Why report gay terrorism victims

All through last weekend I have been glued to news from Nairobi. The terrorist outrage at the Westgate Mall particularly got me because I've had personal contact with many Kenyans. First through reporting on the digital revolution there, which is astonishing, then the LGBT(IQ) community. Some are now friends.

For the past few days I have been following reporters like Mike Pflanz and the #Westgate hashtag but also gay friends, especially Denis Nzioka, who is the go to source for queer news from Africa.

After Denis reported that two members of Nairobi's queer community had been murdered in the attack, and that one other was trapped, I tweeted this at several news outlets. On the Monday it was picked up and reported by Gay Star News.

This drew an immediate hostile reaction on social media with people asking whether reporting the sexuality of these victims was relevant or necessary, that it was "bizarre to highlight someone's sexuality in this situation". Another sarcastically noted that "what we all really want to know is were any gay men killed in Nairobi massacre."

Denis' reports had described the two who died as members of Nairobi's "queer community". If this attack had happened in Brighton, England would it be wrong to report that "Brighton's gay community is in mourning", say, if "members" had been similarly murdered?

Now some may scoff at the idea of a 'Brighton gay community', or any 'gay community', let alone a 'LGBTIQ community', and hence wonder why you'd report "members" lost. That's because we're privileged enough to have reached a point where we can be sarcastic about it. Kenyans don't have that luxury.

Gay Kenyans at a health demonstration

I've done reporting that has covered the development of this community in Kenya. In a society where gay sex is illegal and gay people need to protect themselves and each other from various threats, the growth of community resources and networks - which Nzioka documents in his reporting - is fantastic.

One of my bugbears in reporting about Africa and gays is that this positive aspect is lost in a sea of horror stories, much as general reporting on Africa is. I saw this up close when I covered an anti-gay riot near Mombasa in 2010 and its aftermath. The riot drew (inaccurate) international headlines, how it was shut down and how both gays and allies worked together to help and then go further to educate drew no international headlines.

The same is true of Uganda, where the growing community and its increased visibility is hardly reported on. All most people would know about is the 'Kill the gays' bill.

When I reported a couple of weeks ago that a number of Russian sources, including a main LGBT organisation, were saying that the latest aspect of the anti-gay tide - a bill to remove children from gay parents - would be stopped and that there was some reason to think the tide could be reversed this was mocked and derided. My reporting was even compared to Holocaust denial.

Anyone with anything positive to say about Russians, even about gay Russians, gets this treatment. Particularly those who question the boycott tactic, opposed by several Russian gay groups. In the case of the gay figure skater Johnny Weir this has led to queer-baiting and fag-bashing with one prominent gay American blogger, John Aravosis, labeling the flamboyant Weir a "freak" and a "quisling". On his blog Aravosis allows commentators to abuse Weir in ways which wouldn't shame a High School jock tormenting a fey teenager.

It is not 'journalism' if places like Kenya, Uganda and Russia are solely presented as hell holes. In fact it does a serious disservice to gay people there.

Our disaster too

Regarding the Westgate Mall disaster and its gay victims - and it is a 'disaster' - gay people have particular needs in disasters which usually are ignored.

The need to take into account gay disaster victims needs is something which relief bodies and governments have become, and need to become, increasingly aware of. This is not just an issue in somewhere like Pakistan, where transgender (hijara) flood victims in 2010-11 were blocked from relief, but also South Florida.

Nzioka reported that he would not name the two queer terrorist victims because they were not out. Even in death Kenyan society requires them to be closeted. The support for the people they've left behind will come from the community which supported them in life.

That community exists and in a disaster like this reporting its existence is one step to demanding that it be respected and equally aided. Yes, we must report that gays exist in disasters because, first, they need to be visible.

Edited to add: Tris Reid-Smith, editor of Gay Star News, sent in this comment:

Just to help explain our news values here... We do not report on 'gay issues' we report on LGBTQI people. Just as a French newspaper would highlight French victims, we have highlighted LGBTQI victims of this tragedy. We are not 'singling out' people – we care equally about everyone – but reporting on our community. The points raised are very good but our approach is pretty much standard for all media in the world, whatever audience they serve. Let's hope the remaining people caught up in this get out safely. Meanwhile our thoughts will be with all the victims, their friends and families.

And there's also this angle, pointed out by Owen Barder, Senior Fellow & Europe Director at the Center for Global Development. Development:

@pauloCanning people think it normal to report on victims' nationality and occupation; why not on this aspect of who they are?

And Marcus O'Donnell, former Editor of the Sydney Star Observer, noted that:

@pauloCanning I got the same reaction when I did report at sso after 9/11 on reactions from NYC gay community

On the Tuesday Denis Nzioka ‏tweeted:

@pauloCanning I cannot allow the memories of #KenyaLGBTI to be swept under, even in such a situation as #Westgate. It would be an injustice!

On Facebook Nzioka added this point:

It's critical to show that even in such incidents, LGBTIQ persons are also victims and remembering them is one way we can show solidarity with them.

Update, October 1: JJ survived. 'In trauma but alive'.

The American Wahhabists

The horrific image above, which I make no apologies for posting, comes from the Ugandan Parliament.

The Ugandan lesbian activist Kasha Jacqueline posted it on Twitter. It is an example of the sort of disgusting anti-gay crap being distributed to Ugandan Members of Parliament. Kasha said it left her "sobbing" and pleading for advice on what to do about it.

• Here's the larger version.

Kasha also just tweeted the cover of a Ugandan tabloid headlined 'Broke MP Sodomised For ShS900m' (about £200,000 / US$345,000). Her comment on that headline was that it was "dense". Unfortunately many Ugandans would believe it.

The idea that gay sex results in people requiring surgery and that gays recruit and target boys did not descend (from heaven) on Uganda, it comes from American dominionist (theocratic) Christian activists. Groups like Right Wing Watch and Truth Wins Out have long documented the sort of vile propoganda, which extends to deranged claims like that gays ran the Nazi party, circulating amongst anti-gay activists.

Back a couple of years and the activities of these people and their links to Uganda were all over US media. Coverage topped by that of MSNBC primetime host Rachel Maddow, who spoke many times with author Jeff Sharlet. His work has exposed the secretive American groups whose aims are internationalist, to spread their theocratic vision worldwide. Other writers like Chip Berlet, writing here for Alternet, have examined just how deeply such militants have infiltrated US conservative politics.

The media focus was on the infamous 'Kill the gays' bill, proposed in Uganda and whose contents are directly linked to US influence. One US Christian activist in particular, Scott Lively, is actually being sued in a US court in a groundbreaking case for inciting persecution. Last month the group sueing Lively, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), exposed links between the people behind the shocking literature distributed to Ugandan MPs and US group LibertyCouncil.

Writes Dan Littauer in GSN:

[The 'Kill the gays' bill] language echoes the false and hateful allegation by Lively and Liberty Counsel that a ‘sodomy’ and ‘homosexualists’ groups from the West ‘promote’ ‘perversion’ in Uganda, naming LGBT activists as ‘militant homofascisits’.

An ironic persistent whine from anti-gay Ugandans is that they oppose homosexuality because it comes from 'foreign influence'. Uganda had no gay people before the whites arrived, they claim. Anyone reporting the ties of anti-gay activists to US funding is rigorously attacked despite a wealth of evidence showing the timeline between American missionaries arriving and anti-gay political action following.

That proposed law, which retains the death penalty (despite heavy spin claiming otherwise, a lie unfortunately bought into by much international mainstream media) is not dead, despite some non-Ugandan activists claiming 'victory!' over it. It still sits on the order paper of the Ugandan parliament, waiting for a vote.

Maddow hasn't covered Uganda for a couple of years now but neither have most others. Jim Burroway at the Box Turtle Bulletin, who do similar work to Right Wing Watch and Truth Wins Out, has been covering developments since Lively first appeared in Uganda. He thinks the bill could be revived for political reasons in Uganda and keeps a watchful eye.

The shocking tweets from Kasha show that anti-gay forces in Uganda haven't let up and, as Burroway has also warned, won't give up until their 'Kill gays' bill becomes law.

Wealthy, anti-gay, international fanatics

The activities of rich American religious fanatics are directly comparable to those of the rich Saudi Wahhabists, who also have their own 'by-the-book' proselytising brand of an Abramaic religion.

The new documentary 'God Loves Uganda' filmed US dominionist evangelical Lou Engel calling Uganda "ground zero" for American efforts.

Writes Peter Montgomery for Religion Dispatches:

It’s clear that much of the power American culture warriors have in Uganda comes from the money their ministries pour into the country along with their missionaries. At the massive Miracle Center Cathedral, the biggest megachurch in Uganda, the high-living pastor is quite frank that “American money helped us build this church,” adding, “whatever you see here is the fruit of American labor.” In another clip, a pastor marvels that aid from U.S. evangelicals increased threefold when they started attacking homosexuality.

Churches’ financial success brings added clout to anti-gay pastors like Martin Ssempa—who drives his congregation into a frenzy by showing explicit and extreme gay pornography—and the politicians allied with them, like David Bahati, the sponsor of the kill-the-gays bill.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is a multi-million dollar organisation, founded by US televangelist Pat Robertson (pictured on the cover of Time magazine). It is actively funding and organising anti-LGBT efforts in Zimbabwe, Kenya and elsewhere in Africa and in Brazil.

Mirroring Uganda, reports Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian priest, and Jandira Queiroz, a Brazilian activist, in the Huffington Post, in Brazil:

The ACLJ typically hires local staff for its international offices to mask the U.S. origins of their assault on LGBTQ and reproductive rights, while hypocritically using that façade to attack human rights advocacy as a neocolonial enterprise imposed on the country in question.

In international bodies like the UN another wealthy US group, Family Watch International (FWI), works with the Vatican and Islamic countries against gay interests. It actively recruits and indoctrinates diplomats in the sort of propaganda Kasha found in Ugandan MPs pigeonholes. FWI President Sharon Slater has said that:

Iran is one of the strongest nations in standing up for family values at the UN.

In Zambia, writes Chivuli Ukwimi:

There has been an increase in the number of visits to Zambia by notable American evangelical leaders calling upon Zambian leaders to reject ‘anti-biblical’ practices like homosexuality and abortion and uphold and retain the status of Zambia as a ‘Christian nation’. Of course, many of them have come with sizeable cheques to ‘support’ various churches and religious institutions. And opportunist religious leaders – like Bishop Edward Chomba, who was actually ex-communicated by the International Communion of the Holy Christian Orthodox Church in the US in 2007 – are happily jumping at the chance to make friends with their wealthy peers from across the sea by trying to out-do each other’s anti-gay rhetoric.

If you think you have heard this process before, it is because you have – in Uganda. And we know where that ended up – in legislation calling for the death penalty for homosexual acts, vile and vitriolic press ‘coverage’, and the murder of an LGBTI activist.

The West turns a blind eye

In Ethiopia a building anti-gay campaign is being fueled by US funded religious groups. It is reaching the point of proposing laws -- death sentences -- similar to those proposed in Uganda.

According to Ethiopian activists, the developing wave of persecution is being ignored by the US State Department and the British Foreign Office.

"The U.S. and other countries don’t do enough to push for an end to such violations," writes Rainbow Ethiopia. "It’s not because the foreign governments don’t know what’s going on."

This is not the first time that those countries have been accused of ignoring serious human rights abuses in Ethiopia -- for geo-political reasons -- and the charge undermines the pro-LGBT shift in foreign affairs claimed by both the UK and the US.

Although some may see any actions taken by Western governments opposing persecution of LGBT as 'colonialist' -- and anti-gay forces would loudly agree with that claim -- Ugandan activists have cited international pressure as the reason why the 'Kills gays' bill is not now law. Activists in Malawi, Russia and elsewhere have also supported international pressure.

Richard Lusimbo from SMUG told Littauer:

We need to hold accountable those in the west who support and praise for the persecution of the LGBTI people in Uganda and other parts of the world. Their work imposes a denial of rights and a life of hardship and suffering for gay people in Uganda and elsewhere.

America's shadow foreign policy

According to activist the Rev. Canon Albert Ogle, American tax dollars are supporting many of those active in pushing for LGBT persecution internationally.

Ogle cites the invisibility of LGBT related services from the aid budgets of USAID, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as well as in funds going to the United Nations Global Fund.

Organisations like the televangelist Billy Graham's family charity Samaritan’s Purse get millions for unscientific 'abstinence only' HIV/Aids programmes which exclude LGBT. And, Ogle notes, Andy Kopsa’s research shows that Samaritan’s Purse:

Brags about converting Muslims to Christianity through the distribution of "hygiene kits" and clean water projects in Niger. They have been found to be evangelising Haitians as part of their relief efforts.

But despite being censured previously for proselytizing with federal money, Graham's group still gets millions.

Another group, World Vision, massively funded by US taxpayers, won't employ gay people and have been involved in the anti-gay activity in Ethiopia.

Says Ogle:

[My Ethiopian friend] was arrested and tortured as a direct result of this kind of shadow foreign policy by American-based evangelical organizations that receive multimillion-dollar contracts from the American government. They hide behind good works to orphans and widows while ignoring the devastation they cause for the LGBT poor of the developing world. As more and more light is shed on a very hidden part of American-funded evangelism in the global south, the American tax payer deserves more accountability as to where their gifts are going and what they are actually used to fund.

Who's fighting American Wahhabists?

The pro-gay foreign policy announced with fanfare by Hillary Clinton in December 2011 is already showing some fruit. One little noticed example is the American government's support for LGBT organisation in Mongolia, where that country's parliament just discussed the issues for the first time and where a first ever Pride march is planned.

There are people working hard to end US support for anti-gay forces and, Ogle reports, that on April 8:

USAIDlaunched a new initiative with the Astraea Foundation, The Victory Institute and the Williams Institute to create a $12 million superfund to help struggling LGBT organizations in the Global South to try to reverse the impact of this kind of discrimination and invisibility.

"It is a beginning," says Ogle. But "so much more is needed to repair years of discrimination and neglect and to stop funding faith based programs that are on the front lines of LGBT oppression in many countries."

Evangelicals like Warren Throckmorton, who has done hard reporting on developments in Uganda and has been cited by Maddow, are working within religious circles to expose the international theocrats. The producers of 'God Loves Uganda' are using their documentary to try to get American evangelicals to "consider the impact of their words and deeds", writes Montgomery. He says that the film's producers have had hundreds of inquiries from churches for screenings.

Polls show that there has been a huge, positive swing in the attitude of American 'born again' Christians towards LGBT over the past quarter-century. Perhaps within another generation the American Wahhabists attempt to impose 'biblical law' outside America will have simply died at its source?

Related articles

• Ugandan anti-gay pastors hold hate rally next to gay hero David Kato's grave
• Uganda 'Kill the Gays' bill remains a threat, just off stage
• "God loves Uganda," hates gays
• Getting Our Perspective Right on Our Fellow Africans

World Bank examining LGBT poverty globally

LGBT people in the West have an image of being a comparatively well-off group. Since the early 1990s, LGBT media and marketeers have promoted dubiously sourced statistics on supposed average earnings and created the idea of the 'Pink Pound/Dollar'.

Here's a recent corporate example promoted unquestioningly by Queerty: ' SURVEY: The Gays Earn More Money, Have Less Debt Than Average Americans.'

This idea has then been used by the opponents of LGBT rights, including in court cases, to portray LGBT people as a privileged and powerful group. It has "great long term costs", wrote the great Australian activist Rodney Croome back in 1996:

One cost is the way the anti-gay movement uses our claim to consumer power to portray us as greedy whingers. The hate rhetoric, designed so well to tap into lower middle class and blue collar economic insecurity, goes something like "they've got the jobs, they own the businessess, they've got all the money and they still want more". Another cost is when funding bodies use our supposed disposables as an excuse to leave us out in the cold. One of the chief reasons given by Tasmanian Legal Aid for refusing to help fund our current High Court appeal was that the gay and lesbian community is rich enough to pay for its own litigation. But worse of all, is the way the pink dollar has obscured lesbian and gay poverty leaving economically disadvantaged gays and lesbians a hidden and voiceless minority.

Actual studies of economic well-being for LGBT people are rare. It is hard to study a group of people whose boundaries are fuzzy and where many of its members are pretty invisible and practically no one has even tried.

Croome quotes an Irish study from 1995 which found poverty rates double that of the general population. It's not hard to imagine why this might be. Studies of homeless youth in the US has found very high numbers are LGBT. 320,000 to 400,000 is a conservative estimate of the number of American gay and transgender youth facing homelessness each year. Discrimination, job segregation, and subsequent issues like higher rates of drugs and alcohol abuse might have something to do with higher poverty rates. As might other health issues.

"The majority of people with HIV and AIDS in San Francisco are living in extreme poverty," says Brian Bassinger, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Housing Coalition:

There's this mythology that gay men are wealthy. The reality is that gay men living in poverty are twice the national average. We are poor. And poor people see marriage equality as a middle class and upper class issue.

Bassinger's clients, and those of LGBT homeless charities in cities like New York, are struggling for attention and support.

A 2009 University of California study of same-sex families -- reputedly a first -- found extremely high poverty rates in sub-groups like rural couples and African-American couples. But it also found that white urban gay couples had poverty rates similar to the general population. Perhaps this explains why certain LGBT issues have prominence and financial support and others less so?

Global LGBT poverty

As in Western countries, in the so-called 'Global South' LGBT people also suffer discrimination and marginalisation and hence higher poverty rates.

Albert Ogle reports on a new survey of almost 6,000 men who have sex with men (MSM) from 165 countries by MSM Global Forum.

20% of younger MSM surveyed had no income and 30% had no stable housing, which have both been linked to greater HIV vulnerability and reduced access to HIV services. Compared to older MSM in the 2012 GMHR sample, younger MSM experienced significantly higher levels of homophobia and violence. Among all MSM surveyed, homophobia was significantly associated with reduced access to condoms, lubricants, HIV testing and HIV treatment.

“This data shines light on our collective failure to ensure that YMSM have the resources they need to keep themselves healthy,” said Dr. George Ayala, executive director of MSM Global Forum. “Moreover, it is a powerful reminder that HIV among MSM is an international development issue, inextricably linked with housing, health, education, and security. Donors and policy makers must treat HIV among MSM of all ages with the same level of urgency afforded to other international development priorities, and they must take concrete steps to ensure that the unique needs of YMSM are accounted for.”

Ogle just attended a first, a meeting at the World Bank featuring international gay activists. It included Victor Mukasa, who founded the rights organisation Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) but has been forced to claim asylum in the US. A charity which Ogle in involved with, he writes, supports HIV testing for Ugandan gay men who are simply denied health services elsewhere -- services which are often funded by foreign governments and international bodies.

Meetings such as this one as well as the efforts of bodies such as MSM Global Forum and the pressure of activists on bodies such as USAID are beginning to change the approach of funders on discrimination such as that seen in Uganda. Writes Ogle:

Every institution from the family, the church, the World Bank and governments are failing the LGBT community right now. The presence of this panel was seen as a positive step to begin to address the appalling neglect of this community in heath, education and employment opportunities.

And Ogle reports that the World Bank is funding a ground breaking study on the 'economic impact of homophobia globally', to be published later this year.

The Bank is a controversial partner for any civil rights movement or for those promoting health, given its history. But given the paucity of basic research on LGBT poverty this study has to be welcomed.

Whether such a study can get any resonance in the international LGBT movement or the media is another matter.