U.S.-based anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups are set to join a Kenyan anti-LGBTQ+ group at its second annual Pan-African Conference on Family Values, which is scheduled to take place from May 12-17 in Nairobi.
Hosted by the Africa Christian Professionals Forum, the conference will feature Travis Weber of Family Research Council (FRC) and Bettina Roska, legal officer of Alliance Defending Freedom International, as speakers. Promotional posters show the conference has received sponsorships from FRC, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Political Network for Values, and Foundation for African Cultural Heritage, a longtime affiliate organization of the World Congress of Families (WCF). The conference signals the renewal of U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ groups’ continued assault on human rights in Africa.
For more than a decade, U.S.-based anti-LGBTQ+ groups WCF, Family Watch International (FWI) and C-Fam have worked to delegitimize LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights as human rights internationally and at the United Nations. From 2013-14, international efforts of hate and extremist groups developed an international playbook built on “natural family” rhetoric. Cobbled together from white supremacist, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ tropes that link fears of declining Christian cultural supremacy with a falling birth rate, “natural family” rhetoric advances Western white social norms and imposes a so-called “natural order” on African countries.
Since 2007, the groups have cultivated an international network of activists with agents in African countries who share anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-sex education policies. In Kenya, since 2018, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group FWI has pushed a “family protection” bill that punishes “aggravated” homosexuality with the death penalty. Under the auspices of Agenda Europe, an alliance of representatives from hard-right groups and political parties across Europe, the global hard right has helped build a network of Western “natural family” groups and African agents who are working to enshrine homophobia and transphobia into Kenyan law.
‘Natural family’: Roots in racist, anti-immigrant conspiracy theories
“Natural family” rhetoric is motivated by fears of a demographic “crisis” and the crumbling of Western Christian culture, which, proponents claim, is supported by evidence of declining global birth rates. In 2013, Allan Carlson, founder of World Congress of Families and a progenitor of the “natural family” frame, gave a speech in Moscow titled “The Natural Family in an Unnatural World.” In the speech, Carlson argued this new frame was needed to combat “socialists” and “neo-Marxists” and to protect the “natural order” of creation.
The crux of this argument was highlighted in a 2008 documentary, partially filmed at a WCF conference, called Demographic Winter. The film contends that only cisgender heterosexual couples are capable of perpetuating Western and Christian values through sexual procreation, and that these values represent a “natural order.” Carlson has claimed that low birth rates, “the rapid spread of cohabitation,” the legalization of LGBTQ+ marriage equality, the “early sexualization of children” and divorce are “signs of a fundamental challenge to the life of the home.” To Carlson, the “family system of the whole of what we once called Christian civilization is in crisis.”
Carlson’s and WCF’s “natural family” framing helped repackage rhetoric that originated in far-right political movements’ racist reactions to immigrants to both the United States and European countries from their former colonies during the mid-20th century. Variously characterized as the “birth dearth,” “great replacement,” “demographic crisis,” and, at its most extreme, “white genocide,” myths that white Christian society is under attack or being replaced by uncivilized, non-Christian Black and Brown people are represented across almost all hard-right factions.
In his 2013 speech in Moscow, Carlson said the “natural family” is a common denominator that bridges the gap between “savages” and “civilized men.” To Carlson and the purveyors of natural family rhetoric, indigenous family structures across Africa, Asia and South America that do not follow the “nuclear” model as well as the use of sexual education and family planning services that include legal and safe abortions are inconsistent with Christian culture. This ethnocentric and colonial model, however, is predicated on the belief that white Christian norms about family and society can and should be imposed in other cultural contexts and that adherence to conservative Christian policy preferences provides an accurate measure of a society’s progress toward civilization.
In the United States, many of the same groups point to multiculturalism and procreation by Black and Brown immigrants, Muslims and non-Christians as threats to the nation’s (white-dominant) culture. This Christian supremacist logic melds well with eugenicist beliefs that sex and reproductive technologies that do not produce children naturally threaten the survival of Christian society.
Restoring the ‘natural order’
In 2020, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) published the strategic planning document Restoring the Natural Order: An Agenda for Europe. The document revealed that a founding meeting was held in 2013 for what became “Agenda Europe,” and this material was prepared for it. The plan was shared across 20 international anti-abortion groups and included in a framework laced with such policy priorities like overturning existing laws related to gender, sexuality and reproductive rights, including access to contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF). This document served as a foundation for Agenda Europe, which has grown to include more than 100 hard-right and extremist groups.
Agenda Europe proposed multiple strategies to erode LGBTQ+ and women’s rights by eradicating legal reproductive health care and eliminating comprehensive sexual education (CSE). Among the strategies recommended to Agenda Europe advocates is to use “the weapons of our opponents and turn them against them.”
The weapon they refer to is the international human rights framework, a system of international legal norms that demand governments protect individual human rights to life and liberty. By “debunk(ing) the opponent’s claim to victim status,” Agenda Europe substitutes homophobia and transphobia with “Christianophobia” and claims to be the true victims of the liberal social order. According to Agenda Europe, “The kinds of laws that end up violating the rights of religious people are often pushed for by one of the three following groups: radical feminists, radical homosexual groups, and radical secularists.”
The Agenda Europe document ends with an action list divided into three categories: laws to repeal/issues to prohibit, laws to adopt and nonlegislative actions. At the top of the list of policies to adopt are anti-sodomy laws, including prohibitions on “gay propaganda.” Other priorities include prohibition of all abortion, all pharmaceutical contraceptives and IVF. The nonlegislative actions include defunding LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights organizations, revising sex-ed materials to reflect the natural law and, according to the document, emphasizing “the ‘choice’ aspect of sodomy.”
The Agenda Europe report lists Sharon Slater and Brian Brown as prominent “luminaries” — the transnational actors who generate core ideas and strategies for those on a national level to adopt and promote the agenda. Agenda Europe began to set its sights on Africa in 2016, according to an email chain published by Open Democracy that included Slater, Austin Ruse of C-Fam and Brown. At the time, Ruse asked the email chain for contacts in Africa who were “friendly” to their agenda, but it is unclear if Ruse was given any names. In March 2016, Slater bragged to the email chain about her documentary The War on Children. She boasted it was “making a stir” and “generating protests at the Minster [sic] of Education” in Uganda. The U.S.-based, anti-LGBTQ+ movement frequently produces propaganda films, which give the groups free rein to express extremist ideas without challenge or context.
FWI’s videos often claim the group is protecting children from the indoctrinating and sexualizing advances of LGBTQ+ advocates and comprehensive sex education (CSE). Those indoctrination claims contrast with Slater’s documented history as a proponent of conversion therapy, a discredited practice that advocates wrongly claim can change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In May 2018, Slater gave a presentation to Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF) on the topic of the “porn pandemic.” Slater’s presentation to KCPF was on a topic used by Slater to disguise anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience as a component of anti-CSE discourse. At the end of the presentation, Slater expressed her hope that the audience would connect her and the KCPF with others in Kenya “so we can mobilize and maybe together we can pass … some important legislation here in Kenya to protect families.”
In November 2018, KCPF organized the World Congress of Families Africa Regional Conference in Nairobi. Don Feder, now at the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Ruth Institute, delivered a speech on “demographic winter.” Feder is also on the advisory board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant hate group. Theresa Okafor, WCF’s Nigerian regional director, spoke on the idea of reproductive rights as “cultural imperialism in Africa.” In 2019, WCF organized a counter-event to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Nairobi to mark the 25th anniversary of the first ICPD in Cairo. The event was billed as a side event for the “prolife and family friendly” crowd sponsored by FWI, C-Fam, the Political Network for Values (PNfV) and CitizenGo.
Agenda Europe shares key figures with Political Network for Values
Since its inception in 2013, Agenda Europe has developed ties to hard-right Hungarian government-sponsored groups like the Hungary Foundation and PNfV. The Southern Poverty Law Center has previously reported on the ballooning budget of PNfV, much of which comes from the Hungarian government as it seeks to build global support for “natural family” and anti-immigrant policies, and the contracts between the Hungary Foundation (HF) and American right-wing writer Michael O’Shea, who took part in the 2021 round of the Hungarian government-organized nongovernmental organization Danube Institute’s Budapest Fellowship. The Hungary Foundation also contributes to the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies.
The policies advocated by PNfV are meant to protect Hungary’s ethnic makeup, according to the prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Orbán first came to international prominence on the hard right as a champion of anti-immigration policies following the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. “We do not want our own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others,” he said in a 2018 speech. Orbán said in 2019 that his family policies are meant to encourage Hungarian childbirth instead of immigration.
PNfV summits offer an avenue for sharing policy proposals. Slater and Brown sit on the board of directors for PNfV, and their groups are frequently represented at the summits. In addition, Travis Weber of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group FRC is on their council of experts, alongside Theresa Okafor, Nigerian representative of WCF Africa, and Stefano Gennarini, director of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group C-Fam. PNfV’s Transatlantic Summits have been repeatedly sponsored by International Organization of Families (parent organization WCF), C-Fam, FWI, FRC and even Alliance Defending Freedom in 2023.
Members of parliament from multiple African countries, including Peter Kaluma of Kenya, Lucy Akello and Sarah Opendi of Uganda, and Sam George of Ghana, have attended these transatlantic summits following Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexual Act (AHA). Ghana, with the help of George, passed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill in 2024.
Kaluma attended the Transatlantic Summit V in 2023 and also attended the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty in Uganda months prior. At that conference, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called on legislators present to “save Africa” with anti-homosexuality laws in their own countries. Kaluma vowed he would bring the Family Protection Bill before Kenya’s parliament that year.
At PNfV’s most recent 2024 Transatlantic Summit VI in Madrid, Slater appeared on a panel with Lucy Akello. Akello, a member of the Ugandan parliament, was a member of a WhatsApp group of high-ranking Ugandan anti-gay actors and officials leading up to the Anti-Homosexuality Act’s enactment. Open Democracy revealed Slater participated in this chat, sending 86 messages providing suggestions for external messaging on the legislation and organizing Zoom calls with legislators involved in enacting this law.
Kaluma’s Family Protection Bill
Just before the enactment of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) in 2023, Kaluma introduced the Family Protection Bill in Kenya. The name evokes Slater’s preferred framing of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The bill, nicknamed the “Kaluma Bill,” ticks all the boxes of the most extreme priorities of U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ groups’ “natural family” agenda, complete with a policy prohibiting comprehensive childhood sex education. It also continues the trend of enshrining the Western gender binary. The Kenyan bill and Ugandan AHA legislation show many similarities in language, including the punishments recommended. Both the bill and the law also outlaw the use of “sex contraption,” but the Kaluma bill outlaws all forms of same-sex acts in very specific detail. Like the Ugandan AHA law, the Kaluma bill criminalizes the “promotion” of homosexuality, which includes Pride flags and celebrations, and brings the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.” Both pieces of legislation wrongly conflate child molestation with homosexuality, a longtime hallmark of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. The language prohibiting same-sex marriage appears copied and pasted verbatim, though the Kaluma bill gets a bit more specific. Kaluma’s bill also includes criminalization of “cross-dressing” and outlaws gender-affirming care entirely.
The Kaluma bill centers the criminalization of homosexuality as necessary to protect the “natural family.” The bill names its top objective and goal as “to recognize and promote the family as the natural and fundamental unit of the Kenyan society and necessary basis of social order and a strong force for social cohesion and integration.” It specifically privileges the Western nuclear family structure of father, mother and children as the fundamental unit of society. This echoes the natural family rhetoric exactly; FWI, C-Fam and IOF/WCF have worked in tandem to reclaim Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the Western patriarchal, heterosexual and cisgender, single-unit family construct as the only form of family that benefits society. The Kaluma bill also caters to Slater’s mission and eliminates comprehensive sex education in schools.
In 2023, Kaluma spoke to CNN about his connection to FWI and Slater. Kaluma had just returned from a conference at the U.N. held by PNfV where Slater was a speaker. Kaluma denied having a close relationship with Slater, despite a video showing a copy of her book, Stand for the Family, on his desk during the interview. He told CNN he hadn’t read the book and denied FWI involvement in the drafting of his bill. Another source told CNN that Slater had been involved in the drafting stage.
Kaluma celebrated President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024 in an X post. “It is the collapse of the Obama Homosexuality/LGBTQ empire; the collapse of the Bigpharma and the Msinstream [sic] media in USA,” he wrote. “All homosexuals/LGBTQ perverts should leave Kenya or face persecution and imprisonment – NO MORE ASSYLUM [sic] IN THE USA ON CLAIMS OF SEXUAL PERSECUTION. GOD BLESS TRUMP.”
Image at top: The “natural family” rhetoric perpetuates the belief that only cisgender heterosexual couples can preserve Western and Christian values. (Credit: SPLC)
Great Job Rudy Isaza & the Team @ Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center Source link for sharing this story.
