Amid the close of the second annual Pan-African Conference on Family Values, a gathering of anti-LGBTQ+ groups and politicians held in Nairobi, Kenya last week, two human rights activists are warning anti-LGBTQ+ animus on the continent is being fueled by far-right American organizations with the tacit approval of the Trump administration.
Lorna Dias, outgoing executive coordinator of Galck+, a coalition of 18 African LGBTQ+ organizations, and Melody Njuki, with the Initiative for Equality and Non-Discrimination (INEND), wrote in the Washington Blade that the conference was sponsored by U.S.-based anti-rights groups, including Family Watch International, the Political Network for Values, and the Center for Family and Human Rights, each known for targeting LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights worldwide.
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“Life as an out gay man at Kakuma was extremely challenging. Homophobia and transphobia were prevalent.”
“To those of us in the LGBTQI+ community who’ve been fighting rising homophobia, this conference was more than a convening. A gauntlet is being thrown down, one that will fuel the momentum of anti-rights efforts in Kenya, one that threatens all of Africa,” the activists said.
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Local media in Kenya was inundated for months, the women write, with advertisements promoting the conference and promising to equip participants with tools to “safeguard our values.” One highly circulated call to action boasted U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a special invited guest, though he didn’t attend.
The U.S. sponsors, all deemed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “have made inroads with influential political leaders with talk of the ‘natural family,’ a narrative that espouses the Western ideal of a nuclear family,” the women explain.
Anti-rights actors accuse the gay rights movement of importing Western ideas even as they are readily adopting Western cultural norms.
– Lorna Dias, outgoing executive coordinator of Galck+,and Melody Njuki, with the Initiative for Equality and Non-Discrimination (INEND)
“In reality, these views run counter to traditional African communal views on family. It is ironic, therefore, that anti-rights actors accuse the gay rights movement of importing Western ideas even as they are readily adopting Western cultural norms.”
Much of that change can be ascribed to Christian religious leaders across the continent who adhere to a conservative, orthodox version of evangelical Christianity.
“In Kenya, we knew our hard-won gains for the LGBTQI+ community were in jeopardy when President William Ruto came into office in 2022. He has since been very vocal about his conservative views, perhaps reluctant to alienate himself from his predominantly Christian religious leader sycophants,” the activists say.
“Nevertheless, we’ve won significant legal battles in recent years, including in 2023 when the Kenyan Supreme Court ruled that LGBT organizations can legally register with words like ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ in their names.”
But Arizona-based Family Watch International and its allies continue to make inroads cultivating LGBTQ+ animus in Africa with propaganda tools like last week’s conference.
The authors point to another similar gathering, the “V Transatlantic Summit” in New York in 2023, that was attended by virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Kenyan Member of Parliament Peter Kaluma. Shortly after, he introduced his Family Protection Bill, copycat legislation modeled on Uganda’s notorious “Kill the Gays” law.
That legislation was written with the assistance of Family Watch.
Family Watch was implicated last year in soliciting funding for another conference from Russia, an ally in the group’s worldwide anti-LGBTQ+ campaign. Emails, WhatsApp messages, and interviews with conference attendees indicate Russia transferred $300,000 to help cover the costs of the March 2023 event in Uganda.
“In the past, we could count on the U.S. to keep our political leaders in check,” Dias and Njuki write. “Not anymore. President Trump’s attacks on the queer community in the U.S. have only emboldened the anti-queer movement in Kenya. Anti-rights groups are coming back with renewed vigor to amend our constitution and dismantle all human rights protections.”
“Life and liberty as we all know it is very much in jeopardy,” the authors conclude. “Some may be living too much in survival mode to see it. But without a doubt, we are all on a rollercoaster ride to a place where no one is safe.”
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