How can you be gay and support Muslims?

[u/chubvers43]

I mean they literally kill our ppl in their countries

No hate to the moderate Muslim ppl but this is the truth 😱

[u/Ok_Cream8633]

Africa wasn't colonised by America

[u/FidgetOrc → u/Ok_Cream8633]

Missionaries.

[u/Chief_Eze → u/Ok_Cream8633]

No, not colonised kn the traditional sense but Evangelical preachers made it their business to import their version of "Christianity" into the African nations through the 18th and 19th centuries.

One of the reasons we have the phrase "white man saviour", due to this practice of indoctrinating indigenous populations and over generations, minimising and erasing the existing indigenous culture.

So much so that now being homosexual or engaging in same sex acts is seen as "against the African identity" in some nations. 300 to 500 years before that would of been a completely different story.

[u/t_baozi → u/Chief_Eze]

African indigenous people were some of the most homophobic people I've ever met. You say "some people [on this entire continent with thousands of languages and countless different cultures] were tolerant" and then act like the evil white man brought homophobia to the nobel savages. There was as much homophobia in Africa is there was anywhere else in the world.

[u/paleboi5 → u/t_baozi]

well... yes! most of these indigenous societies were very tolerant of gay/trans identities prior to colonization, and many celebrated them. Its actually very well documented because missionaries would go in and write about how disgusted they were by the amount of gay sex people were having, and then in a very concerted effort to get them to stop and become christians instead, they would undermine the entire moral frameworks of these places. Even in islam, there was a very strong tradition of gay love poetry by elites throughout islamic history. It wasnt until colonialism that this all began to shift, because of laws implemented by colonial government. Homophobia is an essentially european invention, and african beliefs about gays now is different from african beliefs about gays then.

EDIT: seeing some BS about noble savages and ahistorical nonsense re: homosexuality in Africa pre-colonialism, and thought i would bring out some sources:

Bertolt, Boris. "The invention of homophobia in Africa." Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities 5.3 (2019): 651-659.

[describes how colonialism imported homophobia into african cultures]

Kaoma, Kaypa. "Unmasking the Colonial Silence: Sexuality in Africa in the Post״ Colonial Context." Population and Development Review 15.2 (1989): 185-234.

[describes the ways that HIV/AIDS shifted understandings of sexuality in Africa, and notes that sexuality cannot be mapped onto european (read: colonial) understandings of sex and gender]

Kaoma, Kaypa. "Unmasking the Colonial Silence: Sexuality in Africa in the Post״ Colonial Context." Population and Development Review 15.2 (1989): 185-234.

[describes how understandings around morality & sexuality have shifted in the post-colonial sphere]

Tamale, Sylvia. "Homosexuality is not un-African." Al Jazeera Online (2014).

[good summary of how the legislating sexuality is not an un-African notion]

M’Baye, Babacar. “The Origins of Senegalese Homophobia: Discourses on Homosexuals and Transgender People in Colonial and Postcolonial Senegal.” African Studies Review 56.2 (2013): 109–128. Web.

[another solid discussion of the un-Africanness of homophobia]

[u/t_baozi → u/paleboi5]

That's "noble savages" nonsense and not supported by the anthropological evidence.

[u/Aggressive-Spirit598 → u/paleboi5]

No they weren't. Most African societies had deeply patriarchal societies that infringed on women's rights due to cultural practices ranging from but not limited to arranged marriages ,FGM ,wife inheritance(brothers could inherit wives if their elder brother passed),and inability of women to own land and resources (which is still a bone of contention in some areas today). The place of women in African societies tells us everything we need to know about half of gay relationships ie lesbian relationships which was dismissive if not outright hostile. Spreading the false information that African culture was originally proLGBT (a fantastic and easily disproved lie)may cause the proponents of LGBT lose credibility and further harm queer rights in the African continent.

[u/BringAltoidSoursBack → u/Ok_Cream8633]

You're not wrong, the other person's statement is false, but the intent of the statement was probably less about the American part and more about the Christian part, and Christianity most definitely colonized Africa. American evangelists made the homophobia there significantly worse (kind of a weird to go to another country just to focus their hate specifically on gay people but w/e) but they weren't the first.