Why Are Liberals Outraged over the Nigerian Gay Marriage Ban?

Commentary by Robin G. Jordan

One must wonder why liberals have singled out Nigeria for harsh criticism since if you have been reading the news reports on the Internet, more than one former Soviet bloc country has recently enacted a ban on gay marriage. The Indian government also rejected a proposal to legalize gay marriage in that country. Nigeria is not the only country where sodomy is illegal. Nor is it the only country where sharia law prescribes stoning as the penalty for sodomy. (For those unfamiliar with what the Quran says about homosexuality, it instructs that if two men are found to be engaging in sexual relations with each other, they are to be admonished to cease from what they are doing. If, however, they do not cease, then the Quran prescribes stoning as the penalty for their intransigence.) This criticism not only has disparaged the Nigerian government’s efforts to preserve traditional moral values in Nigeria but also questions the government’s motives for adopting such a measure. It accuses the Nigerian government of exploiting the issue of gay marriage for its own political purposes and scapegoating Nigeria’s tiny gay community.

I suspect that these attacks have to do with the aspirations of the so-called “gay rights” movement. Gay activists have been trying to establish a foot hold in Nigeria and the hostile rhetoric against the decision of the Nigerian government to ban gay marriage and prescribe criminal penalties for violaters of the ban and the support of the Church of Nigeria for that decision is designed to bring pressure upon the Nigerians from the outside for the purpose of furthering the cause of so-called “gay rights.” Even if the rhetoric does not prompt any change of heart on the part of the Nigerian government, it can be used to generate sympathy for that cause in the United Kingdom and the United States. Don’t be surprised if the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment becomes equated with the Nigerian ban on gay marriage on the Internet and in the liberal media.

The Church of Nigeria and its leading bishops especially its Archbishop Peter Akinola have been outspoken in their condemnation of homosexual behavior and homosexuality on Scriptural grounds. The leadership role that the Nigerian Primate has played in the global South’s rejection of the so-called “gay rights” agenda – the normalization of homosexual behavior and homosexuality in the Church and in society – makes him a natural target for such attacks as those that have appeared on the Internet and in the liberal media.

The Nigerians are not fools. They see what has happened in the United States, Canada, Europe, and South Africa. A gay couple marries in one state or country that permits gay marriage or the equivalent and then moves to another state or country and then files a suit in court to have their “marriage” recognized in that state or country. Gay couples even shop for courts with activists judges known to be sympathetic to so-called “gay rights.” Judicial decisions resulted in the legalization of gay marriage in Canada and South Africa. A ban upon gay marriage in Nigeria and the imposition of criminal penalties for violaters of this ban effectively stops the use of this strategy in Nigeria.

Western liberal elites portray as unenlightened, unsophisticated, bigoted, and homophobic African peoples like the Nigerians who uphold traditional moral values and do not accept homosexual behavior and homosexuality. But from the perspective of the Nigerians the West is using claims of being enlightened, sophisticated, tolerant, and affirming to rationalize and justify its sexual permissiveness and moral decadence. These claims also betray an attitude of racial superiority and prejudice on the part of Western liberal elites toward black and brown peoples of Africa. Western liberal elites while giving lip service to cultural diversity and multiculturalism are in practice highly intolerant of cultures whose values are different from their own and want to imposed their values upon these cultures. To the Nigerians the West is guilty of engaging in cultural imperialism in Africa today much in the same way that it engaged in political and economic imperialism in the past.

To the Nigerians the ban on gay marriage is an appropriate measure to contain the spread of Western sexual permissiveness and moral decadence in their country. Such a measure is consistant with the traditional moral values of Christians, Muslims, and animists in Nigeria. Christians, Muslims and animists do not disagree on whether the civil authorities have the right to take steps to restrain vice and gross immorality but rather on whether the laws should be based upon Muslim jurisprudence.

Even in the United States there is an ongoing debate over the effects of the US Supreme Court’s decision to decriminalize sodomy. One of the effects of this decision has been that activist judges have given unusally light sentences to gay teachers found guilty of sexually molesting their teenage students. The US Supreme Court’s decision has weakened our society’s ability to protect children from the sexual predations of adults and is contributing to the erosion of the boundaries to sexual activity between adults and children.

The position that the Church of Nigeria has taken in this matter is consistant with the positions that the Nigerian church has taken on related matters - for example, its decision to not send Nigerian ministerial candidates to seminaries in the United Kingdom and the United States and to establish theological training schools of its own and its decision to organize a convocation of Nigerian Anglican churches in North America. The Church of Nigeria has rejected the leadership of the liberal Western churches in the areas of biblical authority and human sexuality. For the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Episcopal Church USA to reprove the Nigerian church for its position as some urge Canterbury and ECUSA to do will only exacerbate the present crisis in the Anglican Communion and hasten the disintegration of the Communion.