This news from Ghana is the latest in a deeply worrying trend: the rise of politically sanctioned homophobia in Africa. We don't hesitate to criticise Islam for its many prejudices, but this hatred, it appears, has its origins in Christian belief. It is also worth noting that the suspected perpetrator of the atrocities in Norway yesterday (acts so repugnant and horrifying they almost defy description) is reported to be a Christian fundamentalist.
I'm not religious**, and so may never understand how commonly held beliefs can so easily warp or mutate, and in so doing lead to slaughter and state-approved prejuidice. Yesterdays events in Norway were beyond tragic. The situation in Ghana is deeply worrying. In Malawi, aid donors threatened withdrawal in order to procure a pardon for two men jailed for homosexuality. The idea of withdrawing aid because a country will not conform to our concepts of tolerance seems drastic (and is controversial) but our responsibility should be to combat such blatantly medieval and hatful dogma wherever we find it.
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**I was baptized, though never confirmed, into the most non-committal, wishy-washy church of them all, the Church of England. If, as an unbeliever, I am forced to express an opinion on religious belief, I turn to John Henry Newman's instructions for the unbelieveing gentleman:
'If he is an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic....He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent....and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them.'
It is worth reading the definition of a gentleman from Newman's The Idea of a University.
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