Anti-gay laws hurt other groups
There is growing consensus that women and children also suffer in homophobic nations
‘We know where your children go to school. We are going to rape your daughters and turn your boys into homosexuals if you don’t stop defending the pédés [faggots].”
“If you don’t get your husband to stop defending these dirty homosexuals, we are going to rape your children.”
These were just some of the threats Cameroonian human rights lawyer Michel Tougé and his wife received in 2012 from people opposed to his continued fight for the rights of the country’s queer people.
Article 347 of Cameroon’s penal code criminalises “sexual relations between persons of the same sex” and punishes them with “imprisonment from six months to five years and a fine of from 20 000 to 200 000 francs”. But most people charged with homosexuality are convicted “based on little or no evidence”, according to a 2013 Human Rights Watch report, Guilty by Association: Human Rights Violations in the Enforcement of Cameroon’s AntiHomosexuality Law.
“At the time, there were many people being arrested in Cameroon on suspicion of being gay and I was one of the lawyers defending them,” Tougé says.
Photographs taken of his children, two boys and two girls, then between the ages of eight and 15, at their school accompanied the threats.
It became too much for Tougé. After two months of the family not leaving their house (“we were scared of what could happen if they caught them … raped them”), he decided to move his family to the United States while he remained in Cameroon.
“It traumatised us as a family. This kind of situation can only bring fear — can only bring sadness — to a family.”
The effects of anti-homosexuality laws on women and children have been highlighted in a recently released report, Diversity in Sexuality: Implications for Policy in Africa, by Christine Rupiah on Scribd.
The report was put together by the Academy of Science of South Africa (Assaf), which provides “evidencebased science advice” to government and other stakeholders on “matters of critical national importance”.
It found evidence that new antihomosexuality laws such as these “precipitate negative consequences not just for LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexuals and intersex] persons and communities but for societies as a whole”. These included “the rapid reversal of key public health gains, particularly in terms of HIV and Aids and other sexual health programmes, increases in levels of social violence [and] some evidence of reduced economic growth.
Harry Dugmore, the director of the Centre for Health Journalism at Rhodes University, is the report’s researcher and author. He observed that these laws could lead to the “diversion of attention from sexual and other violence against women and children”, although he emphasised that this was an “observation” and not a finding.
“There is definitely a correlation between violence against women and children and these repressive laws. The data is very suggestive of this.
“To bring in a contextual point, homophobia is best understood as a mechanism to defend patriarchy, where men are superior and there are very strict roles, with women and children having little or no power. Alternative sexualities challenges patriarchy …
“It is hard to prove there is a oneon-one correlation between the two but generally in countries that have anti-homosexuality laws there are often horrific rates of violence against women and children.”
The study was undertaken in collaboration with the Uganda National Academy of Sciences.
Mutyaba Gloriah is the programmes officer of the Ugandan queer rights organisation, Freedom and Roam Uganda.
“There has been an effect on women and children in that, when the [Anti-Homosexuality] Bill was passed, we got a lot of support from the international community. Part of this support was the threat of sanctions and this has had a big effect on vulnerable women and children, because they are the lowest income earners,” Gloriah says.
After the Bill was passed (before ultimately being overturned on a technicality), the World Bank postponed a $90-million loan for the country’s health services. Following suit, other countries, including Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, cut aid to the country.
Neela Ghoshal, a senior LGBTI rights researcher with Human Rights Watch, says: “No other country has been subjected to this kind of sanctions before. It might be a contentious thing to say, but there was probably added pressure because of this to nullify the Bill.”
But for Gloriah, the effects of cuts in financial aid was something she saw first-hand.
“Lesbian, bisexual and transgender women use the feminist movement as space to penetrate and advocate for a broader voice. But when the Bill was passed, it said any organisation or person that is aware of an LGBT person and does not report them could face imprisonment. So what happened was that many women’s organisations that worked with LGBT persons had to stop that aspect of their programmes, which saw them losing money.
“This money was also being used to help other women who are not sexual minorities, but who are minorities in other areas, such as sickness, living with a disability or being victims of war,” Gloriah says.
A month after the country’s AntiHomsexuality Bill was introduced, Ugandan academic and human rights activist Sylvia Tamale delivered a speech at Makerere University in which she focused on the impacts it could have on broader human rights in the country.
In her speech, she agreed with some points raised in the preamble to the Bill, such as strengthening the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the family unit, and the need to protect Ugandan children and youths from sexual abuse and exploitation.
She added, however: “While I agree that we must seek ways of dealing with issues that threaten our families, I do not agree that homosexuality is one of these issues.”
For her, the real issues that threaten the Ugandan family unit include traditional healers who believe in the power of child sacrifice; 90% of Ugandans experiencing domestic violence and defilement; 50% of child sex abuse reports involving children below 10 years of age, with perpetrators being heterosexual men known to the victims; the millions of children orphaned by HIV; rising poverty levels; and the “all-powerful patriarchs that demand total submission and rule their households with an iron hand”.
Giving an example of how patriarchal beliefs go beyond households, Gloriah says: “Our finance officer is a heterosexual woman, who is passionate about women’s rights broadly. The passing of the Bill has affected her greatly. She has had threats, not only against her, but her family as well … It has really affected her family life, because she leads a much more private life than before, because she cannot move freely.
“She is discriminated against at social events, by family and friends. So, basically, she is facing the same discrimination we face, yet she is a straight woman. All this for simply doing her work.”
Human Rights Watch’s Wendy Isaack says: “There is a level of exposure when working as a human rights activist in countries such as these. People’s lives are threatened when supporting LGBTIQ work.”
Isaack’s report Tell Me Where I Can Be Safe was released in 2016 and focused on the effects on Nigerian LGBTIQ communities of the 2014 Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act.
“The purported aim of the SameSex Marriage Prohibition Act is to prohibit marriage or civil unions between persons of the same sex and impose criminal penalties for persons convicted of entering such a union,” says the report.
“In reality, its scope is much wider. The law forbids any cohabitation between same-sex sexual partners; bans any ‘public show of same sex amorous relationship’; and prohibits anyone from forming, operating, or supporting ‘gay clubs, societies and organisations’. Punishments are severe, ranging from 10 to 14 years in prison,” it found.
Juliet Bar, a Nigerian human rights lawyer, says: “The Act has definitely affected the rights and accessibility of women in minority groups: women with disabilities, women who have suffered violence since the Boko Haram insurgency, especially in the northern parts of Nigeria.
“These women have not been able to access any form of healthcare to enable them to deal with the psychological effects of going through that insurgency. Many were raped, so issues like addressing their psychological trauma is not looked at by government …
“And this is something that is very, very key: government attention is not there. Because of the sentiment attached to LGBTIQ issues, government gets people to forget other societal issues and policies government should really be talking about.”
But Pierre Brouard, the deputy director of the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Sexualities, Aids and Gender, is not convinced.
“This is difficult to quantify. How does one prove, for example, that resources are going to one thing when it could go to another? It is a difficult argument to make, even if it does make logical sense.”
Isaack is also loath to comment on the possible effects of anti-homosexuality laws on women and children. “We have not conducted research into it, so do not have the evidence for me to comment either way.” But, she adds: “During my research in Nigeria, gay men had reported that, in cases where they enjoyed family support, these family members were inevitably threatened by community members. They would be threatened with being forced out of their communities because they were seen to be ‘promoting’ homosexuality.”
For Tougé, defending the rights of queer people has forced him to live apart from his family. Five years after the “really, really difficult” period that led to their separation, he says: “My wife and children have adjusted to it. I visit them twice a year. It’s hard, but we have adjusted.”
As to why he chose not to go with them, Tougé pauses before saying: “My purpose is to challenge the law. And one of these days it will be removed. I need to continue doing this work. For me, it’s a duty.”
“Because of the sentiment attached to LGBTIQ issues, government gets people to forget other issues”