The essence of a liberal democracy is to let people whose lifestyles we disapprove of remain equal before the law. Such restraint is needed in the debate across Africa about LGBT rights.
One of the surprises I had living in Australia was discovering that democracy does not require agreement.
During the marriage equality debate, many African migrants, including friends whose religious convictions I respect, sincerely believed same-sex relationships were sinful. They were free to hold that belief, campaign for it and vote accordingly. That is precisely how democracy should work.
What surprised me was something else. Some people of African descent I knew accepted that freedom of choice in Australia but also supported stronger criminal penalties for same-sex relationships in Africa. I found myself wondering why we could accept moral disagreement without imprisonment in the democracies that had become our homes, yet urge a different standard for the continent we still called our own.
That question has become increasingly important. Today, 31 of Africa’s 54 countries criminalise consensual same-sex relations while 23 do not, reminding us that Africa itself has never spoken with a single voice on this issue. Nor has the debate been entirely home-grown. International progressive organisations and governments have promoted greater recognition of LGBT rights, while an openDemocracy investigation found that more than 20 US Christian conservative organisations spent at least US$54 million in Africa between 2007 and 2018 supporting campaigns centred on traditional family values and opposition to LGBT rights. Too often, Africa has become the arena in which competing moral certainties imported from abroad seek local victory.
The deeper question is not whether same-sex relationships are morally right or wrong. People of good faith will continue to disagree. The question is what democracy asks of us when those disagreements persist. A liberal democracy does not require approval of another person’s moral choices. It asks something both more modest and more demanding: whether we are prepared to let people whose lives we disapprove of remain equal before the law.
For millions of Africans in the diaspora, that question is deeply personal. Living between cultures does not require abandoning one for the other. It gives us both the opportunity and the responsibility to ask difficult questions of each.
Democracy rests on a deceptively simple principle: the majority governs. Yet every successful democracy also recognises that the majority cannot decide everything. It cannot imprison people because they practise the wrong religion, speak an unpopular language or simply make others uncomfortable. Constitutional democracy’s greatest achievement has never been majority rule alone, but the willingness to place principled limits on majority power.
History suggests that majorities have often been sincere. They have also often been wrong.
Respectable people once defended laws against interracial marriage, denied women the vote, justified apartheid and punished Indigenous peoples for speaking their own languages or practising their own cultures. Each policy was defended as necessary for morality, social order or civilisation. Looking back, those certainties now seem astonishing. Looking forward, every generation imagines its own are different.
History rarely condemns societies for disagreement. It condemns them for turning disagreement into criminality.
Whether we approve of it or not, every society has included a minority of people attracted to members of their own sex. This is not unique to Europe or modern Australia. It has existed across cultures and centuries, including Africa.
Reasonable people will continue to disagree about morality, religion and family. Democracy does not require those disagreements to disappear. It asks governments to exercise restraint before concluding that peaceful citizens deserve imprisonment simply because the majority finds them morally unsettling. A society confident enough to tolerate disagreement is usually stronger than one that feels compelled to criminalise it.
Years before I came to Australia, another experience had prepared me for that conclusion. During my first weeks as a doctoral student in Glasgow, people would often ask, after hearing my name, “Do you have an English name?” The question was kindly meant, yet was revealing. It reminded me how completely societies can absorb foreign inheritances until they no longer appear foreign at all.
That memory returns whenever Africa debates same-sex criminalisation. Across much of the continent, same-sex relationships are often dismissed as a foreign import, despite historical evidence that they existed in many African societies long before colonial rule. The criminal laws used to prohibit them, by contrast, were overwhelmingly introduced under British colonial administration. Britain has long since abandoned many of those laws. Yet we increasingly defend and strengthen them as expressions of authentic African tradition.
The irony is difficult to miss. We readily accept inheritances from elsewhere, our official languages, legal systems, schools, churches, parliamentary institutions and even many of our names, without questioning their authenticity. Yet we are remarkably selective about which foreign inheritances we reject. Yesterday’s certainties often acquire new custodians.
For those of us in the African diaspora, another contradiction deserves reflection. Many migrants opposed marriage equality because they believed they were defending enduring moral values. That was their democratic right. Yet the freedom to hold and express that conviction depended upon constitutional protections that allowed people with profoundly different beliefs to remain equal before the law. We should be careful not to ask Africa to deny others the very democratic restraint that protects us where we now live.
A similar caution applies to African lawmakers and religious leaders. Some have welcomed support from international conservative movements promoting stronger anti-LGBT laws across Africa. Yet many of those same movements increasingly argue that immigration has gone too far, that multiculturalism has failed and that unfamiliar faces have changed their societies. The minority whose presence unsettles them is no longer gay people. It is increasingly people who look like us. It is difficult to defend African dignity while embracing allies who question whether Africans themselves belong in Europe, North America or Australia.
There is a final irony for those campaigning to reduce migration. Criminalisation may itself contribute to the movement of people across borders. Some of those it targets will inevitably seek refuge elsewhere. The politics of exclusion rarely remain confined to one issue. Those who wish to reduce migration should be careful not to encourage policies that create another generation of refugees.
The surest way to help young Africans build their futures at home is not through harsher criminal laws but through better education, stronger democratic institutions, greater economic opportunity and societies confident enough to protect every citizen’s liberty, even when the majority disagrees with how they choose to live.
For Africa, the challenge is not to abandon its moral traditions but to exercise the confidence that mature democracies demand. Strong societies distinguish between preserving culture and criminalising peaceful citizens. They understand that moral conviction and state coercion are not the same thing.
Our continent has inherited many certainties, some our own and others borrowed from elsewhere. We honour Africa best not by defending every inheritance, but by asking which ones enlarge human dignity, strengthen democratic life and deserve to be carried into the future.
Every generation believes its exclusions are different. History has a habit of deciding otherwise.
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
