African Leaders Reject Obama's Pro-Gay Rights Foreign Policy

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a landmark speech in Geneva that set the groundwork for the U.S.'s new foreign policy that would support LGBT organizations around the world, reported EDGE in a Dec. 7 article.

President Obama said he wants governments around the globe to "ensure that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, and transgender persons."

"It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave," Clinton said. "It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished."

A senior adviser to Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni told the Christian Science Monitor that the policy is an "Anathema" to a number of African nations. Most of Africa's 54 nations prohibits homosexuality, the Jewish World Review reported.

"I don't like her tone, at all," he added.

"I'm amazed she's not looking to her own country and lecturing them first, before she comes to say these things which she knows are very sensitive issues in so many parts of the world, not least Africa," he said.

If "convicted" of being gay in Uganda, a citizen faces a 14-year jail sentence. In addition, Ugandans can receive up to 10-years in jail if they "help homosexuals marry."

Church leaders from Kenya were also against the Obama administration's new policy. They criticized the idea that LGBT members deserve "extra support to achieve equal rights."

"We don't believe in advancing the rights of gays," said Oliver Kisaka, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya.

"Society should reach out to gays and transgender people to help them out of their situation," he continued." They have not ceased to be God's children and no one is a gone case."

In November the Peter Tatchell Foundation reported that LGBT activists protested Nigeria's Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) bill, which makes same-sex marriage illegal.

"This proposed new law violates the equality and non-discrimination guarantees of Article 42 of the Nigerian Constitution and Articles 2 and 3 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, which Nigeria has signed and pledged to uphold," Peter Tachell, Director of the human rights lobby, the Peter Tachell Foundation, said.