Anti-Cosmopolitan Rhetoric in the African Gay Rights Struggle

By Kevin Taber

December 2009

It should be obvious to most informed observers that gay rights and human rights are part and parcel of the same dialogue. The struggle for gay rights, while plagued with false starts and stumbling blocks around the world, is nothing short of an inexorable march toward equality on par with the great Civil Rights and anti-Apartheid movements of the second half of the 20th Century. It becomes dangerous, then, to confuse issues of human rights – such as those we seek to address here – with issues of morality and cultural preservation. Nonetheless, as anyone with access to a reputable news source can tell you, just such a discourse is, and has recently been, taking place within the public sphere both domestically and abroad in various forums around the world.

This debate is currently being held under the watchful eye of the international community in a very public way within the central-African republic of Uganda. While similar legislation has been considered – and in some cases, passed into law – in other nations around the world, the framing of this particular issue within a strong anti-cosmopolitan and anti-Western context provides proponents of anti-gay legislation with the illusory appearance of cultural preservationists and spokespersons for a particular people.¹

Anti-cosmopolitan and anti-Western discourse, then, assumes that Western influences are responsible for the introduction of homosexuality, and, by extension, the introduction of tolerance towards homosexuals in society. Inherent to this assumption is the belief in the unnatural and immoral character of homosexuality, and the undue influence of Western norms and ideology in spreading this lifestyle, and tolerance toward it, around the globe. Thus, any who stand against these “alien” concepts take up the mantle of the anti-imperialist, albeit an imperialism which is perceived largely as a more culturally-oriented version of its political-economic predecessors.

Granted that, in the postcolonial world, a very fine line exists around issues related to cosmopolitanism and neo-imperialist/colonial concerns. On one side of this line, we have universal cosmopolitan norms and issue related to human rights, while the other is haunted by the memory of, and experience with, the residual institutions of assimilation and subjugation held-over from colonial times which were used to both justify and execute the colonial forays into Africa and elsewhere in the world.² (One thinks immediately of the lasting impact of the French colonial mission civilisatrice, particularly within the African context, which, when viewed from the postcolonial perspective, helps provide some context to this delicate balancing maneuver between the acceptance of the universal values of cosmopolitan norms and the desire to mitigate the types of Western influence and interference which helped shape and define the colonial encounter.) This may be especially untenable to some self-appointed defenders of cultural preservation when these norms are seen as yet another extension of modern cultural imperialism, and perhaps even neocolonialism.

However, within this context, homosexuality is seen as something that can be spread much the same way as Western religions, fashion, tastes, etc. have been spread in the past. The reaction against homosexuality as an immoral extension of cosmopolitan norms treads a very tenuous path between protecting traditions and culture and ignoring basic human rights, which, despite their point of origin, must be universally recognized.

Ignorance – or, worse, denial – of gay rights makes a dangerous assumption about not only the place of homosexuals in a given society, but also their very place among the global society to which we all belong as human beings. This is particularly dangerous given the justification for human rights retrenchment in the arena of gay rights in some African nations, owing largely to the belief that gays and gay rights are “tainted” by Western influence, and thus a danger to non-Western societies.

As Seyla Benhabib writes, “It is an insult to the dignity and freedom of individuals everywhere to assume, as so many today are tempted to do, that human rights and cosmopolitan norms…are products of western cultures alone whose validity cannot be extended to other peoples and other cultures throughout the world.”³ While it is a mistake for Western societies to assume that they have nothing to gain from others, and that non-Western values might not inform – or even help set-up – new and existing international cosmopolitan norms, the inverse is also true. Societies place themselves in a very precarious position when they, or their policymakers, assume that Western-inspired cosmopolitan norms have nothing to offer to others – particularly in the arena of human rights and other international cosmopolitan norms.

Notes

¹ Associated Press, “Uganda Debates Death Penalty for Gays: Human Rights Groups Condemn Proposed Legislation,” December 8, 2009.

² Kamal Salhi, “Rethinking Francophone Culture: Africa and the Caribbean between History and Theory,” Research in African Literatures 35, no. 1 (2004): 10.

³ Seyla Benhabib, “Twilight of Sovereignty or the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Norms?:  Rethinking Citizenship in Volatile Times,” Citizenship Studies 11, no. 1 (2007):  33.