Human rights, homosexuality and faith in a globalised society

Human rights politics can get difficult when individual identity and allegiance to a sub-group becomes the centre of the discussion. This is even more true when the politics of aid relates to the party political narrative in the donor country. Often such positions can hurt the very people they are trying to help.

One such example is the Secretary of State for Development, Andrew Mitchell MP announcing, just this week, that he would decrease aid to governments of countries that discriminate against gays and lesbians. For the sake of clarity, what he said was that the funding would still continue into those countries, but that it would go through third sector organisations rather than governments.

His announcement follows the recent article by gay journalist Johann Hari and Elton John, trumpeting the formation of an international pro-gay pressure group Kaleidoscope. In the meantime gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is putting pressure on the 41 of 53 commonwealth countries that still criminalise gay sex to stop doing so. Tatchell has also recently come out in support of persecuted Christians in Pakistan.

The debate is a touchy one. Should UK state aid go to places like Pakistan or Uganda only if it’s tied with a requirement for those states to change their attitudes towards minorities? Should aid be used as a carrot, and what are the implications for the minorities that the carrot stick is meant to help?

In Pakistan, Christians are regularly persecuted for their faith. Because of the nature of the persecution and because of the geopolitical implications and influence the Foreign Office needs to have to represent our interests, dialogue with the Pakistani authorities tends to happen quietly and behind closed doors. It would be unusual for a UK government minister to publically suggest the relatively large aid package Pakistan receives from the UK should be linked to direct political outcomes. However, this seems not to be the case around the issue of homosexuality and the discrimination against gays in parts of Africa.

In Uganda, the current law states that committing homosexual acts can carry a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. More recently still some Ugandan MPs, backed by some Christians, want to introduce the death penalty for repeat offenders of what a proposed bill called “aggravated homosexuality”.

Just to explain the odd-sounding vocabulary at least to western European ears: in Uganda homosexuality is not associated with an overarching sexual identity but with same-sex sexual acts. Moreover, it is associated with an oppressive and abusive tribal leader who used homosexual acts to punish the then minority Christian population there in the not too distant history.

Sadly, from reports on the ground, it seems that the Ugandan population is willing to engage in vigilante justice against homosexuals, or even people simply rumoured to be gay. If this indeed is the case, a word in the right ear that the UK Government is withdrawing aid because of Uganda’s legal position in relation to homosexuality could raise a backlash from the population at large which could increase the vigilantism inflicted against gays and lesbians.

In the western world, where Christians and gays are more or less free to —please forgive me—practice what they preach, the mentality of some in the Muslim community in Pakistan and some of the Christian community in Uganda seems backward. However, seen from a Ugandan perspective, the laws that are upheld are laws which the colonial powers brought with them and imposed on Uganda.

The questions raised above have no simple answers. One of the dangers UK ministers face is simply pandering to what seems to be popular demands at home, rather than thinking about what their policies might mean for minorities such as gays and lesbians in the countries they are sending aid to. Rather than use the aid budget Mitchell has been given as a carrot to help “detoxify” the Conservative party brand, he should learn about the history and local political implications and from there engage with the Ugandan Government constructively to do what can be done to ease real persecution of men and women made in the image of God.