wfn.org | Gay Groups Call For Pressure on `Homophobic' Zimbabwe

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16-December-1998 
98424 
 
    Gay Groups Call For Churches to Put 
    Pressure on `Homophobic' Zimbabwe 
 
    by Edmund Doogue 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe -Leading representatives of international and local 
homosexual organizations Dec.11 called for the international community - in 
particular churches - to campaign for the rights of gays and lesbians of 
Zimbabwe to be respected. 
 
    Keith Goddard, programed manager of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe 
(GALZ), which has more than 300 members - most of them black Zimbabweans - 
told a press conference in Harare that Zimbabwe was "one of the most 
vocally homophobic countries in the world. Our president [Robert Mugabe] is 
world famous for his [verbal] gay-bashing." Goddard said that he had 
recently visited a small village in Austria where people had said to him: 
"We don't know much about Zimbabwe, but don't you have a president who 
hates homosexuals?" 
 
    Goddard said that although homosexuals in Zimbabwe did not face the 
dangers experienced by their counterparts in some Islamic countries, there 
was an "hysterical climate" about the issue in Zimbabwe, which he said was 
whipped up by the government and the state-owned press. 
 
    "When parents discover that one or more of their children is 
homosexual, they panic," Goddard said. "They think they must be harbouring 
a criminal or a child-molester, or that their child is engaging in satanic 
practices." 
 
    People had tried to take advantage of the hysteria by blackmailing 
homosexuals. "Some poverty-stricken people here are looking for quick 
money," he said. These people, he added, told homosexuals that unless they 
paid a large sum of money, the blackmailer would claim he had been 
raped. If such accusations were made, the police would often arrest the 
accused person, and the accusations would be published on the front page of 
Harare newspapers. 
 
    Representatives of Amnesty International, of the Metropolitan Community 
Church, which was founded by a homosexual pastor in the US and now has 
congregations in many countries, of the International Gay and Lesbian Human 
Rights Commission, based in New York, of the European Forum of Lesbian and 
Gay Christians, and of other groups attended the press conference. Most of 
them are in Harare to attend - as visitors rather than as official 
delegates - the World Council of Churches (WCC) assembly. 
 
    Richard Kirker, an Anglican priest representing the Lesbian and Gay 
Christian Movement in the United Kingdom and the European Forum of Lesbian 
and Gay Christians, told the press conference that he and others had come 
to Zimbabwe to help GALZ "negotiate its way through what has proved to be a 
minefield dealing with the WCC." 
 
    He said that GALZ had been "effectively excluded" from the assembly's 
Padare, a forum of 550 events held during the assembly. (Although GALZ was 
not permitted to hold a workshop at the Padare, it was allowed to 
participate with other Zimbabwean groups under the sponsorship of a 
local human rights organization. About a dozen events about homosexuality - 
sponsored by churches from other countries - were included in the Padare, 
which ended, Dec. 11.) 
 
    According to Goddard, the WCC had asked GALZ to get sponsorship from a 
local church if it wanted to participate fully in the Padare. He said that 
as all local churches opposed GALZ, the requirement imposed by the WCC was 
like asking a black church under apartheid to get sponsorship from a 
pro-apartheid white church. 
 
    "Where is the church - it is supposed to support the marginalised?" 
Goddard said. "We have made every effort to put our case to the churches 
[in Zimbabwe], but we have been steadfastly  refused. The [local] churches 
support the stereotypes that we are child molesters and criminals. 
 
    "We are bitterly disappointed by the reaction of the WCC," he said. 
 
    In response to a question from a gay Christian from Zimbabwe at the 
press conference, Nancy Wilson, vice-moderator of the Metropolitan 
Community Churches, said MCC was trying, through its church in South 
Africa, to find ways to set up a church in Zimbabwe. "In this country, 
even just saying `we are gay Christians' is a powerful statement," she 
said. 
 
    Scott Long, of the Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which is 
linked to more than 1000 gay rights groups around the world, told ENI after 
the press conference: "The WCC should open its eyes and look at what's 
happening in this country." 
 
    He said the WCC assembly was "segregated" from the life of  Zimbabweans 
because the event was taking place on a university campus several 
kilometers from the center of town. "It's cut off from real engagement with 
Zimbabwe." 
 
    Members of South Africa's National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian 
Equality protested outside Zimbabwe's consulate in Cape Town on Dec. 10. 
The demonstrators called on the Harare government to open dialogue with 
Zimbabwe's gay and lesbian citizens, and pointed out that South Africa's 
constitution protected the country's gays and lesbians from discrimination. 
One protester held a placard declaring: "Vorster [South African prime 
minister from 1966 to 78] said blacks had no rights; Mugabe says gays have 
no rights." 

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