels, and the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians of Denmark. Joining Sudan in voting “no” were such countries as Iran and the United States (Sudan voted the same way when the ILGA applied four years earlier, in 2002).

Ethiopia
Ethiopia is doubly unique: it is both a very old Christian state (with a Muslim minority) and a region that was only belatedly and to a small degree colonized (by Fascist Italy). It was its indigenous Christian influence that resulted in Article 629 of the Ethiopian penal code that prohibits homosexual acts, male or female. Such acts are punishable by up to ten years in prison, particularly if the victim was subjected to acts of cruelty or was under the age of fifteen.

Ethiopia, like Sudan, also voted against granting the ILGA consultative status on the UN Economic and Social Council in 2002.

Somalia
In Somalia, where the majority of the population is Muslim, Article 409 of the penal code of 1973 makes all homosexual relations punishable by three months’ to three years’ imprisonment. Additionally, Article 410 provides for, among other things, “security measures” (i.e. police surveillance) against those who have been convicted for the crime of homosexuality “to ensure that [they do] not engage in these activities again.”

Somalia’s political instability over the past twenty years, instigated by the start of the Somali Civil War beginning in 1986, has worsened the situation for homosexuals. In February 2001, the press in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu reported that an Islamist tribunal in Bosaso (in the autonomous northeast region of Puntland) had condemned a lesbian couple to death by stoning. Under strong international pressure, Puntland authorities claimed that the media had fabricated the entire story in order to discredit the newly autonomous region. It is difficult to ascertain the exact fate of homosexuals in the various parts of the country, but every indication leads one to believe that it is far from favorable.

Kenya
In Kenya, homosexuality is criminalized according to Sections 162 to 165 of the penal code, and punishable by five to fourteen years’ imprisonment. Homophobia is strong, reinforced by politicians (notably Daniel Arap Moi, Kenya’s president from 1978 to 2002) and the churches (which have often conveyed the
heterosexism
and the taboos of Kenya’s former colonizer, Britain). Homosexuals are commonly ridiculed, harassed, and beaten; violence against them is high in the capital Nairobi and slightly rarer on the Mombasa coast. It must be noted, however, that Kenya’s indigenous homosexual tradition is relatively rich, in part due to the Arab-Muslim influence, as suggested in the book on the history of homosexuality in Africa,
Boy-Wives and Female Husbands
(edited by Will Roscoe and Stephen O. Murray).

In the twentieth century, Kenya played an important role in the construction of a homophobic African identity: As early as 1938, Jomo Kenyatta, the future first president of an independent Kenya, affirmed in his book
Facing Mount Kenya
(the first ethnographic work written by an African, with a preface by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski) that homosexuality was unknown among the Kikuyu, Kenya’s most populous ethnic group. He based this theory on the (erroneous) belief that there was no word for homosexuality in any African language. Further, the practice of mutual masturbation between men was common in precolonial African societies, a fact which Kenyatta went to great lengths to disassociate from homosexuality. The acclaim accorded to Kenyatta’s book contributed to the establishment of postcolonial stereo-types, presently embraced by a number of Africans and African-Americans, which associate black cultures with a certain sexual purity, manifested by their “exclusive” heterosexuality untainted by the perversions of European cultures.

Uganda
In Uganda, any person who has “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” is a criminal under Articles 140, 141, and 143 of the penal code. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment for an “active” homosexual, but only seven years’ imprisonment for a “passive” homosexual. Also, homosexual fondling (considered a gross indecency) can be punished by up to five years in prison.

Public opinion in Uganda is very hostile toward gays and lesbians: those who are known to be homosexual are driven away by their families and lose their friends, jobs, homes, and right to an education (in 1999, twenty-five students were expelled from a high school in Ntare for being gay; later that same year, four students were expelled from a university for the same reason). According to some, Ugandans are generally in favor of punishing homosexuals by stoning.

Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda since 1986, is very homophobic: on September 27, 1999, he declared that homosexuality is foreign to Ugandan culture and threatened the gay population with widespread arrest, imprisonment, and fines (and he asked the Ugandan Secret Service to be prepared to make such arrests). President Museveni’s homophobic declaration aroused a strong international reaction: a month later, the US State Department issued a statement to the Ugandan government expressing “deep concern and consternation” over his anti-gay stance. But a wave of repression still followed Museveni’s provocative statement: at the end of the same year, five gay and lesbian activists who were members of the newly formed homosexual group Right Companion were arrested, beaten, and subject to extortion. In 2000, a gay activist from another group, Lesgabix, was assassinated in Kampala.

On the religious front, homosexuality has also caused rifts among various Christian factions in the country. In May 2001, Christopher Ssenyonjo, a former bishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, took up the defense of homosexuals (he is also active with the gay Anglican organization Integrity Uganda). His former colleagues, choked with indignation, accused him of “betraying his faith for thirty pieces of silver” and serving the interest and neocolonialist culture of gay America. (In 2006, Ssenyonjo, excommunicated from the Anglican Church of Uganda, formed the new Charismatic Church of Uganda.) Also, the Catholic Church, through Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala, condemns homosexuality at the same level as corruption, abortion, and “all forms of behavior that are contrary to the laws of God and our own culture.”

Tanzania
Male homosexuality has been illegal in Tanzania since colonial times (Tanzania was a German colony from 1884 until World War I, then a British colony until independence was declared in 1961). Articles 154 to 157 of Tanzania’s penal code render all homosexual relations between men punishable by fourteen years’ imprisonment (there is no mention of women).

Having said this, the law does not seem to be regularly applied, or if so, only erratically. In 1998, a British citizen was expelled from Tanzania for homosexuality; however, it appears that the fact he was a successful businessman in the country was the bigger offense. And there is a burgeoning gay movement in the country; Community Peer Support Services (CPSS), an association for the defense of gays and lesbians, has been in existence since 1997 and currently has 334 members whom it trains to become activists. According to CPSS, the situation of gays and lesbians is better in Tanzania than in all its neighboring countries.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire, Congo-Kinshasa, Belgian Congo)
It is believed that male homosexuality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (a separate country than its neighbor to the west, the Republic of the Congo) is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, but in fact, the legal status of homosexuals in the DRC is unclear: Articles 168, 169, and 172 of the penal code make sexual assault a crime, not sexual relations between consenting adults. The same vague legislation can be found in neighboring Rwanda.