The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa 3031466527, 9783031466526

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The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa

Haley McEwen

The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa

Haley McEwen

The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa

Haley McEwen Wits Centre for Diversity Studies University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa Department of Political Science University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-031-46652-6    ISBN 978-3-031-46653-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To queer families everywhere

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support of colleagues, friends, and family who have encouraged and supported me throughout the research and writing process. The doctoral supervision, mentorship and friendship of Melissa Steyn provided me with the critical intellectual and creative space, and the fortitude, to develop and pursue this research project. A research grant from the South African National Research Chair in Critical Diversity Studies, held by Melissa Steyn, provided the financial support to conduct fieldwork. This project would also not be possible without the support of a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Political Science with Ann Towns at the University of Gothenburg. I would also like to thank colleagues at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies and the broader Wits community, William Mpofu, Kudzai Vanyoro, Sayan Dey, Rudo Mzite, Jamie Martin, Tommaso Milani, Scott Burnett, Nicky Falkof, Nceba Ndzwayiba, and Antje Schuhmann for their comradeship during the years we worked together at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. My PhD examiners, Tamara Shefer, Susana Maia, and Jo Vearey also provided me with helpful insights and strong encouragement to continue with this project. To my dear late colleagues, Paul Chappell and Finn Reygan, who were each profound scholars of gender, sexuality and social justice and from whom I learned so much, the incredible conversations we had and the memories of your laughter will stay with me forever.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are also several individuals and organizations who provided me with important insights that sharpened my analysis throughout the project. Gabrielle Le Roux, staff at the GALA Queer Archive, Stian Antonsen and the staff at the Students’ and Academics International Assistance Fund (SAIH), colleagues from the Global Interfaith Network, Lata Narayanaswamy, and the queer civil society activists in Southern Africa who I engaged with throughout the research and writing process, I thank you for our ongoing exchanges around the challenging topics covered in his book. To the mentors and teachers who equipped me to think critically about the world, long before my PhD years, I could not have imagined this project without the education I received from you. Steven Rohs, Carmela Garritano, and Gene Burns, the knowledge I gained from your courses at Michigan State University profoundly shaped my scholarly horizons. I can only hope to be as impactful and inspiring as an educator as you all were for me. To my partner, Genevieve, I thank you deeply for encouraging me to finish this book and for motivating me to share my research with the world. Thank you also for reading early versions of drafts and providing feedback, even when you were busy with your own projects! To my Mom and Aunt Mikki, thank you for your unwavering love and support that has enabled me to pursue my passions in life. Aunt Maggie and Aunt Sally, and my ‘outlaws’, Hennie and Jeff, thank you for being who you are in my life and in this world. Eddie, while we have only recently got to know each other, I can’t express how grateful I am for your steady and grounding words of affirmation and support. To my chosen family in Cape Town, Sarah and Fran, I thank you for your friendship, which has stood the tests of time, distance, and road trip adventures. And to my dogs, Minki, Achilles, Bebop, and Taco, who stood, and laid, beside me throughout the writing process, I thank you for your companionship and patience whilst you waited for my attention and walkies.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Now  That’s Familiar: The Coloniality of the U.S. Christian Right and ‘Family Values’ Agendas in Africa 15 3 Investigating the Pro-Family Movement 41 4 Campaigns  Against Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights 59 5 Masking and Mobilizing Anti-LGBTIQ+ Agendas 81 6 Globalizing  ‘Abstinence-Only’: The U.S. Christian Right Campaign Against Comprehensive Sexuality Education105 7 Conclusion:  Shifting Contexts, Selective Decoloniality, and Pro-Family Silences131 Index143

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About the Author

Haley McEwen  is originally from Michigan, and spent several years living and working in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. Haley holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; an MPhil in Diversity Studies from the University of Cape Town; and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Relations (James Madison College) at Michigan State University. Haley is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg and a research associate of the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (WITS).

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Abbreviations

CCN CEDAW CSE ECOSOC ESA FACH FGM/C FRC FWI HIV/AIDS INGO IOF LGBTIQ+ MP NGO ONCI PEPFAR SRH SRHR STI UN UNAIDS UNESCO

Coalition of Churches Namibia Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Comprehensive Sexuality Education United Nations Economic and Social Council East and Southern Africa Foundation for African Cultural Heritage Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Family Research Council Family Watch International Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome International non-governmental organization International Organisation for the Family Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Minister of Parliament Non-governmental organization Office of the National Chief Imam United States President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief Sexual and Reproductive Health Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights Sexually transmitted infection United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

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ABBREVIATIONS

UNFPA UNGA UNRISD US WCF WHA WHO

United Nations Population Fund United Nations General Assembly United Nations Research Institute for Social Development United States World Congress of Families World Health Assembly World Health Organisation

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  U.S.  Christian Right activists and organizations who refer to themselves as ‘pro-family’ are coordinating and mobilizing campaigns against LGBTIQ+ rights, access to abortion and contraception, and sexuality education in several  African countries and at international United Nations gatherings. These activities form a significant component of what has become widely referred to as a swell of transnational ‘anti-gender’ politics taking shape in several countries, regions, and multilateral governance arenas. This chapter provides an overview of these developments, outlining the motivation and rationale for asking the questions of how and why U.S.  Christian Right actors have been advancing ‘pro-family’ campaigns in African countries. Keywords  U.S. Christian Right • Pro-family • Anti-gender • Africa Around the world, well-resourced and highly coordinated efforts  are underway to reverse many of the policy and social changes brought about by feminist and queer social justice advocacy. Ultra-conservative advocacy groups, often referred to by scholars and activists as ‘anti-gender’, are working to overturn legislation and counter norms that deepen gender

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_1

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equality, promote bodily autonomy, and recognize gender and sexuality diversity. In their bid to block and reverse expanding rights and changing social norms pertaining to gender and sexuality, anti-gender groups are working on several simultaneous projects: Denying the legitimacy of genders beyond the cisgender binary of male/female; overturning and blocking legislation that enables access to contraception and abortion; creating legislation that targets and criminalizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people (LGBTIQ+); banning scientifically accurate and realistic sexuality education; prohibiting media and arts that positively represents LGBTIQ+ people; removing non-biological parents from birth certificates; and, denying same-sex couples access to reproductive technologies. The list of issues that have become sites of fundamentalist sex and gender political mobilization continues to grow. No longer can specific regions of the world be singled out as ‘red-­ zones’ of homophobia or misogyny, or as places that are uniquely behind in the recognition of gender equality or human rights pertaining to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). As it has been now widely recognized by scholars, activists, and journalists, some of the most extreme rhetoric and legislation to curtail reproductive justice, and delegitimize the reality of gender and sexuality diversity, is emerging from countries where progress has been made towards the recognition of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and education over the course of the past fifty years. High-income countries in the global north have not only experienced the intensification of political efforts to reverse the sexual and gender revolutions within domestic policy arenas but are home to organizations that are leading, and financing, anti-gender campaigns internationally and within multilateral policy arenas. Evidence of this can be seen not only in the forensic financial investigations revealing that sources of ultra-conservative funding are located in the U.S. and Europe (Datta 2020, 2021), but also at the United Nations  (UN), where alliances and coalitions are taking shape to block gender equality and LGBTIQ+ inclusion at global policy levels. While Uganda enacted what many consider to be the world’s most homophobic law in 2023, lawmakers in the U.S. are banning LGBTIQ+ content and books in American schools alongside bans against education that accurately portray the histories of slavery and systemic racism in the U.S.  In many high income and  developed western  countries, laws are being made to restrict adult and youth access to gender-affirming healthcare and to deny same-sex couples the rights to access reproductive

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technology, adopt children, or have both of their names listed on their children’s birth certificates. Regarding reproductive rights, states in the U.S. have enacted legislation that not only severely restricts abortion access following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but criminalizes people who have performed abortions and those who have provided support to an individual seeking an abortion. What is becoming clear is that issues of gender and sexuality are becoming sites of ultra-conservative advocacy that goes far beyond LGBTIQ+ rights, access to abortion and contraception, or what is included in school curricula. Rather, anti-gender politics have taken shape in contexts that have also experienced growing threats to democratic norms and the rise of illiberal populist social movements. These movements are interested not only in restricting LGBTIQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and sexuality and gender education, but in eclipsing the democratic aspirations and norms of equality, dignity, and respect for all. Amidst these emerging challenges to democratic norms and values, it is also important to remain aware of the ways in which the promotion of liberal democracy by western nations shapes the context in which anti-­gender politics have emerged.  As critical feminist and queer  scholars have shown, the current state of sexuality and gender within geopolitics cannot be fully understood without a recognition of how homo- and femonationalism are embedded within western civilizing projects and neoliberal fundamentalism. Anti-assimilationist, queer abolitionist, and decolonial feminist and queer frameworks reveal the dangers and limitations of uncritically embracing the global gay rights and western feminist narratives that are under attack by anti-gender activists. In this book, it is my intention to convey the logic and arguments that inform anti-gender discourses and to provide a snapshot of the transnational networks and alliances that are forming around opposition against sexual and reproductive health, rights, and education. Furthermore, it is my hope that the contents of this book will  provide readers  with a deeper  understanding  of  the contestations over  gender, sexuality, and family  that are not only  occurring  in policy arenas where gender equality, reproductive rights, and LGBTIQ+ rights are under attack, but also in everyday spaces such as public bathrooms, school and university classrooms, workplaces, recreational spaces, hospitals, and social media. Anti-gender subjectivities are taking shape at all levels, and those iterating misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic discourses are not necessarily concerned with the geopolitical interests served by their utterances.

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Yet, it is impossible to account for the intensification of interpersonal or community-level prejudice and intolerance without recognizing the global political dynamics that have enabled, and encouraged, these views. Thus, my intention here is to unpack the debates underway and the transnational connections between them so as to facilitate deeper understandings of the social and political landscapes in which struggles for social justice and human rights are continuing to resist and refuse erasure. This book focuses on one slice of the broader global context of anti-gender politics and movements: the transatlantic advocacy networks that have formed between U.S. Christian Right advocacy groups and African activists and policymakers over the course of the past three decades. While this is not the only example or instance of transnational anti-gender mobilization, and African anti-gender politics are becoming increasingly ‘organic’, this case reveals how the rise of ultra-conservative twenty-first century sexuality and gender politics are unprecedented in how they have travelled and transformed policy debates and popular attitudes across geographic contexts. U.S. Christian Right groups have been expanding their advocacy internationally since the 1990s (Crane, 1994; Martin, 1999; Buss & Herman, 2003; Croft, 2007; Marsden, 2008), and Africa has become a strategic site where U.S. Christian Right groups have been working to promote their ‘family values’ agendas against LGBTIQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and sexuality education (Kaoma, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014). At the time when I began my doctoral studies in 2013, a number of scholars (Awondo, 2010; Charles, 2013; Chitando & Mataveke, 2016; Currier, 2012; Epprecht, 2013; Hoad, 2007; Hofer, 2003; Tamale, 2007; Vincent & Howell, 2014) had made reference to the ways in which religious conservatives from the West were contributing to the formation of homophobic discourses and political agendas across the continent. Their primary focus, however, was on the ways in which these developments impact African contexts politically and socially, rather than the conservative western activists themselves.  There was little research interrogating  the specific ways in which U.S. Christian Right lobby groups, think tanks, and activists had been working to advance their agendas in African countries. Although a focus on this aspect of African anti-gender politics risks obscuring the interests and agency of African actors who are promoting policy agendas against sexuality and gender diversity and reproductive justice, the enormous effort made by U.S. Christian Right groups across the continent have created a situation in which that these political projects cannot

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be fully understood or explained without recognition of  U.S.  Christian Right investment and interest in globalizing their political agendas. This book therefore  aims to provide insight into the U.S.  Christian Right groups operating in African countries and the underlying, and intersecting, interests at stake in their advocacy. The millions of U.S. dollars spent by U.S. Christian Right organizations in African countries certainly provide a key explanation for the varying degrees of success they have had in rolling out their campaigns against sexual and reproductive health, rights, and education in these contexts. Yet, further interrogation of the knowledge production and narratives that are transmitted through this financial investment is required to fully understand why and how U.S.  Christian Right discourses and agendas have been embraced, and further promoted, by some African political and religious leaders. The  overwhelming whiteness of the U.S.  Christian Right as a social movement, and the ethnonationalism of their sexuality and gender politics, makes it even more compelling that these groups have dedicated such extensive resources to growing networks and support in African countries, and that they have been successful in doing so. The history of colonialism is replete with examples of how the notion of the gender binary, hierarchy, and heteropatriarchal institution of the nuclear family were used to establish a white supremacist global racial order, justify the conquest, enslavement, and exploitation of indigenous people, and expand European potential for capital accumulation. Today, the contemporary Christian Right similarly bases its opposition against gender and sexuality diversity and reproductive rights on colonial notions of what constituted western ‘civilization’: a rigid gender binary, hierarchy, and the hegemonic status of the nuclear family institution. The whiteness of ‘family values’, as discussed by Sophie Bjork-James (2020), is reflected in contemporary white nationalist and evangelical arguments that express anxieties about changing racial hierarchies through the language of gender, the family, and the economy: Far-right critiques of changing gender norms, and feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights not only attack bodily autonomy, gender equality, and the rights of queer individuals but also code anti-black racism in their arguments that feminism and queer social movements are attempting to destroy “white culture” (Bjork-James, 2020, p. 63). Thus, the whiteness of U.S. Christian Right domestic politics makes it curious that these groups are actively working to grow their networks and support bases in African countries. These apparent contradictions also manifestt in the coalitions that U.S.  Christian Right groups are forming with conservative Islamic

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organizations within global governance arenas, or what Clifford Bob (2012) refers to as ‘Baptist-Burqa networks’ in his book, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics. Therefore, the questions of why and how U.S. Christian Right groups are promoting their agendas in African countries were the questions I sought to answer through this project. In approaching these questions, my doctoral research pursued two objectives: First, to provide empirical insights into the networks that the U.S.  Christian Right has grown in African countries and the discourses they are advancing in these contexts. Given that there was relatively little knowledge of U.S.  Christian Right activities in Africa at the time that I started the project (beyond the work of Kapya Kaoma cited above), it was important to establish a knowledge base upon which more in-depth analysis could be developed. With regards to the deeper analysis and theorization, the second aim of my doctoral research was to provide a deeper understanding of the intersections between heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and western dominance as the U.S. Christian Right actors spread their opposition against social and political changes brought about by feminist, queer, and decolonial social movements in African countries. In pursuing these objectives, my research has been interested in historically locating the emergence of the nuclear family ideal in order to better understand its contemporary social and political function. Despite the vehement efforts of U.S.  Christian Right groups to proclaim that the nuclear family and ‘family values’ are apolitical and ahistorical, ample historical research reveals that the nuclear family institution is rooted in the history of modernity, the construction modern of nationalism, and in the projects of colonial conquest (Foucault, [1978] 1980; Oyěwùmí, 2002; Lugones, 2007; Kitch, 2009; Weber, 2016). As Argentine decolonial feminist scholar María Lugones (2007) wrote, the gender binary and hierarchy informed “heterosexism as a key part of how gender fuses with race in the operations of colonial power” (p.  210). Colonialism, she explained, “Imposed a new gender system that created very different arrangements for colonized males and females than for white bourgeois colonizers,” introducing “gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of production, property relations, of cosmologies and ways of knowing” (ibid). Reading the idealization of the nuclear family from this historical perspective makes it possible to critically interrogate both the historical and contemporary  geopolitical power relations at stake within U.S. Christian Right “family values” advocacy in Africa.

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I employ the concept of ‘decoloniality’, as opposed to ‘postcoloniality’, to name the ongoing ways in which colonial systems of power are reproduced in the period following the official end of colonial rule and the termination of colonial administrations. I have drawn on decolonial philosophy of knowledge to interrogate the ways in which the idea that the nuclear family is a universal, as asserted by U.S. Christian Right activists, has historically constituted systems of power based on race, gender, and sexuality. This framework allows for an investigation of how modern/ colonial power relations are being contested, challenged, and (re)produced through contemporary  anti-gender knowledge production about gender, sexuality, and attempts to construct the nuclear family model—a western European invention—as a universal norm. While the project focuses on the U.S. Christian Right’s family values agenda and discourses, the pursuit of the research questions also engages with the U.S. gay rights and feminist movements that have expanded their political efforts globally and have, in part, also prompted ‘family values’ activists and organizations to globalize their advocacy. As existing literature shows, it is not possible to critically understand pro-family activism in Africa, or globally, without also taking into account, and problematizing, the promotion of sex and gender-based rights internationally through frameworks of western feminism and gay rights.

Anti-Gender or Pro-Family? Naming and Defining Ultra-conservative Sexuality and Gender Politics Although the term ‘anti-gender’ has been used by scholars and activists to critique the countermovement against gender and sexuality diversity and LGBTIQ+ rights, those who are working to reinforce the gender binary and nuclear family model as an ideal refer to themselves as ‘pro-family’. In labelling their efforts to exclude LGBTIQ+ people from equal recognition and rights as ‘pro-family’, conservative political and religious actors reframe themselves in positive terms in an effort to counter LGBTIQ+ rights with an alternative framework that  centers  the heterosexual and hierarchical ‘family’ as a societal, economic, and national norm. The concept of ‘natural family’ has been defined by pro-family activists in christonormative terms as “the fundamental social unit, inscribed in human nature, and centered around the voluntary union of a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage” (Carlson, 2013). In casting the nuclear family formation as ‘natural’, and therefore without politics or history, this

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formulation normalizes definitions of gender, sexuality, and kinship in ways that uphold several interlocking and co-constituting systems of unequal power relations. In the 1990s, Judith Stacey (1994) offered a definition of the U.S. ‘family values’ movement that still rings true today, reverberating at a global scale: “an interlocking network of scholarly and policy institutes, think tanks, and commissions” working to forge “consensus” on family values in response to what they perceive as a ‘general decline’ in family values driven by feminism, the sexual revolution, and gay liberation (p. 53). The concerns animating the movement remain centred on protecting the normative status of the nuclear family structure, promoting “belief in the superiority of families composed of heterosexual, married couples and their biological children” and conviction that families which don’t conform to this standard “threaten middle-class tranquility” (p. 55). The heterosexism of ‘family values’  has been foundational to the idea that non-reproductive sex is a threat to the existing gender power hierarchy and heterosexuality. According to Susan Pharr (1997), homophobia is fundamentally created by heterosexism “with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual and its display of power and privilege as the norm” (p.  16). Heterosexism and homophobia, she writes, “work together to enforce compulsory heterosexuality and that bastion of patriarchal power, the nuclear family,” which, in turn, is used to justify male dominance over women at all levels of social organization (ibid). Throughout this book, I use the concept of heteropatriarchy to name the heterosexist and patriarchal power relations that are institutionalized by the construction of the nuclear family as an ideal. Within the North American context, discourses of the “natural family” and “family values” have been persuasive because they create “a sense of individual agency to change one’s personal economic or social position” (Dingo, 2004, p. 176). The “natural family,” according to Dingo, functions as a discursive technology that offers a ‘common-sense’ solution to multiple and intersecting crises within contemporary contexts and is persuasive because it targets already vulnerable groups for the economic instability, an “amoral market,” and the supposed “decline of national cultural values” (ibid). Not only speaking to concerns that color contemporary political rhetoric in the U.S., anxieties about economic uncertainty, changing socio-cultural norms, and the effects of globalization have contributed to the deployment of ‘family values’ as a ‘common-sense’ solution by far right populist political parties and civil society in many other parts of the

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world. Although the contemporary transnational advocacy led by far right interests directly targets issues of gender and sexuality diversity, sexual and reproductive rights, health, and education, deeper analysis points to the underlying principles of democracy, equal rights, and human rights that are under attack by ‘pro-family’ efforts to naturalize and universalize the inequities embedded within the institution of the nuclear family. While this book draws extensively on the findings from my doctoral research  conducted between 2013–2018, it also presents more recent content and analysis given the advances made by U.S.  Christian Right groups since completing my doctoral studies. After completing my doctoral research, I conducted further investigations into the various dimensions of how U.S. Christian Right activists and groups are mobilizing their campaigns and agendas in African countries and began to broaden my perspective beyond the continent. Given the global ambitions of U.S. Christian Right groups, and the emergence of not only anti-LGBTIQ+ advocacy but also coordinated campaigns against sexuality education, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and children’s rights, my investigations also began to widen towards the other regions, issue areas, and governance levels where ‘pro-family’ actors were advancing agendas against gender equality and bodily autonomy. In 2020, for instance, I worked with the Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund (SAIH) to investigate anti-­ gender attacks on the academic freedom of gender and sexuality studies programmes. The research (McEwen, 2020) revealed the ways in which gender studies was becoming a focal point of pro-family advocacy as part of their wider attacks on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Hungary banned Gender Studies in 2018 arguing that gender studies is “an ideology not a science.” In Brazil, public officials, policymakers, and President Jair Bolsonaro were using various tactics, including intimidation and violent threats directed towards educators, to remove gender and sexuality education within schools and universities; in South Africa, far-right groups attacking Comprehensive Sexuality Education were similarly arguing that gender and sexuality education threatened traditional ‘family values’ and endangered children. I have also paid close attention to the ‘development’ discourses that are increasingly deployed by pro-family groups as a means of constructing their exclusionary agendas and policy proposals as mainstream and scientific. Between 2022–2023, I collaborated with gender and development scholar, Lata Narayanaswamy, on a project investigating these dynamics

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(McEwen & Narayanaswamy, 2023). The project was conducted in collaboration with, and published by, the United Research Institute for Social Development  (UNRISD), an autonomous research institute within the UN system that undertakes interdisciplinary research and policy analysis on the social dimensions of contemporary development issues. In our project, Narayanaswamy and I studied the ways in which pro-family groups are using social scientific, and economic discourses in order to mainstream their agendas against LGBTIQ+ rights and reproductive justice  within multilateral governance arenas. Through these and other projects, I gained a deeper understanding of the multiple scales of pro-family advocacy underway against LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE. Beyond academic literature, investigative research conducted by researchers including  Neil Datta at the European Parliamentary Forum (Datta, 2020, 2021), Claire Provost and Nandini Archer at OpenDemocracy (Archer & Provost, 2020), Kapya Kaoma at the Political Research Institute (Kaoma, 2010, 2012), Kerry Cullinan at Health Policy Watch, Global Philanthropy Project (Martínez et al., 2021), and IPAS (2023) have also provided recent insights into pro-family advocacy and the specific groups and funding streams from North America and Europe that have been advancing campaigns at community, state, and intergovernmental scales. This book aims to provide insights that will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and civil society actors who are seeking a deeper understanding of the transnational pro-family movement. Although the contents of the book attend to the dynamics unfolding in African contexts, the overarching findings and analysis are relevant to other regional contexts and at global policy levels given the transnational ambitions and activities of U.S. Christian Right groups and the broader transnational anti-­ gender movement. A case study approach is taken to the three focal points of U.S. Christian Right groups advocacy in Africa and globally: abortion, LGBTIQ+ rights, and sexuality education. While these topics are addressed in separate chapters, discussion and analysis show how these three agendas form the larger package of global pro-family advocacy. Chapter 2 locates the U.S. Christian Right ‘pro-family’ movement in Africa within the wider context of U.S. Christian Right global activism. The movement’s focus on Africa as a strategic region in the globalization of ‘family values’ is discussed and critically interrogated. This chapter also sets out the decolonial intersectional theoretical framework used to uncover the historical and geopolitical power relations at stake within pro-­ family advocacy and discourse.

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In Chap. 3, I reflect on the methodological challenges of doing research on anti-gender politics as a queer person from a queer family. I also discuss the experience of doing this work as a scholar located in the paradigm of critical social theory, which pro-family actors have further attacked as part of their efforts to discredit the legitimacy and existence of gender, sexuality, and family diversity.  Drawing upon critical and  decolonial research methodologies, the chapter focuses on the specific techniques of data collection I employed throughout this project and how I navigated the power relations of the field. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the three key advocacy areas of U.S.  Christian Right activism in Africa. Each of these areas reveals not only the different dimensions of their advocacy but also the different facets of the pro-family movement. Chapter 4 examines how U.S. ‘pro-life’ activists and organizations have been mobilizing their agendas  against reproductive justice; Chap. 5 explores the role of U.S.  Christian Right groups in promoting anti-LGBTIQ+ agendas; and Chap. 6 focuses on the campaigning of U.S. Christian Right groups against sexuality education. Within each of these streams of pro-family advocacy in Africa, the idealized heteropatriarchal nuclear family model is idealized, normalized, and universalized. Furthermore, each case reveals how pro-family discourse constructs African  futures as  being reliant upon heteronormative and patriarchal social arrangements and power relations, with the heteropatriarchal institution of the nuclear family prescribed as the only antidote for protecting the sovereignty of African nations.  Chapter 7 discusses the key themes that run throughout the case studies: The geopolitical dimensions of gender and sexuality diversity, African sovereignty and futurity, and the creation of transatlantic advocacy and ideological infrastructure that is working to counter the liberal democratic paradigm of equal rights. The conclusion also highlights the implications of pro-family advocacy for other areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights advocacy in Africa.

References Archer, N., & Provost, C. (2020, October 27). Revealed: $280m ‘dark money’ spent by US Christian Right groups globally. openDemocracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trump-­us-­christian-­spending­global-­revealed/.

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Awondo, P. (2010). The politicization of sexuality and the rise of homosexual movements in post-colonial Cameroon. Review of African Political Economy, 37(25), 315–328. Bjork-James, S. (2020). White sexual politics: The patriarchal family in white nationalism and the religious right. Transforming Anthropology, 28(1), 58–73. Bob, C. (2012). The global right wing and the clash of world politics. Cambridge University Press. Buss, D., & Herman, D. (2003). Globalizing family values: The Christian rights in international politics. University of Minnesota Press. Carlson, A. C. (2013). The natural family in an unnatural world, a lecture for the Department of Political Science. Moscow Lomonosov State University. Charles, T. (2013). Marriage above all else: The push for heterosexual nuclear families in the making of South Africa’s White Paper on Families. Evidence Report 41. Institute of Development Studies. Chitando, E., & Mataveke, P. (2016). Africanizing the discourse on homosexuality: Challenges and prospects. Critical African Studies, 9(1), 124–140. Crane, B.  B. (1994). The transnational politics of abortion. Population and Development Review, 20, 241–262. Croft, S. (2007). ‘Thy will be done’: The new foreign policy of America’s Christian Right. International Politics, 44(6), 692–710. Currier, A. (2012). The aftermath of decolonization: Gender and sexual dissidence in postindependence Namibia. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37(2), 441–467. Datta, N. (2020). Modern-day crusaders in Europe. Tradition, family and property: Analysis of a transnational, ultra-conservative, Catholic-inspired influence network. European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Retrieved from https://www.epfweb.org/sites/default/files/2021-­01/ EPF%20TFP_EN_Oct30_0.pdf. Datta, N. (2021). Tip of the iceberg: Religious extremist funders against Human Rights for Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Europe 2009–2018. European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Retrieved from https://www.epfweb.org/sites/default/files/2021-­08/Tip%20of%20the%20 Iceberg%20August%202021%20Final.pdf. Dingo, R. (2004). Securing the nation: Neoliberalism’s US family values in a transnational gendered economy. Journal of Women’s History, 16(3), 173–186. Epprecht, M. (2013). Sexuality and social justice in Africa: Rethinking homophobia and forging resistance. Zed Books Ltd.. Foucault, M. (1978 [1980]). History of sexuality (Vol. 1). Pantheon. Hoad, N.  R. (2007). African intimacies: Race, homosexuality and globalization. University of Minnesota Press. Hofer, K. (2003). The role of evangelical NGOs in international development: A comparative case study of Kenya and Uganda. Africa Spectrum, 38, 375–398.

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Ipas. (2023). False pretenses: The anti-comprehensive sexuality education agenda weaponizing human rights. Ipas. Retrieved from https://www.ipas.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2023/03/False-­P retenses-­T he-­A nti-­C omprehensive-­ Sexuality-­Education-­Agenda-­Weaponizing-­Human-­Rights-­OPPCSEE23b.pdf. Kaoma, K. (2009). Globalising the culture wars: US conservatives, African churches, and homophobia. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from https://politicalresearch.org/2009/12/01/globalizing-­culture-­wars. Kaoma, K. (2010). How US clergy brought hate to Uganda. The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 17(3), 20–24. Kaoma, K. (2012). Colonizing African values: How the US Christian Right is transforming sexual politics in Africa. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from https://www.sxpolitics.org/wp-­content/uploads/2012/08/colonizingafricanvaluespra.pdf. Kaoma, K. (2013). The marriage of convenience: The US Christian Right, African Christianity, and postcolonial politics of sexual identity. In M.  K. Weiss & M. J. Bosia (Eds.), Global homophobia: States, movements, and postcolonial politics of oppression (pp. 75–102). University of Illinois Press. Kaoma, K. (2014). The paradox and tension of moral claims: Evangelical Christianity, the politicization and globalization of sexual politics in sub-­ Saharan Africa. Critical Research on Religion, 2(3), 227–245. Kitch, S. (2009). The specter of sex: Gendered foundations of racial formation in the United States. SUNY Press. Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–219. Marsden, L. (2008). For God’s sake: The Christian Right and US foreign policy. Zed Books. Martin, W. (1999). The Christian Right and American foreign policy. Foreign Policy, 114, 66–80. Martínez, J., Duarte, A., & Rojas, M.  J. (2021). Manufacturing moral panic: Weaponising children to undermine gender justice and human rights. The Elevate Children Funders Group & Global Philanthropy Project. Retrieved from https://globalphilanthropyproject.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/04/ Manufacturing-­Moral-­Panic-­Report.pdf. McEwen, H. (2020). Un/knowing & un/doing sexuality & gender diversity. The Global Anti-gender Movement against SOGIE Rights and Academic Freedom. SAIH.  Retrieved from https://saih.no/assets/docs/RAPPORT-­2020-­ UK-­Web.pdf. McEwen, H., & Narayanaswamy, L. (2023). The International Anti-Gender Movement: Understanding the rise of anti-gender discourses in the context of development. Human Rights and Social Protection. UNRISD. Retrieved from https://cdn.unrisd.org/assets/library/papers/pdf-­files/2023/wp-­2023-­4-­ anti-­gender-­movement.pdf.

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Oyěwùmí, O. (2002). Conceptualizing gender: The eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts and the challenge of African epistemologies. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Woman Studies, 2(1), 1–9. Pharr, S. (1997). Homophobia: A weapon of sexism. Chardon Press. Stacey, J. (1994). Scents, scholars and stigma: The revisionist campaign for family values. Social Text, 40, 51–75. Tamale, S. (2007). Out of the closet: Unveiling sexuality discourses in Uganda. In C.  M. Cole, T.  Manuh, & S.  F. Miescher (Eds.), Africa after gender? (pp. 17–29). Indiana University Press. Vincent, L., & Howell, S. (2014). ‘Unnatural’,‘un-African’and ‘ungodly’: Homophobic discourse in democratic South Africa. Sexualities, 17(4), 472–483. Weber, C. (2016). Queer international relations: Sovereignty, sexuality and the will to knowledge. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Now That’s Familiar: The Coloniality of the U.S. Christian Right and ‘Family Values’ Agendas in Africa

Abstract  This chapter sets out a theoretical framework for making sense of anti-gender politics in African countries and for interrogating the ‘pro-­ family’ rhetoric that ultra-conservative groups are lodging against bodily autonomy, gender sexuality, and reproductive justice in African countries and at global scales. The historical development of the U.S.  Christian Right’s ‘family values’ agenda is discussed and further interrogated in relation to the colonial history of the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family model as mechanisms of conquest and domination. Drawing on critical social theory, this chapter sets out an intersectional decolonial framework for interrogating twenty-first-century pro-family politics in African countries. Keywords  Family values • U.S. Christian Right • Coloniality • Africa The intensification of debates about gender and sexuality, bodily autonomy, and gender equality in African countries coincides with the growing activities of U.S. Christian Right groups across the region. While advocacy in the U.S. and African countries to promote equal rights and opportunities for all people regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics has been marked by struggles against prejudice and  systemic discrimination, ultra-conservative groups have been working to thwart © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_2

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meaningful discussion, education, and sensitization around these issues in both contexts. U.S. Christian Right groups known to have been engaged in American ‘culture wars’ since the 1960s have expanded their advocacy beyond U.S. borders, actively  promoting ultra-conservative discourses against sexuality education, reproductive rights, and LGBTIQ+ rights internationally  since the late 1990s  (Buss and Herman, 2003).  Global U.S. Christian Right advocacy has involved the development and insertion of Christian norms and values within U.S.  foreign policy and  dedicated efforts to establishing transnational political and religious networks.  At the turn of the twenty-first century, debates about sexuality and gender justice were becoming increasingly politicized and polarized in several African countries. As Basile Ndjio writes of sexual politics in Cameroon, the rapid increase in homophobia at the turn of the twenty-­first century, “make[s] it hard to believe that up to the early 2000s … state officials in Cameroon did not perceive same-sex relations as a social problem so threatening to Cameroonian society that it necessitated the state’s home-front war against these practices” (Ndjio, 2012, p.  613). Cameroon was not alone, as intensifying political rhetoric about “homosexual peril” (Ndjio, 2012) was beginning to appear in many countries in the early 2000s. In countries including Gambia, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia (Nyanzi, 2013), LGBTIQ+ people were being branded as threats to the moral, economic, and social foundations of the nation, and becoming targets of hateful rhetoric and crime (Ndjio, 2012, p. 610). The consequences of the spreading narrative that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ have been severe, resulting in the harassment, assault, blackmail, extortion, arbitrary arrest, illegal detention, criminalization, and killing of LGBTIQ+ people (Ndjio, 2012, p. 613). On the heels of moral panic about LGBTIQ+ people and rights, the issues of sexual and reproductive health rights  (SRHR), and education were becoming politicized and polarizing topics in many African countries by the 2010s. While many policymakers and communities had supported the improvement of access to (SRHR) and sexuality education for decades, new forms of opposition and resistance were beginning to emerge. It was also during this time that U.S.  Christian Right groups were becoming more coordinated in their political activities at the United Nations. Beyond Africa, U.S. Christian Right groups were forming ‘unholy alliances’ with the Vatican, Catholic and Islamic states, former USSR states, and conservative non-governmental organisations  at international UN conferences  to block the inclusion of SRHR, LGBTIQ+ rights, and sexuality education within policy frameworks (Cupać & Ebetürk, 2020, p. 702).

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While some commentators have warned against overestimating the influence of U.S. Christian Right groups in relation to ultra-conservative African religious and political leaders who have interests in opposing sexuality and gender justice, there is little doubt that U.S.  Christian Right groups have played a significant role in shaping twenty-first century African  politics of gender and sexuality. In 2020, Archer and Provost reported on the $280 million U.S. dollars spent by U.S. Christian Right groups  (between 2007–2018) to mobilize their ‘family values’ agendas globally, finding that approximately 20% of this total figure ($54 million) was spent in African countries. The report highlights several organizations that have invested in promoting anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-SRHR agendas in African countries: Fellowship Foundation (also known as The Family), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Human Life International, Focus on the Family, World Youth Alliance, Heartbeat International, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Cato Institute, Family Watch International, the Heritage Foundation, and Family Research Council, and several others.  Although campaigns against  LGBTIQ+ rights,  Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), and SRHR typically have the appearance of being led by grassroots activists and movements’, the report showed  the ways in which they are  fertilised through transitional U.S. Christian Right financing. Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma has written prolifically on the ways in which U.S. Christian Right activists are working to promote anti-gay and anti-­ feminist political agendas in Africa and what strategies they have used to build political networks across the continent (Kaoma, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014). Through interviews and documentary data, he has shown how U.S. Christian Right organizations “formed relationships and partnerships with mainstream U.S. evangelical groups working in Africa and initiated relationships with African religious leaders, with offices in various African countries” (Kaoma, 2012, p.  13). The effects of these relationships are elaborated upon in his 2012 report, Colonizing African Values: How the U.S. Christian Right Is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa, in which he discusses the creation of the 2009 ‘Kill the Gays’ bill in Uganda. Kaoma shows that U.S. Christian Right groups used strategies of direct intervention through the  mentorship of African political and religious leaders, facilitating the transplanting of U.S. culture-war style debates about homosexuality and same-sex marriage to Uganda and other African countries. Notably, he talks about draft legislation proposed in many countries to prohibit same-sex marriage and adoption of children by same-sex couples even though these issues were not yet on the advocacy agendas of

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most queer African people at the time (p. 9). Civil society organizations have also offered critical insights into some of the specific advocacy strategies used by U.S. Christian Right groups to mobilize opposition against policies that would make sexual and reproductive health services and sexuality education more widely accessible (Madung et al., 2022; IPAS, 2023).

Pro-Family = Anti-LGBTI + Anti-CSE + Anti-SRHR When read together, these findings provide at least two key insights: First, U.S.  Christian Right groups are financing and mobilizing campaigns against sexuality and gender justice in several African countries. Second, opposition against LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE are related issues within U.S. Christian Right advocacy in Africa, packaged together in their discourses and advocacy for the protection of the so-called ‘natural family’. Historical analysis reveals that this combination of agendas is nothing new within U.S.  Christian Right advocacy. Rather, the movement has campaigned against this set of issues for decades in the U.S., arguing that they are related attacks on ‘the family’ and ‘family values’. This strategy has enabled the movement to grow a diverse support-base beyond evangelical Christians and expand its political influence. As Dowland (2009) writes, the Christian Right’s construction of the ‘traditional family’, as that with two heterosexual parents in which the husband is the head and primary breadwinner and the wife is a stay-at-home mother, provides the basis for their argument that feminism, contraception, abortion, and gay rights are related threats to the value of motherhood and family within U.S. society (p. 607). In the 1970s and 1980s, this narrative raised concern not only amongst U.S. feminists and gay rights activists, but also some traditional political conservatives who were hesitant about expanding the role of government beyond its function to protect individual rights to include legislating morality (Dowland, 2009, p.  608). However, the U.S.  Christian Right argument that the institution of the ‘traditional family’ was instrumental to America’s success and required for the country to “return to original greatness” became a powerful unifying narrative that ultimately brought together various conservative interests (ibid). The ‘family values’ frame also enabled the Christian Right to answer to criticisms that it was anti-woman and anti-feminist and to frame their advocacy as a defense of motherhood. As Buss and Herman tell, the Christian Right took the position that it was not opposed to policies directed at helping women,

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but against policies that they considered ‘anti-family’ and which they associated with “radical” feminism (Buss & Herman, 2003, p. 41). In this regard, as Dowland (2009) writes, in bringing together feminism, gay rights, and abortion as an issue bloc, the ‘family values’ agenda was “capacious enough to accommodate Americans of differing theological orientations and political commitments yet specific enough to provide a common vision for leaders, activists, and fellow travelers” (p. 609). The coalition that grew around this ‘family values’ agenda ultimately enabled U.S. Christian Right actors to gain influence within the highest echelons of U.S. political power. As scholars who have interrogated the rising political power of the Christian Right in the U.S. show, evangelicals were recognized as a domestic voting bloc by the late 1990s and were influencing U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid by the early 2000s (Martin, 1999; Buss & Herman, 2003; Croft, 2007; Huliaras, 2008; Buss & Herman, 2003). As this book will discuss, U.S.  Christian Right groups are deploying this family values package of anti-LGBTI, anti-CSE, and anti-SRHR agendas in many African countries. At the same time, the discourse of family values has acquired an anti-imperial frame that is not only positioning LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE as attacks on singular notions of ‘the traditional African family’ and ‘African family values’, but as forms of cultural imperialism driven by western liberals and elites. The incorporation of this additional narrative has enabled the ‘family values’ agenda to label queer and feminist individuals and advocacy as imperialist, closing down the potential for historically and scientifically accurate conversations about sexual and reproductive health, education, and gender, sexuality, and family diversity. This frame also provides a justification for Christian Right advocacy (with U.S. Christian Right actors claiming that they are ‘warning’ African leaders and communities about these matters) and obscures the coloniality of the agendas they are financing and promoting in African communities. Pro-family activism is not only about oppressing particular categories of people, such as women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people. Rather, the movement seeks to prescribe a particular life-­ course imaginary that is defined by a specific set of ‘choices’ that, when placed in a particular sequence, are said to produce outcomes that are economically productive and socially beneficial. The nuclear family institution, as Michel Foucault argued, is a technology of ‘bio-power’ through which “life and its mechanisms” were brought “into the realm of explicit calculations” that facilitated the development of capitalism in the sixteenth

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century (Foucault, 1980 [1978], p. 110). According to Foucault, ­techniques of bio-power transformed the ways in which modern states exercised power over their subjects as states sought, firstly, to make maximum use of the capabilities and productivities of the body by integrating it into systems of economic control, and secondly, to measure and supervise the biological processes (birth, death, fertility) of the body (p. 139). Located at the juncture of the ‘body’ and the ‘population’, sex “became a crucial target of a power organised around the management of life rather than the menace of death” (p. 147). The nuclear family, or ‘Malthusian couple’, was a central figure within these efforts to “transform the sexual conduct of couples into a concerted economic and political behaviour” (p. 26). Pro-family discourse constructs the nuclear family as an analytical space in which the bodies of citizens should be disciplined and mechanized in relation to the interests of capitalist accumulation (Foucault, 1980 [1978], p.  148). Sex, according to pro-family activists, must put the body to (re)productive use. Sexual activity that is not for the purposes of reproduction (i.e. sex with contraception, sex outside of marriage, same-sex sex, and casual sex) violates the “principle of non-idleness,” which constructs the wasteful use of the body and time  as “moral offense and economic dishonesty” (p. 154). For pro-family activists, the family must continue to be viewed as a powerful (re)productivity machine in which individuals conform to a particular life course consisting of a set of prescribed choices made in a particular order: Abstinence before heterosexual marriage, heterosexual courtship, then marriage, followed by sexual activity for the purpose of reproduction, and finally parenthood in which adults socialise their offspring into repeating this life course. The linear ordering of this life course, which is centred on heterosexuality, plots out a singular narrative of how a ‘productive’ and ‘moral’ life is conducted: one that is centred on Christonormative and heteropatriarchal ideas of sex, gender, sexuality, reproduction, and kinship. Pro-family discourses work to naturalize this mechanization of the body, making it appear universal  and natural. Consideration of the modern/colonial and capitalist ancestry of the construction of the ‘natural family’ enables one to more deeply interrogate the economic and geopolitical interests that inform pro-family agendas in the U.S. and African countries. In attempting to prescribe that all people follow a particular life course, pro-family activists attempt to dominate life render alternatives that could disrupt the ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist [hetero]patriarchal’ status quo  (Hooks, 2004, p. xi)  as unthinkable and  unimaginable. This

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linear and heteropatriarchal life course leaves no room for reinterpretation or reconfiguration of ‘family’ within U.S. Christian Right pro-family discourse. Any disruption of this sequence, or its reordering in any way, is said to threaten entire economies, societies, and nations. The universalization of the natural family and the heteropatriarchal life-course imaginary not only functions as a form of ‘bio-power’, but it also normalizes the hierarchies of power that structure the nuclear family (between fathers/ husbands, mothers/wives, and children). When examining the colonial history of the nuclear family institution, it becomes apparent that the heteropatriarchal hierarchies of the nuclear family also naturalise other hierarchies of power beyond the household unit, such as those between the state and citizens, and those that structure geo-political relations between global norths and souths.

Family History: The Colonial Genealogy of the Nuclear Family While the U.S. Christian Right ‘pro-family’ movement claims that the nuclear family is the only ‘natural’ family formation to have ever existed across human societies, this definition of family, which consists exclusively of a heterosexual, monogamous family unit with biological children who reside in a single privately owned family household, is not, and has never been, a universal norm. Rather, this definition of ‘family’ and its institutionalization as a ‘norm’  has been integral within the establishment of systems of social hierarchy and power in the West, and within western colonial projects.  Fears over the weakening or decline of ‘the family’ have been significant themes shaping American popular and political discourse for several decades. As Judith Stacey writes, anxieties about the decline of ‘the family’ have always taken place against a white heterosexist backdrop in which racial minority groups and women are constructed as the perpetrators of social and economic destruction (Stacey, 1994). Since the nineteenth century, the rhetoric of ‘family values’ has been enmeshed within racist and xenophobic fears amongst white Americans who believed themselves to be on the brink of “race suicide” resulting from high fertility rates among African Americans, the arrival of “inferior” eastern and southern European migrants, and the “selfishness” of white women whose birthrates have been in decline (p. 65). In her analysis of the racism and sexism of the twentieth century discourse of ‘family values’, Perry (1995) shows

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that the term “single mothers” became linked to welfare, becoming “a code word for race” just as the terms ‘welfare dependency’, ‘inner city’, and ‘the urban underclass’ came to function as codes for blackness. These narratives, she argues, “implied that black families, especially those headed by single mothers, do not share the values of the rest of society and do not pass on to their children the kinds of values that most Americans believe are important” (para 17). More recently, Sophie Bjork-James has shown how the notion of the nuclear family continues to carry and inspire “white sexual politics” in the U.S.  In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, she writes, white evangelicals and white nationalists rallied their support around Donald Trump, coalescing around one central issue: “defending the gendered and heterosexual order of the patriarchal family” as the means through which the country could be made “great again.” While their definitions of “greatness” may have varied, “with one working to create a white ethno-­ state and the other a state defined by conservative Christian values,” they were united in their authoritarian opposition against social changes relating to gender and sexuality (Bjork-James, 2020, p. 58). Writing about the racial history of the nuclear family in the context of the U.S., Patricia Hill-Collins (1998) argues that it is within the family that individuals are taught their location within hierarchies of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, and social class, thus learning to view such hierarchies as the natural order of things. Predicated on the assumption of heterosexism, the hierarchies of the nuclear family naturalize male authority and position masculinity as a source of authority, which in turn naturalizes the dominant social and economic status of men in society more broadly  through attendant associations  with the  seemingly natural processes of the family (Hill-Collins, 1998, p. 64). Families not seen as instilling the “family values” required to support these hierarchies become constructed as economic burdens and threats to the nation. For these reasons, Hill-Collins refers to the nuclear family model as “a privileged exemplar of intersectionality” (Hill-Collins, 1998, p. 63), arguing that the nuclear family ideal has a dual function as both an ideological construction and a fundamental principle of social organization. These dual functions make it possible for the notion of the nuclear family to accommodate a range of meanings, making it usable as a model that can be upscaled or repurposed to create and naturalize other forms of hierarchy, such as those between racial or ethnic groups, the state and citizens, or global norths and souths (p. 63). Drawing on McClintock’s (1995) writing about the

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social power hierarchies that are naturalized through constructions of the ‘traditional’ family, Hill-Collins highlights the role of the idealized nuclear family in reproducing wider social power relations, arguing that “families are expected to socialize their members into an appropriate set of ‘family values’” that reinforce a male-dominated hierarchy within the assumed “unity of interests symbolized by the family” while maintaining the foundation for multiple social hierarchies (Hill-Collins, 1998, p. 64). Pro-family advocacy for the defence of the heteropatriarchal nuclear family can be traced even further back to colonial ideologies that employed the gender binary and hierarchy in the construction of racial categories, hierarches, and geo-political order that served the interests of Europeans. As anti-imperialist feminist scholars have shown (McClintock, 1995; Stoler, 1995; Lugones, 2007), Victorian notions of the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family ideal were not only used to enforce patriarchy in Europe but also became central within the efforts of eighteenth-­ century colonial administrations to establish a white supremacist system of racial categorisation and hierarchy in the colonies. Constructing the western heterosexual nuclear family model, comprised of a male head of household, a female wife and mother, and biological children who lived in a single-family household unit as measures of civilization, all other forms of kinship became considered marks of intellectual, social, moral, and economic inferiority. The indigenous gender and kinship practices observed by Europeans in Africa and other regions of the colonized world were used not only to construct African people as an uncivilized and inferior race but also to justify European colonial projects. Across the British Empire, prohibitions against “sodomy” became a consistent feature of imperial administration, as did the creation of missionary schooling for indigenous women and children. Penal codes and missionary education were not only designed for the purpose of Christianizing and civilizing indigenous societies but also formed as part of a larger power matrix working to construct a gender power order that buttressed a white supremacist racial hierarchy and served the interests of capitalism. Within the metropoles of empire, the regulation of European family life, and bourgeouis ‘respectability’ were inextricably linked to notions of (white) racial survival, imperial patriotism, and the political strategies of the colonial state (Hepple, 2012, p. 355). When deployed to the colonies in the form of missionary schooling, penal codes, and heteropatriarchal social norms, these discourses tied the “conduct of private life and the sexual proclivities [of] individuals…to corporate profits and the

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security of the colonial state...it was thought that unseemly domestic arrangements could encourage subversion as strongly as acceptable unions could avert it” (p. 349). Colonial authority and racial hierarchies thus became structured in fundamentally sexed and gendered terms, with gender inequalities serving as pillars within structures of colonial racism and imperial authority (Stoler, 1995, p.  344). In this sense, the future of the empire came to depend upon the successful erection and maintenance of a system that could justify and implement measures of domination, control, and conquest by Europe over the ‘rest’ of the world. A system that bell Hooks (2004) has referred to as “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, drawing important attention to the intersecting forms of hegemonic power that constitute “cultures of domination” (p. xi). Notably, as African nations began to win their independence from the mid-twentieth century, prohibitions against “sodomy” were largely retained. As Hepple (2012) writes, while decolonization was taking place during the same period that Britain and other western countries were removing laws that criminalized homosexuality, governments of former colonies did not follow suit on the grounds that such reforms were not seen to be a priority. However, when considering the sexed and gendered construction of nationhood  and nationalisms elsewhere in the world, it is possible to further consider the extent to which these laws were seen as normative to the establishment of post-colonial nations by liberation governments. Recent legislative moves to impose further restrictions upon gender-diverse and queer people have  largely involved the expansion of these  existing  colonial-era anti-­ sodomy laws.  Central to the construction of the nuclear family ideal is the normative notion that only two genders exist—male and female—and that they exist in a natural hierarchy, constituted and institutionalised within the heteropatriarchal family model. A number of decolonial scholars have interrogated the colonial history of the  gender  binary and heteronormativity. Maria Lugones articulated the coloniality of heteropatriarchy, arguing that colonial ideology was not only racist but heterosexist in that the construction of the gender binary and hierarchy became “fuse[d] with race in the operations of colonial power” (Lugones, 2007, p. 210). Colonialism, she wrote, imposed a new gender system that created very different arrangements for colonized males and females than for white bourgeouis colonizers, introducing gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of production, property relations, cosmologies, and ways of

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knowing (p. 210). Sally Kitch (2009) has also shown how biological and essentialist constructions of gender difference and hierarchy allowed European men to justify their control and domination over colonized men, who became deemed unable to govern themselves because of their inability to control and dominate  African women who were seen to be masculineed and hypersexual  by colonial authorities. Male dominance over women therefore became a signal of cultural advancement and superiority, reflected in the gender power order practiced by Europeans (Kitch, 2009, p. 43).  Analysis of the forms of control over sexuality and gender that were integral to colonialism have been widely recognized within decolonial philosophy examining colonial logics of power and epistemology (Grosfoguel, 2013; Mignolo, 2011). Drawing on the work of Aníbal Quijano (2007), Walter Mignolo locates ‘sex and gender’ alongside ‘economy’, ‘authority’, and ‘knowledge and subjectivity’ as the four primary spheres of colonial power that created the conditions for othering, enslavement, exploitation, and violence. As a “complex conceptual structure,”  this colonial matrix of power guided actions taken by European colonial administrations to exploit labour and appropriate land/natural resources (economy), assert government and military dominance (authority), impose hierarchical subjectivities (gender/sexuality), and enforce understandings of what constituted knowledge and who could be knowers (knowledge/subjectivity) (Mignolo, 2011, p. 18). The gender/sex hierarchy, according to Mignolo, was therefore as important to colonial conquest as the appropriation of land and natural resources and militarization, “privileg[ing] males over females and European patriarchy over other forms of gender configuration and sexual relations” through the invention and institutionalization of the sex (heterosexual/homosexual) and gender (male/female) binaries (Mignolo, 2011, p. 18). The “global racial/ethnic hierarchy that privileged European people over non-European people”, he writes, secured the privileged status of European men over all men and colonized people, as well as over European women (p. 18). As Ramón Grosfoguel (2013) further argues, these systems of dominance and control were held in place by the privileging of  Western knowledges over non-Western knowledges (which were often subject to eradication in epistemicides) and a spiritual/religious hierarchy that privileged Christianity over non-Christianity and other non-­ western spiritualities (Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 74–75).

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European civilizing missions were therefore heavily dependent upon the ability of colonial administrations to force indigenous people into the western gender binary and hierarchy, and attendant social arrangements (Lugones, 2007; Kitch, 2009; McClintock, 1995; Stoler, 1995). Missionary schooling became a key mechanism through which the western gender binary and hierarchy were enforced as part of the civilizing imperative, aiming to domesticate indigenous women into the reproductive labour of household maintenance and child rearing (Burke, 1996, p. 445). Missionary schools in Africa were similar to those that were created for native girls in the Americas, which “intended to indoctrinate them with the ideals of Christian womanhood—piety, domesticity, submissiveness, and purity” (Devens, 2016, p.  281). While women were coerced into domestic roles within the now privatized home space, men were forced into the wage labour system or trained for civic duty through which systems of indirect rule could be implemented by men in the colonies. Thus, it was through colonial intervention that the model of the married, heterosexual, monogamous, and reproductive nuclear family model was invented in colonized societies. U.S. and African pro-family activists are reconfiguring this history through the narrative that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ and that the gender binary, nuclear family model and compulsory heterosexuality are ‘natural’ forms of gender expression and kinship that require protection from feminist and queer influence. The underlying epistemic and geo-political power relations embedded within pro-family advocacy today can be further uncovered through an interrogation of three key dimensions of contemporary pro-family activism: defining, universalizing, and politicizing the notion of family.

The Coloniality of Contemporary Pro-Family Discourse and Advocacy Defining Family Asserting and policing a singular and restrictive definition of family is integral to pro-family efforts to delegitimize and erase all other family formations, gender identities, and sexual orientations that do not serve the interests of heteropatriarchy. Although they claim to be ‘pro-family’, it is only the heterosexual married monogamous family unit that pro-family

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actors consider ‘natural’. As defined by prominent pro-family activist and thought leader, Allan Carlson (who is also the co-founder of the World Congress of Families), the natural family is “the fundamental social unit, inscribed in human nature, and centered around the voluntary union of a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage” (Carlson, 2013, para 9). This definition is central within pro-family discourse and ideology, as illustrated within the mission statements of pro-family organizations. For instance, Family Watch International states that its mission is to “preserve and promote the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, as the societal unit that provides the best outcome for men, women and children.” Family Research Council similarly argues that “at its heart, marriage is a natural institution, rooted in the necessity for humanity to reproduce itself. Marriage is naturally the union of one man and one woman because that is the only sexual union capable of resulting naturally in such reproduction.” This definition of the heteropatriarchal nuclear family unit as the only natural, and thereby legitimate, kinship formation, privileges heterosexual, monogamous, married couples with biological children, whilst erasing and denigrating other kinds of families as morally, socially, and religiously unnatural (Buss & Herman, 2003, p. 2). The use of the adjective ‘natural’ gives this definition common-sense appeal, foreclosing possibilities for other kinship formations to be politically and socially intelligible or valuable. As discussed above, this singular vision of ‘family’ reinforces Victorian-era ideologies of gender, sexuality, and kinship that were integral to the establishment of a colonial and capitalist order based upon male dominance and white supremacy. Through its construction of the bourgeois heteropatriarchal nuclear family as natural, apolitical, and devoid of any history or context, this discourse erases the history of how the nuclear family unit was imposed as an organzing structure of capitalist and colonial systems of power, dominance, and oppression. Capturing the definition of family in these terms has formed a critical aspect of pro-family efforts to oppose policies and policy language that recognize the diversity of families, gender identities and expressions, and sexual orientations, and which decenters the normative status of heterosexuality and patriarchy. Policy proposals to use the term families, rather than family, for example, have been vehemently opposed by pro-family actors who argue that such definitions are an attack on the family  and human civilization (see for instance United Nations, 2014).

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Universalizing Family Second to the pro-family movement’s effort to monopolize the definition of ‘family’ is the movement’s effort to universalize the nuclear family as the only kinship formation to have existed in human societies. In constructing the nuclear family unit as natural, pro-family discourse legitimizes the multiple hierarchies established through this heteropatriarchal and Eurocentric ideology while erasing its colonial history, along with past and present alternative imaginaries of what a family can be or look like. Within efforts to construct the nuclear family unit as natural, the pro-­ family movement declares it to be a universal aspect of human societies across time and space. The World Congress of Families gives global expression to the notion that the nuclear family is universal to all of humanity and history, arguing that the family is “based on the marital union of a man and a woman, is the bedrock of society, the strength of our nations, and the hope of humanity… the ultimate foundation of every civilization known to history” (World Congress of Families, n.d.). One need not look far within African feminist and queer scholarship to find that the nuclear family unit as envisioned by the pro-family movement has not been customary within most African societies. As numerous scholars have shown, no such nuclear family structure has been practiced on the continent as a norm, historically or currently (Oyěwùmí, 2002). Rather, African kinship systems have taken a diversity of forms in relation to various contexts, cultures, religious practices, and belief systems. In addition to extended family networks and polygamy, for example, African societies have also historically been comprised of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. Precolonial art depicting same-sex intimacies (Epprecht, 2004) and anthropological research (Nkabinde & Morgan, 2006; Epprecht, 2008) have provided important evidence that Africa has never been the exclusively heterosexual continent some political and religious leaders often claim. As Oyěwùmí writes, although the nuclear family system is a specifically European form and has never been a norm in Africa, it has been and remains the source of many falsely universalized concepts that inform gender and kinship research across the continent (Oyěwùmí, 2002, p. 1). In showing the colonial history of the notion of gender in The Invention of Women, Oyěwùmí (1997) describes the ways in which the western nuclear family model became institutionalized in Nigerian societies during colonization and its consequences for women. The historical and continued

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existence of diverse forms of kinship across the continent clearly show that no single practice relating to sex, gender, or family existed across the continent in the first place and that the nuclear family model and its attendant gender binary and hierarchy were certainly not universally practiced. Pro-family  efforts to universalize the nuclear family erase indigenous and alternative knowledge systems and practices, positioning the  ultra-­ conservative American definition of what constitutes a ‘natural family’ as authoritative, and the pro-family  actors  who deploy  this narrative as the ultimate authority on matters relating to gender, sexuality, and family. Ramón Grosfoguel argues that such discourses of universality disguise their provincialism, invoking what might be called a God’s-eye view to construct knowledge as unbiased and “unconditioned by its body or space location” (Grosfoguel, 2013, p. 76). Presented as unsituated knowledge that is apolitical, ahistorical, and originless, the effort to present the nuclear family unit as natural presumes the speaker’s ability to see from an objective view, unsituated in space or time. This assumed positionality claims, without explicitly stating, the speaker’s epistemic privilege and authority. The pro-family movement negates the historical and geographic location of the notion that the nuclear family is natural through a subject-­ object split characteristic of the white male imperial knower at the centre of Cartesian philosophy, which claimed that an unsituated “I” could produce disembodied universal truths about human nature and societies. This unsituatedness is a hallmark of the egopolitics of Cartesianism, assuming itself to be producing knowledge from nowhere, a “point zero epistemology” that does not consider itself to be a point of view at all (Castro-­ Gomez, 2003, cited in Grosfoguel, 2013, p.  76). This epistemology, Enrique Dussell ([1977] 1985) argued, could have been produced only by an imperial being, which, after having conquered the world and other forms of knowledge, could achieve godlike qualities, giving it epistemic privilege (Grosfoguel, 2013, p. 77). Thus, in addition to erasing the diversity of ways in which kinship has been, and continues to be, practiced in African societies and elsewhere, pro-family efforts to universalize the nuclear family model reinforce the epistemic power of white Christians from the West, whilst obscuring the violent colonial history of the nuclear family institution. As Kapya Kaoma (2012) shows, contemporary U.S.  Christian Right pro-family activism in African countries has largely been made possible by the history of colonial missionary schooling and Christianization, which devastated indigenous knowledge systems and practices, while economic exploitation

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and militarization were having devastating effects on existing kinship systems. Recognition of the ways in which the eurocentric and heteropatriarchal nuclear family model functioned as instruments of Western colonial dominance and conquest exposes the historical erasure contained in pro-­ family efforts to present their version of the ideal family structure as universal, apolitical, and ahistorical. The colonial history of the nuclear family becomes even more relevant when considering the ways in which U.S. conservative pro-family activists are positioning themselves as allies of formerly colonized people. Through the language of anti-imperialism, the pro-family movement has “laid claim to a progressive stance that says it is more authentic, more compassionate, and more sensitive” to African realities than feminist and LGBTIQ+ activists (Buss & Herman, 2003, p. 77). U.S. Christian Right pro-family activists position themselves as being akin to African audiences and communities, arguing that both are oppressed by elite western progressives and international organizations that are attempting to impose a neo-colonial liberal sexual rights agenda in the U.S. and in African countries. (Geo)Politicizing Family The pro-family politicization of gender, sexuality, and family constructs feminism and LGBTIQ+ movements as attacks on traditions, cultures, and national sovereignty. Anti-gay and anti-feminist political rhetoric and agendas have been a feature of North American political landscapes since the 1960s, but it was only towards the turn of the millennium that the rhetoric of ‘family values’ entered U.S. foreign policy and global governance arenas. It was at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women where the pro-family movement first began to assert the family values agenda within global policy terrain. Since then, international pro-family activists have deployed measures to “strengthen the family” through opposition to birth control, the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/ AIDS, and gay rights (Croft, 2007, p. 44), and have “consistently opposed any foreign-policy initiative that might weaken parental control over children, facilitate abortion…or devalue the role of the conventional homemaker and mother” (Martin, 1999, p. 74). In addition to their work within international UN conferences, U.S.based pro-family activists have been growing and constellating a transnational network of conservative activists and organizations through the

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creation of global campaigns, the development of organizational partnerships, and direct mentorship of conservative activists from other countries. While several Christian Right organizations were established in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on promoting policy agendas to promote family values agendas in the United States (such as Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, American Center for Law and Justice, American Enterprise Institute, and the Howard Institute for Family, Religion, and Society), the 1990s ushered in a new era of Christian Right groups with the specific mandate to promote pro-family agendas worldwide. For instance, Family Watch International  (FWI), Human Life International (HLI), Heartbeat International, and the Centre for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM). Some of the organizations originally established to promote family values agendas within the U.S. context have also globalized their advocacy in recent decades. For instance, the American Center for Law and Justice has established international offices in Russia (the Slavic Centre for Law and Justice), France (the European Center for Law and Justice), and Kenya (the East African Center for Law and Justice). While the specific activities of these organizations to establish African political and religious networks will be elaborated upon in the following chapters, at this stage it is important to note that they each undertake advocacy in relation to one or more of the three key areas of pro-family advocacy: Opposing abortion and contraception, opposing the recognition and rights of LGBTIQ+ rights, and opposing sexuality education. While some organizations, such as HLI and Heartbeat International, focus exclusively on one issue (contraception and abortion), others mobilize campaigns in relation to all three issues (such as FWI). Whether or not an individual pro-family organization prioritizes one or more of these issues in their advocacy, they circulate a shared narrative that portrays abortion and SRHR more broadly, LGBTIQ+ recognition and rights, and CSE as attacks on family values, traditional cultures, and national sovereignty.

Growing a Global Pro-Family Movement: Transnational Pro-Family Network Building The World Congress of Families (WCF) has been exceptionally influential in consolidating a global pro-family movement, bringing together anti-­ abortion and anti-LGBTIQ+ activists (who may or may not fully agree

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with one another’s causes) under one united banner. WCF was conceived by Allan Carlson and two Russian sociologists, Anatoly Antonov and Ivan Shevchenko, in 1995. Since its establishment, WCF has hosted over a dozen international convenings, playing a key role in the activation of coordinated anti-gender opposition against western liberalism across several geographical contexts. The influence of WCF as a site of conservative transnational advocacy has been noted by scholars (see Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020; Stoeckl, 2020) and several civil society organizations. In 2014, the Human Rights Campaign issued a report about the WCF, describing the organisation as “one of the most influential American organizations involved in the export of hate…under the guise of protecting the ‘natural family’. It is connected to some mainstream conservative organizations and to the very highest levels of government in the countries where it operates” (Human Rights Campaign, 2014). Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center warned that the WCF is “one of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia and sexism…WCF pursues an international anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ agenda, seeking to promote conservative ideologies—and codify these in regressive laws and policies—that dictate who has rights as ‘family,’ and who doesn’t” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015). In response to such accusations, the WCF claimed that it does not advocate violence  against any group. Rejecting the accusations of the SPLC and the HRC in a report titled A Call for Civil Dialogue and Constructive Engagement, the WCF stated that it “strongly opposes violence and would never advocate violence or hatred toward any group of people, regardless of differences.” According to their statement: The WCF only takes issue with LGBT activists in their attempts to undermine the natural family by redefining marriage in the law and to ignore or distort the overwhelming social science, psychological, medical, and demographic evidence that the two-parent, mother-and-father family is the optimal unit for social stability and raising children (Word Congress of Families 2014, original emphasis).

While the WCF attempts to deny its implicit intolerance through an initial claim of ‘strong opposition’ to violence, the qualification of the organization’s opposition to LGBTI activists advances an argument that constructs  queer people and non-nuclear families as illegitimate and

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dangerous to society. “LGBT activists” are accused of “distorting” family and imperilling children and society at large. The statement also makes a general reference to “evidence” that the only family structure that can ensure social stability is the nuclear family unit. Attempting to redefine the affective economy (Ahmed, 2001) in which they are trading, the WCF rejects the label of anti-LGBTIQ+ hatred by refocusing attention towards objects of ‘love’—heterosexual marriage and the “mother-and-father family” as “the optimal” social unit. Africa has become a region of interest for WCF as made evident by the several regional conferences that have taken place across the continent in recent years (Accra, 2019; Nairobi, 2018; Kampala, 2018; Lagos, 2017; Lilongwe, 2017; Cape Town, 2016). In 2019, WCF convened a regional conference in Accra under the theme ‘The African Family and Sustainable Development: Strong Families, Strong Nation’. According to the conference website, the purpose of the gathering was to “bring together all pro life and family advocates and believers” and “to establish an active collaboration with government officials, the media, academia, religious & traditional bodies, civil societies, NGOs and interest groups to deliberate intensely on the state of the family” (International Organization for the Family, n.d.). Speakers at the event included both American and African pro-family activists, including Sharon Slater  (President of FWI), Brian Brown (President of the WCF/International Organisation for the Family), Theresa Okafor (Founder of the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage), and Catherine Onwioduokit of Family Renaissance International (which was the WCF’s local partner and host for the event). According to the WCF, regional conferences in these and other cities around the world serve an explicit political purpose: to “bring the natural family message to the leaders and grassroots delegates, worldwide. Through them, we help to educate, train, and mobilize local campaigns, policies, and projects” (International Organization for the Family, 2017). The intention to galvanize African pro-family movements is explicitly stated and the evangelical orientation of their campaigning is made clear as the WCF states that it is the WCF that “bring[s] the natural family message” to African audiences. It is through such events that the pro-family movement expands its campaigns in a global bid to activate popular and political opposition against LGBTIQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and sexuality education. At the 2016 conference in Cape Town, the WCF launched the International Organisation for the Family under the new leadership of

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Brian Brown, following Allan Carlson’s retirement from serving as Director of WCF.  At the gathering, delegates signed the Cape Town Declaration, confirming their efforts to “firmly resis[t] every push to redefine marriage: to include same-sex or group bonds, or sexually open or temporary ones.” African signatories to the declaration include the head of the African Christian Democratic Party, Kevin Meshoe, and the Nigerian ambassador to South Africa, Uche Ajulu-Okeke. It is unlikely that WCF’s decision to launch the Declaration in the first African country to adopt marriage equality legislation, on the harbor of the continent’s ‘pink city’, was coincidental.  U.S.-based pro-family groups have  also been establishing  regional offices in African countries since the 1990s.  For instance,  Focus on the Family (founded in 1977 by James Dobson in Colorado Springs) established a Focus on the Family Africa office in South Africa in 1992 and the American Centre for Law and Justice (established in 1990 by Jay Sekulow and Pat Robertson in Washington, D.C.) established a regional office in Kenya  in 2010. CitizenGo, a Spanish far-right organization that works closely with U.S. Christian Right groups and has been actively involved in promoting pro-family agendas internationally, also established a CitizenGo Africa office in Kenya in 2017. U.S. Christian Right ‘pro-family’ advocacy has also encouraged the creation of African pro-family organizations. For example, the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage (FACH), which was founded in 2009 by Theresa Okafor in Lagos, Nigeria. Okafor has become a celebrated person at the World Congress of Families and was awarded ‘Woman of the Year’ at the ninth gathering of the WCF in 2015. The objectives of the FACH mirror those set out by U.S.-based pro-family organizations, as can be seen in their mission statement. As stated on the FACH website, the organization aims to: “promote the sanctity and inviolability of human life from conception…foster the equality in dignity between men and women through the rejection of false norms and notions of equality that diminish the very dignity of the woman…[and] uphold the family as the natural unit for the upbringing of children while protecting and preserving healthy family values, and Nigerian cultural heritage”. Echoing the mission statements of US-based pro-family organizations that employ notions of the nuclear family as a “natural unit”, the FACH clearly positions itself as a defender of ‘family values’ which it connects to a heteronormative definition of ‘Nigerian cultural heritage’.

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Similarly, Pastor Errol Naidoo has positioned himself as a  pro-family leader in  South Africa, attempting to mobilize communities and lobby government ministries against LGBTIQ+ rights, CSE, and the decriminilization of sex work. After the legalization of same-sex marriage in South Africa in 2006, Naidoo went to the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC) where he received mentorship, and later returned to establish the Family Policy Institute in Cape Town in 2007 (Naidoo, 2015). The Family Policy Institute boasts its status as a partner-member of the WCF, and at its ninth gathering in 2015, Naidoo addressed delegates on the issues of pro-family scholarship, research, and policy, speaking to ‘the status of the natural family in South Africa’ (p. 5). As will be further discussed in Chap. 6, Naidoo has been working in partnership with Family Watch International to mobilize the Stop CSE campaign in South Africa, circulating petitions, organizing marches, and spreading disinformation about sexuality education. Key to these organizational partnerships are the individual relationships that have taken shape between far-right U.S. and African political and religious actors. These relationships have been formed as U.S. Christian Right activists campaign across the region, speaking at high-level events, convening regional events with political actors and religious leaders, and providing training sessions on pro-family policy advocacy for civil society groups and policymakers. Sharon Slater of Family Watch International, for example, has hosted numerous African political and religious leaders for pro-family advocacy trainings in the U.S. and has convened regional gatherings focused on protecting African family values. These and other forms of Christian Right advocacy in Africa will be further elaborated upon in the following chapters in relation to the three specific areas of pro-family mobilisation in Africa: sexual and reproductive health and rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, and comprehensive sexuality education.

Conclusion Through efforts to restrict notions of family, sexuality, and gender to western heteropatriarchal norms, U.S.  Christian Right pro-family ideology advances ideas about family that have been historically implicated in the construction and maintenance of unequal relations of power between global norths and souths. As decolonial scholars have shown, the notion that the nuclear family is the only legitimate form of family has played a significant role in the colonial logic of power that institutionalized white

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supremacy and projects of colonial conquest, domination, and imperialism. The assertion of epistemic authority over what constitutes family has, and continues, to universalize western concepts of the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family model, erasing and invalidating all other gender expressions, sexual orientations, and family formations that do not serve the interests of a heteropatriarchal social order. As contemporary pro-family activists assert that the nuclear family is the only natural form of family, they also erase and deny the historical and contemporary  existence of same-sex intimacy, desire, partnership, and diverse forms of  kinship. These discourses further deny the harmful effects  of  colonial occupation  and neoliberal capitalism on  societies and individuals, presenting adherence to the nuclear family model as a cure-all for the contemporary social, economic, and geo-political challenges that African countries face. As discussed in this chapter, contemporary pro-family ideology is historically  grounded in  colonial notions of “civilized” gender norms and kinship arrangements. Yet, the pro-family movement actively hides this relationship, claiming that LGBTIQ+ rights, CSE, and SRHR are ‘trojan horses’ of western cultural imperialism. Presenting themselves as victims of queer and feminist advocacy, American pro-family activists claim to be  aligned  with those who have endured, and fought against,  colonial conquest and domination. Thus, they not only conceal the  underlying whiteness and coloniality of their agendas but also obscure and trivialize the actual forms of violence, exploitation, and oppression that colonized people have endured. Reversing the historical victims and perpetrators of sex- and gender-based forms of injustice, pro-family activists further ignore the sexual and reproductive health needs of young people and adults and obscure the forms of exclusion and violence that LGBTIQ+ people continue to experience daily in Africa and around the world.

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Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press. Naidoo, E. (2015). Family Policy Institute (FPI) Celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Joy! Digital. Retrieved from https://www.joydigitalmag.com/voice-post-category/errol-naidoo/ Ndjio, B. (2012). Post-colonial histories of sexuality: The political invention of a libidinal African straight. Africa, 82(04), 609–631. Nkabinde, N., & Morgan, R. (2006). ‘This has happened since ancient times… it’s something that you are born with’: Ancestral wives among same-sex sangomas in South Africa. Agenda, 20(67), 9–19. Nyanzi, S. (2013). Homosexuality in Uganda: The paradox of foreign influence. MSIR Working Paper, 18. Makerere Institute of Social Research. Retrieved from http://misr.mak.ac.ug/sites/default/files/publications/14Homosexuality% 20in%20Uganda.pdf. Oyěwùmí, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making African sense of western gender discourses. University of Minnesota Press. Oyěwùmí, O. (2002). Conceptualizing gender: The Eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts and the challenge of African epistemologies. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Woman Studies, 2(1), 1–9. Perry, T. L. (1995). Family values, race, feminism and public policy. Santa Clara University. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/other/ lawreview/familyalues.html. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2015). Everything you need to know about the anti-­ LGBTQ World Congress of Families. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter. org/news/2015/10/21/everything-­you-­need-­know-­about-­anti-­lgbtq-­world-­ congress-­families-­wcf. Stacey, J. (1994). Scents, scholars, and stigma: The revisionist campaign for family values. Social Text, 40, 51–75. Stoeckl, K. (2020). The rise of the Russian Christian Right: The case of the World Congress of Families. Religion, State & Society, 48(4), 223–238. Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Duke University Press. United Nations. (2014, December 3). General Assembly, observing anniversary of international year, stresses essential role of family in socioeconomic development, argues over its proper definition. United Nations Meetings and Press Releases. Retrieved from https://press.un.org/en/2014/ga11594.doc.htm. World Congress of Families. (2014). A call for civil dialogue and constructive engagement: The World Congress of Families responds to the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved from http://worldcongress. org/files/2014/3688/5602/WCF_Call_For_Civil_Dialogue.pdf1-­2.

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World Congress of Families. (2016). The Cape Town declaration. The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, 30(4) Retrieved from http://familyinamerica.org/journals/winter-­20161/cape-­town-­declaration/#.yFXpyy0Rpp8. World Congress of Families. (n.d.) World family declaration. Retrieved from http://www.worldfamilydeclaration.org/wFD.

CHAPTER 3

Investigating the Pro-Family Movement

Abstract  This chapter discusses  the methodology employed to  investigate how and why U.S. Christian Right groups are advancing ‘pro-family’ politics in African countries. The overarching methodological approach, informed by intersectional and decolonial feminism and critical social theory, is discussed, and the specific analytical tools and techniques used to collect and analyse data are defined. The unique  challenges of studying dominant and oppressive groups are examined, as well as the ethical considerations made in the process of conducting the research. The techniques of online ethnography, network ethnography, and autoethnography are discussed, and hauntology is further considered in relation to the experience of conducting fieldwork. Keywords  Critical social research • Online ethnography • Network ethnography • Autoethnography • Critical diversity literacy • Hauntology It was a few years after relocating to South Africa from the U.S. that I began to hear the familiar echoes of U.S.  Christian Right rhetoric  as punctuating popular discourse: “It’s not Adam and Steve, its Adam and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_3

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Eve” became a popular mantra, and the claim that homosexuality is “unAfrican” became increasingly pronounced in popular discourse and media reports. In retrospect, the rise of these narratives was most likely prompted by the legalization of same-sex marriage in South Africa, which made it the first country in Africa and only the sixth country in the world to adopt inclusive marriage legislation in 2006. In the years that followed, these anti-LGBTIQ+ narratives became lounder, and stories about the swelling numbers of U.S. evangelical missionaries on international flights to African countries were circulating. It was only a few years later, in 2013, that I officially embarked on my doctoral research project investigating how and why  U.S.  Christian Right  groups were promoting ‘family values’ discourses and agendas in African countries. My decision to pursue this project was affirmed by the work of Kapya Kaoma (2009, 2012), who had conducted in-depth investigations into U.S.  Christian Right anti-LGBTIQ+ advocacy across the continent. More than surprise or shock me, the realization that the U.S.  Christian Right was operating internationally, and in South Africa specifically, terrified me. Knowing the power and influence of anti-gay and anti-feminist conservatives to influence policy and popular belief in the U.S., I became very concerned about what lay ahead for sexual politics in South Africa and other African countries. The process of knowledge production is shaped by what Linda Martin Alcoff calls the ‘interpretive horizon’ of a researcher, or the “perspectival location from which the interpreter looks out at the world” (2005, p. 95). My positionality and academic training made it possible for me to pursue this project, shaping the research questions, the data collection methods used, and the process of interpreting findings. Recognizing the possibilities and limitations of one’s positionality in the research process draws attention to the ways in which our conceptual frameworks are entangled with our identities and sense of self in relation to our race, sexuality, ability, nationality, religion, age, and profession. Lived experiences and identities therefore influence the research questions we deem to be interesting and important, the scholars we choose to read and to cite, and the metaphors we use to describe the world around us (Moya, 2011, p. 81). This is as true for those who occupy dominant positionalities as for those who occupy subordinated positionalities, shaping our ways of knowing “even when we are not consciously aware of how these aspects of ourselves affect our interpretive horizons” (p. 81). Recognizing these critical, yet often under-acknowledged, aspects of knowledge

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production played a central role in the methodological approach I took to this project.

Learning How to Research the Pro-Family Movement My background and positionality as an American who came of age amidst the rise of Christian Right ‘family values’ politics in the U.S. has motivated this project and informed its design. My postgraduate training in critical diversity studies and the years I spent working as a researcher and educator in this field at the University of Cape Town and later at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, provided me with a strong interest in the  relationship between difference and power. It was during this time that I developed an interest in conducing research on power and privilege, and the ways in which historically dominant groups work to maintain systems of unequal power relations. A great deal of my thinking about the interrogation of power and dominance in the context of U.S. Christian Right activities in Africa has been informed by the framework of Critical Diversity Literacy, defined by Melissa Steyn (2015) as “an informed analytical orientation that enables a person to ‘read’ prevailing social relations as one would a text” so that it is possible to “recogniz[e] the ways in which possibilities are being opened up or closed down for those differently positioned” within asymetrical power relations (p. 381). This reading practice centres on an analysis of power relations as constitutive of the ways in which differences are imagined and positioned in relation to one another in a historically, economically, and politically contingent social context. This mode of critical social research therefore aims to contribute towards the imperatives of social justice by exposing the ways in which power operates in relation to difference, and how unequal power relations are reproduced and used as tools to further marginalise historically oppressed groups (Scheyvens et al., 2014, p. 167). The analytic framework of CDL has been instructive in that it sets out to expose and explain often difficult-to-detect power relations at work in social contexts. Specifically, CDL allows one to identify the relatively smooth reproduction of existing power relations, such as those that invisibilize the norm and naturalize the status quo, construct ambiguities, promote patterns of forgetting and remembering, and render alternatives to the status quo unthinkable and unimaginable (Steyn, 2015, p.  384). According to Steyn, inequitable social arrangements such as white

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supremacy and heteropatriarchy rely on constant ideological work to support and maintain the appearance that these hierarchies are natural and inevitable (p. 385). Specifically, in drawing attention to the need to unpack how systems of oppression “interlock, co-construct and constitute each other, and how they are reproduced, resisted and reframed” (Steyn, 2015, p.  383), Critical Diversity Literacy provides tools for interpreting the coded hegemonic practices within the ideological work of the pro-family movement to naturalize and universalize the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family model. Ethics and Power: Encountering the Challenges of Conducting Research on Powerful Groups As a project aiming to interrogate family values discourses, this project centres on agents of systemic heterosexism and heteropatriarchy. As I discovered when consulting social science research methodology texts for qualitative researchers, little guidance is available on how to conduct research on actors who actively promote oppressive discourses and agendas. While there is a relatively small but rich area of research methodology scholarship focused on “studying up” that attends to the “glaring invisibility of elites” in qualitative research (Aguiar & Schneider, 2016; Savage & Williams, 2008), this literaturefocuses largely on economic elites, and remains limited in its coverage of the specific problematics that emerge when a researcher is situated in the communities on the receiving end of oppressive elite agendas under study. The greatest emphasis within much of the scholarship on social science research methodology assumes that the researcher is more powerful than the researched, and a great deal of emphasis is placed upon techniques for ensuring that the individuals and communities whom the research is about play a role in shaping the research. Methods such as participatory action research, and protocols to gain the informed consent of participants and conceal participant identities have been developed to protect research participants and communities from harm during and after research. While it is undeniably critical that social science scholars are aware of the  power they hold in the process of conducting research and that they do no harm during or after data collection, the unspoken norm within qualitative  methodology literature presumes that researchers will conduct research on groups who are marginalized and experiencing forms of exclusion. These assumptions are also tied to ideas about the purpose of social

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research and the kinds of power relations that research should, and can, challenge. While certainly important to the disciplines of the social sciences, collectively, the consistency of approaches across several texts presents somed conceptual and practical obstacles, obscuring the potential for research to investigate dominance, privilege, and oppression, and to interrogate the ways in which systems of oppression are perpetuated by those with access to power. The assumption that the researcher is more powerful than the researched also informs existing paradigms and protocols around research ethics, an undeniably important focus given the forms of abuse and exploitation that have historically accompanied scientific research. Yet, the prevailing emphasis on protecting vulnerable groups without elaboration on alternative dynamics in which research aims to interrogate oppression and privilege also contributes to the erasure of  dominant groups  as potential subjects, rendering them unknowable and unthinkable areas of social science investigation (Pascale, 2011, p. 158). At the same time, I remain aware of the extent to which my own knowledge production is an act of power. As Gatson (2011) states, “decisions regarding exactly what tool in one’s methodological kit to employ often hinge on power—that of the researcher, the researched, and the shifting power relations between the two over time” (p.  246). While Gatson admits that decisions about the research questions and parameters of the study are “basic” forms of power, citing Markham (2005), she reminds one that “the power in method is the power of representation of others” (Gatson, 2011, p. 246). Reminded by Pascale (2011, p. 163) who states that “research will never be an ideal process,” I designed this project to be an effective and accountable investigation into pro-family politics and movement building. During my doctoral studies and beyond, I have employed a combination of methods that make it possible to investigate pro-family advocacy in an ethical manner: network ethnography, online ethnography, document analysis, and auto-ethnography. Specifically, the techniques I employed to collect data included studying organizational websites and collecting documents online; watching and transcribing webinars and speeches by pro-­ family activists and organizations; mapping the connections between organizations; subscribing to and reading organizational newsletters; and following policy developments. I also attended a World Congress of Families in 2015 as a regular paying delegate. This event remains the only in-person pro-family event that I have attended.

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Notably, this project did not involve interviews or focus groups with pro-family actors or those on the receiving end of their discourses and policy initiatives. This project was focused on understanding the thematic and discursive dimensions of pro-family advocacy, meaning that it was more interested in the public discourses used by pro-family actors and organizations to represent and promote their political agendas rather than the viewpoints of individual pro-family activists. For the purposes of answering the research questions, I felt that there was no information that could be collected through interviews that was not already available in the public domain. Furthermore, I also sought to collect and use data that already existed in the public domain in a deliberate effort to analyse the discourses that are circulating, and influencing, ways of thinking about LGBTIQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and sexuality education. All of the materials I gathered during this project, even the speeches delivered at the World Congress of Families, were publicly available at the time they were collected. Network Ethnography To grasp the transnational pro-family complex of actors and organisations, the research required data collection beyond localized contexts of pro-­ family interaction and speech utterance. The shape of the pro-family movement, as a collective of individuals and organizations who are geographically dispersed and who share a set of values and political ideologies, required the use of methods capable of accessing the multiple sites and strategies used to proliferate their discourses, as well as analytic techniques capable of grasping the relationships between various issues areas and actors. While traditional social science methods were designed for the study of physically bounded  and territorially specific social interactions that take place in physical space (Howard, 2002, p.  554), new communications technologies have created a new set of challenges and demands for researchers. The question posed by Howard (2002, p. 569) over a decade ago has only become more relevant with the growth of digital space and online movement-building: How can we qualitatively study culture produced in situations of decentralized human interaction with the high ethnographic standard of first-hand experience and produce generalizable theory? How can we qualitatively

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study culture in such a way as to strike a palatable balance between macro-­ structure and micro-agency?

To address this challenge, Howard proposes ‘network ethnography’ as a synergistic and transdisciplinary method that is especially useful for studying hypermedia organizations, such as global activist movements. As a method, network ethnography is interested in “the complex fabric of associations between members with very different roles in very different organizations” who share deep ideational commonalities (pp. 570–571). Network ethnography, he writes, amalgamates traditional ethnography and social network analysis: While social network analysis can identify key organizations, events, and people, network ethnography extends this method by applying ethnographic field methods on cases and field sites that the former can assist in identifying and selecting (p. 561). As a movement characterized by elements elements of a ‘hypermedia organisation’, ethnography or social network analysis alone would be insufficient to understand the pro-family movement’s multifaceted efforts to expand its epistemic community to include African membership. Comprised of individuals who form a community, but are not members of the same formal organization, the pro-family movement has “adapted in significant ways by using new communication technology to conduct the business of social organization over large areas and disparate time zones, and at all hours of the day” (p. 552). Within these forms of social organization, members do not likely have equivalent or comparable organizational roles, but rather “constitute a knowledge-based group, or ‘specific community of experts sharing a belief in a common set of cause-and-effect relationships as well as common values’” (Haas, 1990 in Howard, 2002, p. 564). Online Ethnography Like other twenty-first-century organizations and networks, the pro-­ family movement uses the internet and other communication technologies to grow their support base and networks. This means that much of my data collection involved extensive online ethnography. Developments in social research that require ethnographic fieldwork across multiple sites and networks have created a great need and potential for online ethnographic methods (Davies, 2008, p. 159). Because one of my intentions was to collect the discourses of the pro-family movement as an ‘epistemic

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community’, it was a pragmatic and theoretically informed decision to collect and analyse freely available online materials produced by pro-family actors. As Gatson (2011) discusses, the internet is ideally situated to be a part of extending the reach of traditional, auto-ethnographic, and multisited/ extended-case forms of ethnography (p. 247). The fact that online forms of ethnography, or cyber-anthropology (Paccagnella, 1997), may involve ‘fields’ that are not physical and may be “little more than a state of mind because…there is no physical entry into or exit from the community….no territorially-based field site, and…social cues that are available are unbundled from much of the context in which the content was produced” (Howard, 2002, p. 559), there has been a fair amount of critique concerning the rigour of such methods. While some, such as Travers (2009) and Hine (2008), have dismissed the innovativeness and legitimacy of online ethnography, claiming that it can only produce ‘thin’ description, Gatson and others have maintained that online research “can provide either the same level of depth as a one-shot, one-hour interview, or the same level of depth as that produced by the daily participating, embedded online ethnographer. It may also provide the same level of in-depth analysis as any historical or comparative historical text-based analysis, wherein the text is gleaned from archival sources” (p.  250). The reliance  of  pro-family actors on the internet to circulate their narratives and grow their global networks ultimately made online ethnography a necessary method for this project. Participant Observation and Autoethnography I also sought first-hand lived experience of how pro-family discourses and groups were operating in physical space. To do so, I attended the ninth World Congress of Families, which took place in 2015 over a four-day period in Salt Lake City, Utah. During the event, I made auto-­ethnographic reflections that I recorded in video and written field journals. I also collected additional texts in the form of audio recorded speeches, hardcopy reports and documents available in the exhibition space at the conference venue.  In addition to being an opportunity to  gather  materials that were not available online, the experience of the World Congress of Families provided me with an embodied understanding of how the pro-family movement operates, organizes, and deploys ‘family values’ discourses.

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Autoethnography can be defined as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (Ellis et al., 2011, p. 1). Overtly challenging the idea that it is possible to produce ‘objective’, apolitical, or ‘value free’ knowledge, autoethnography works to deepen awareness and researcher engagement with the social, cultural, and political aspects of the research process and acknowledges the power relations inherent in knowledge production. Thus, in the context of investigations into the operation of hegemonizing forms of power, autoethnography enables one to bring into discussion findings that do not conform to, and even reveal the limitations of, the empiricist tradition. Because power and privilege “does not leave a trail of evidence in the same way that oppression does” (Pascale, 2011, p.  157), their interrogation often requires consideration of that which is not present in the research site or field, rather than that which is necessarily evident in a bounded research site. In this sense, autoethnography stands as a radical challenge to systematized knowledge production, surfacing that which has been concealed in social science research. (Pascale, 2016, p.  222). “Refusing the terms of formalization all together,” autoethnography “is not predicated on the systematic collection of data but rather uses systematic self-­ reflection, which is grounded both theoretically and experientially” to understand a social context (Pascale, 2016, pp. 222–223). As a method of data collection and analysis, autoethnography therefore opens avenues for interrogating the historical, cultural and biographic conditions that shape the subjects experience of the events being studied, which themselves occur in sites where structure, history and autobiography intersect (Denzin, 2014, p. x). Hauntologies in the Field Experiences such as disturbances and epiphanies are often the starting places in auto-ethnographic writing because they are made possible by one’s positionality within a particular context (Denzin, 2014, p. 34). The epiphanies, or disturbances, that I experienced at the WCF took the form of ‘hauntings’, as theorised by Avery Gordon (2008). These hauntings, I found, were deeply connected to my positionality—I was amongst the figures systematically singled out as an enemy of the ‘natural family’ and as a part of the rising “family dysfunction” and “cultural disintegration” lamented by pro-family actors.

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Hauntings, as Gordon says, are important in studies of social dominance and control in that they notify one that abusive systems of power supposedly “over and done with” continue to haunt social relations (p. xvi). Mediating between the visible and the invisible, the living and the dead, the past and the present, ‘haunting’ is a psycho-social state in which it becomes possible to sense that which modern history has (attempted to) render ghostly (p. 18). The ghost, Gordon writes, “is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure,” who takes the form of “something lost, or barely visible, or seemingly not there to our supposedly well-­ trained eyes [that] makes itself known or apparent to us, in its own way” (p. 8). The hauntings I experienced at the WCF IX, and my autoethnographic interpretation of these, involved theoretically grounded reflection on the political and epistemic significance of my identity with regard to pro-family discourse. Gordon’s theorisation of how hauntings create possibilities for embodied learning vividly captures the experience of interpreting the events that unfolded at the WCF IX and my emotional response to them: Being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against or will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognition (p. 8).

This “transformative recognition”, according to Gordon, unfolds from “that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life” (p. 8). As Denzin (2014) similarly argues,  the process of interpreting epiphanies through interpretive autoethnography unlocks insights into the historical, cultural, and biographic conditions that shaped the subjects experience of the events being studied. Numerous aspects of my positionality were vilified within the pronouncements made by speakers at the WCF, and I realized that I check most of the ‘boxes’ in terms of pro-family narratives about the forces destroying the ‘natural family’: Feminists [✓], queers [✓], people who forego heterosexual marriage and reproduction [✓,✓], anyone cohabiting or having sex outside of marriage [✓], and anyone who has been divorced, are said to be perpetrators of the sexual revolution and, consequently, forces that weaken economies and nations. Children of same-sex [✓], divorced, and/or single parents and donor children [✓] were also singled out as ‘victims of the sexual revolution’ whom the pro-family movement must ‘protect’ through advocacy and policy. While I had a cognitive awareness of the extent to which my various

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positionalities were targets of pro-family discourse prior to attending the event, the embodied experience of being in a space occupied by thousands of anti-feminist and anti-gay activists surfaced a new structure of feeling through which I was able to interpret pro-family advocacy and movement building.

Data Analysis To uncover the interests at stake in, as well as relations of power operating through, pro-family activism in Africa, this project employed critical discourse analysis as a problem-oriented approach to interdisciplinary research that aims to explain and challenge the status quo of social injustice and inequality (Fairclough et al., 2011, p. 357). As critical approaches to epistemology have revealed, ways of knowing (and not knowing) are firmly embedded in, and reproduce, unequal relations of power that are raced (see Outlaw, 2007; Mills, 2007; Steyn, 2012) sexed (Foucault 1978 [1980]), and gendered (Tuana, 2006). As Fairclough (2013) writes, discourse analysis is a necessary tool for the analysis of hegemony and ideology because of the power of discourse  to shape ways of knowing the social world: Discourse can generate imaginary representations of how the world will be or should be within strategies for change which, if they achieve hegemony, can be operationalized to transform these imaginaries into realities (p. 457).

As Jiwani & Richardson (2011, p. 241) state, “The power of discourse in defining and shaping the realities of minoritized groups in society cannot be underestimated.” Here, Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), as developed through her work on sexism, antisemitism, and racism was instructive in its emphasis on integrating “all available background information in the analysis and interpretation of the many layers of a written or spoken text” (p. 364), enabling analysis of codes and allusions contained in discourse (Fairclough et al., 2011, p. 364). Furthermore, because critical discourse analysis recognizes the dialectical relationship between discourse and social context, it is an effective method for critically interrogating the multiple levels at which the  pro-family agenda operates to mobilize particular constructions of gender, sexuality, and family. Thus, discourse is positioned as a social practice, allowing for an understanding

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of the dialectical relationship between discursive events and the situations, institutions, and social structures that historically contextualize language. Haunting and being Haunted at The World Congress of Families In early 2015, I learned that the next WCF would take place in Salt Lake City, Utah. I registered for the conference and arranged to stay in the accommodation suggested on the WCF IX website. In preparation for fieldwork at the Congress, I collected the WCF IX email updates that announced speakers and followed up with desktop research on these individuals to gain a sense of their positionality and the location of their discourse within the pro-family movement. I developed a database of these individuals as well as the organizations that they are affiliated with and their publications, and I also searched for online video and audio content featuring the speakers to familiarize myself with their work. I checked the WCF IX website on a regular basis to check for announcements and updates in search of further clues as to what I could expect at the event, learning key terms, points of reference, and ‘thought leaders’ who would be at the event. At the WCF itself, I audio recorded twenty separate sessions, each comprised of multiple speeches and presentations that I later transcribed for coding and analysis. I also collected several pamphlets, booklets, and informational brochures that were available at the information booths of twenty-three WCF “partner” organizations in the conference exhibition space. I kept a field journal with notes and observations, and I recorded two video journal entries daily (one during lunch and one in the evening) in which I documented my thoughts and reflections on the proceedings. I also searched for and collected media coverage on the WCF and followed the official event hashtags (#WCFIX, #WCF9) on Instagram and Twitter throughout the event. The WCF was dense with texts on multiple topics that the movement works to connect to the ‘natural family’: feminism, the sexual revolution, homosexuality, religious liberty, marriage, gender difference, abortion, and contraception. The advocacy work of the pro-­family movement at local, national, regional, and international levels was an important point of focus throughout the event. While the documents, audio recordings, notes, and photographs I collected provided ample textual data for analysis, my embodied experience of the WCF also became an incisive instrument  for accessing  the affective dimensions of this specific  gathering and pro-family advocacy more broadly. The insights I gained through participant observation at the WCF were ‘transformative’ in the sense that they emerged from a zone

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of ‘disturbance’ (Gordon, 2008, p. 46) in which the historical and contemporary atrocities that are obscured by pro-family discourses became palpably “alive and accessible” (p. 66). Sitting in the Grand Ballroom (the conference plenary venue) waiting for the opening ceremony to commence, I began the process of documenting my observations of the space. I noted the enormous crystal chandeliers and regal decor of the room,  the large stage, screen, and teleprompters in the front of the Grand Ballroom, and the business casual attire of delegates whom I sat amongst in the audience. It was during this initial process of recording my observations and attempting to make sense of the space around me when I had my first recollection of Roald Dahl’s (2013 [1983]) children’s story, The Witches. Noting the details of my surroundings, the first point of comparison that came to mind was  Dahl’s gathering of finely dressed witches, who enveloped themselves in opulence as a strategy  to conceal their sinister plot. The fact that this childhood story appeared, and haunted, my experience of the WCF became a point of reflective writing and analysis after the event  that generated further insights into the self-presentation and epistemicidal dimensions of the pro-­ family movement. I also reflected on the appearance of decorative witches that were placed throughout the lobby of the hotel where the WCF took place (which had been installed by the hotel as halloween decorations) as ‘hauntings’, and an opportunity to explore “what happens when we admit the ghost—that special instance of the merging of the visible and the invisible, the dead and the living, the past and the present—into the making of worldly relations and into the making of our accounts of the world” (Gordon, 2008, p. 25). The figure of the witch, and its repeated appearance in the physical surroundings and my own imaginative space became a symbol that could not be ignored within my interpretation of the event. A constant but non-specific concern of being somehow ‘identified’ or ‘found out’ also saturated my experience of the WCF, even though I was an officially registered delegate and had gained approval from my university’s Human Research Ethics Committee to conduct observational  research  at the event. Over the four days, I could not shake the sense that the other delegates would somehow detect my politics and positionality, reminding me of how Dahl’s ‘ordinary’ witches could sense the presence of their ultimate enemies (children) to be “snuffed out”: A witch has the most amazing sense of smell. The smell that drives a witch mad actually comes right out of your own skin. It comes oozing out of your skin in waves, and these waves, stink-waves the witches call them, go floating

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through the air and hit the witch right smack in her nostrils … to a witch you’d be smelling of fresh dogs’ droppings (pp. 26–28).

While my whiteness and middle-classness made it possible for me  to blend into the mostly white  and middle-class delegation, I found myself excessively monitoring my behaviour in an attempt to conceal my “stink-waves” as an outsider. My gender presentation, the eye contact I was making, my body language and facial expressions became points of concern as I navigated the space of the Congress. The reputation of the WCF, and controversy leading up to this convening added an additional layer of uncertainty and anxiety to conducting field work at the event. I spent much time considering which items of clothing would obscure my politics and positionally as one of the feminist, anti-racist academics that WCF IX speaker Austin Ruse said in the months prior to the event should “all be taken out and shot” (Tashman, 2014). In critically reflecting on the haunting of witches at the event, I was able to make connections between my own subjectivity and the historical context from which the pro-family movement emerges. In speaking from the shadows of that which the pro-family movement denies, represses, and renders invisible, the appearance of witches surfaced in the work of the WCF to eliminate bodies and knowledges that threaten the hegemonic status quo. The witches also made present the multiple subjects and objects of hatred constellated within the pro-family discourse. Like modern-­ day feminists, homosexuals, transgender, cohabitating, nonreproductive, and nonbinary people who are represented as political, religious, and sexual threats, the women accused as “witches” hundreds of years ago were scapegoated for a multitude of social crises related to public health, industry, and the fabric of ‘civilized’ society at large. The figures that are now remembered as “witches” Ehenreich and English (1973) show, have been further suppressed by the fact that their histories were “recorded, like all history, by the educated elite, so that today we know them only through the eyes of [their] persecutors” (p.  8). Through a shared word with the witch, it became possible to open space where I could recognize and engage the historical continuities between bodies and knowledges that are subjugated by contemporary pro-family discourses on the ‘natural’ family. Offering a ‘shared word’ with the figure of the witch, or any ghostly matter, is admittedly risky. Giving empirical validation to the fictive, the ghostly is constituted by the ‘errors’ to be banished from the “objective”

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and omniscient gaze of western male science and Cartesian dualisms. Thus, to listen to and follow ghosts subverts the basic rules of scientific knowledge production, making it difficult to be “the one whose ­writing/ not writing only came together as she came together with the object, with the reality of fictions and the unrealities of the facts…as those bloodless reified categories became animated through wonder and vexation” (Gordon, 2008, p. 22). Yet, the benefit of staging a shared word with the historical figure of the witch, as I came to appreciate, was that there is perhaps no one better suited to challenge pro-family universalizing claims about the ‘natural family’ than witches, as figures seen to embody knowledge that subverts heteropatriarchal, capitalist, and christonormative power. From the sixteenth century, certain women and their families became deemed dangerous in their “ungodliness” and were seen as direct threats to the power and authority of the Church and state. Witches were seen as a subset of a larger group of the undeserving and irredeemable poor, prone to criminal and anti-social acts and susceptible to knowledges deemed socially dangerous (Willis, 2013, p.  20). Growing emphasis on the threat that Satan posed to families through witchcraft served the purpose of “strengthen[ing] the Protestant project of making the individual household into an instrument of ideological reform” (p. 20). The sixteenth-century witch huntings in Europe are also related to the kidnapping of people from Africa and their enslavement in western Europe and North America. As Ramón Grosfoguel (2013) writes, while these two inherently epistemic genocides are rarely brought into conversation with one another, they are connected and inter-related to each other because of their roles in constituting the “modern/colonial world’s epistemic structures” that sought to universalize the knowledge of western men to the exclusion of all other knowledges (p. 77). In the case of the genocide/ epistemicide against Indo-European women accused of being witches, he writes: there were no books to burn because the transmission of knowledge was done from generation to generation through oral tradition. The “books” were the women’s bodies and, thus, similar to the Andalusian and Indigenous “books” their bodies were burned alive (p. 86).

Here, bodies and knowledges are brought into intimate proximity as certain women came to embody subversive forms of knowledge that threatened the Church and State’s mechanisms of social control. The

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kidnapping of Africans and their enslavement in the Americas was also “inherently epistemic,” although it took a different shape for Europe to economically benefit from the forced labour of African people. Generating insight into the affective dimensions of pro-family mobilisation, the recollection of The Witches in such a visceral way gave me pause for reflection on the significance of this disjuncture between the explicitly ‘wholesome’ messaging, performance, and packaging of pro-family discourse and the oppressive ambitions that inform pro-family efforts to erase and exclude those who do not conform to the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family institution. Dahl’s imagination enabled me to see the performance of respectability as a strategy used by the organization, and the pro-family movement, to make possible an ideology and discourse that is deeply violent. What The Witches made further apparent to me was that not only was the saccharine language about ‘the family’ used at the WCF employed to normalize and render rational their ultraconservative ideology and “red-hot sizzling hatred” (Dahl, 1983, p.  7) for feminists and sexual minorities, but that it also worked as an alibi to obscure underlying violence. The epistemicidal/genocidal historical trajectory of the event emerged as I waded into a deeper reflection of the affective effects of the knowledges that were circulating at the WCF IX. While such “profane” awareness can be frightening and disturbing, Gordon writes that it rests “on not being afraid” or turning away from “lost beloveds and the force[s] that made them disposable” (Gordon, 2008, p.  205). My engagement with witches as figures that made their presence known to me in ‘disturbing’ ways therefore emerged from “a necessity,” stirred by the witches, of “doing something” about the historical losses they conjure (pp. 205–206). Such ghostly matters are, as Gordon argues, constitutive elements of modern social life, making them important and necessary encounters that should be involved in the crafting of knowledge (p. 8). Such confrontations are productive, both requiring and producing “a fundamental change in the way we know and make knowledge” (p. 7). As scholars interested in describing and interpreting social reality, therefore, we must “learn to talk to and listen to our ghosts, rather than banish them, as the precondition for establishing our scientific or humanistic knowledge” (p. 23).

References Aguiar, L.  L., & Schneider, C.  J. (Eds.). (2016). Researching amongst elites: Challenges and opportunities in studying up. Routledge.

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Alcoff, L.  M. (2005). Visible identities: Race, gender and the self. Oxford University Press. Dahl, R. (2013 [1983]). The Witches. New York, NY: Puffin. Davies, C. A. (2008). Internet ethnography. In C. A. Davies (Ed.), Reflexive ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others (2nd ed., pp.  105–128). Routledge. Denzin, N. K. (2014). Interpretive autoethnography: Qualitative research methods (Vol. 7). Sage Publications. Ehenreich, B., & English, D. (1973). Witches, midwives and nurses: A history of women healers. Writers and Readers Publishing Corporation. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 32(4), 273–290. Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge. Fairclough, N., Mulderrig, J., & Wodak, R. (2011). Critical discourse analysis. In T.  A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 357–378). Sage Publications. Foucault, M. (1978 [1980]). History of sexuality (Vol. 1). Pantheon. Gatson, S. N. (2011). The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in online ethnography. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (4th ed., pp. 245–275). Sage Publications. Gordon, A. F. (2008). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. University of Minnesota Press. Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture, 11(1), 73–90. Haas, P.  M. (1990). Saving the Mediterranean: The politics of International Environmental Cooperation. Columbia University Press. Hine, C. (2008). Internet research as emergent practice. In S. N. Hesse-Biber & P. Leavy (Eds.), Handbook of emergent methods (pp. 525–542). Guilford Press. Howard, P. N. (2002). Network ethnography and the hypermedia organization: New media, new organizations, new methods. New Media & Society, 4(4), 550–574. Jiwani, Y., & Richardson, J. E. (2011). Discourse, ethnicity and racism. In T. A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 241–262). Sage Publications. Kaoma, K. (2009). Globalizing the culture wars: US conservatives, African churches, & homophobia. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from https:// www.politicalresearch.org/2009/12/01/globalizing-­the-­culture-­wars-­u-­s-­ conservatives-­african-­churches-­homophobia/.

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Kaoma, K. (2012). Colonizing African values: How the U.S.  Christian right is transforming sexual politics in Africa. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from http://www.politicalresearch.org/resources/reports/full-­reports/ colonizing-­african-­values/. Markham, A. (2005). The methods, politics, and ethics of representation in online ethnography. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative methods (3rd ed., pp. 793–820). Sage Publications. Mills, C. W. (2007). White ignorance. In R. N. Proctor & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance (pp. 230–249). Stanford University Press. Moya, P. M. L. (2011). Who we are and from where we speak. Transmodernity, Fall, 79–94. Outlaw, L. T. (2007). Social ordering and the systematic production of ignorance. In S.  Sullivan & N.  Tuana (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 197–211). SUNY Press. Paccagnella, L. (1997). Getting the seats of your pants dirty: Strategies for ethnographic research on virtual communities. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 3(1). Pascale, C. (2011). Epistemology and the politics of knowledge. The Sociological Review, 58(2), 154–165. Pascale, C. (2016). Discourses of the North Atlantic: Epistemology and hegemony. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(4), 219–227. Savage, M., & Williams, K. (2008). Elites: Remembered in capitalism and forgotten by social sciences. The Sociological Review, 56(1), 1–24. Scheyvens, R., Scheyvens, H., & Murray, W. E. (2014). Working with marginalized, vulnerable or privileged groups. In R. Scheyvens (Ed.), Development fieldwork: A practical guide (pp. 167–193). Sage. Steyn, M. (2012). The ignorance contract: Recollections of apartheid childhoods and the construction of epistemologies of ignorance. Identities, 19(1), 8–25. Steyn, M. (2015). Critical diversity literacy: Essentials for the twenty-first century In S. Vertovec (ed.), Routledge International Handbook of Diversity Studies. (pp. 379–389). Routledge. Tashman, B. (2014, March 12). Austin Ruse says left-wing university professors ‘should all be taken out and shot’. Right Wing Watch. Retrieved from https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/austin-­r use-­says-­left-­wing-­university-­ professors-­should-­all-­be-­taken-­out-­and-­shot/. Travers, M. (2009). New methods, old problems: A sceptical view of innovation in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 9(2), 161–179. Tuana, N. (2006). The speculum of ignorance: The women’s health movement and epistemologies of ignorance. Hypatia, 21(3), 1–19. Willis, D. (2013). The Witch-Family in Elizabethan and Jacobean Print Culture. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 13(1), 4–31.

CHAPTER 4

Campaigns Against Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Abstract  This chapter discusses the efforts of U.S. Christian Right pro-­ family groups to promote pro-life agendas against sexual and reproductive rights in African countries. Beginning with a brief overview of the historical development of the pro-life movement in the U.S., this chapter shows how the movement gained momentum and a broader support base by linking the issue of abortion to feminism and gay rights, framing these as related attacks on ‘family values’ and the future of the nation. The rising influence of the pro-life movement within U.S. foreign policy is discussed to show the wider contextual developments that have enabled Christian Right actors to gain influence and legitimacy in African countries. Three key advocacy activities undertaken by U.S. pro-life organizations in African countries are discussed: Intervening in regional and national policy developments relating to reproductive rights; mobilizing community opposition; and establishing crisis pregnancy centres. Keywords  Pro-life • Anti-abortion • Family values • Maputo protocol • Crisis pregnancy centers • Africa U.S.  Christian Right anti-abortion  advocacy  in African countries has received significantly less international attention than their anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning. Yet, as this chapter will discuss, the efforts of the U.S. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_4

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‘pro-life’ movement to restrict abortion access in African countries is a critical dimension of  U.S.  Christian Right efforts to mobilize  pro-­ family agendas across the continent. In most African countries, restrictions on access to abortion were legislated by colonial administrations. Similar to colonial-era  penal codes against homosexuality, restrictions on abortion were not removed after independence from colonial rule was achieved (Malvern & Macleod, 2018, p.  54). In the post-independence period, progress in reforming inherited abortion laws has been slow, particularly in relation to the liberalization of abortion laws  in the former colonial states. Although an increasing number of African countries have broadened the grounds upon which an abortion can legally be sought (beyond saving the life of the pregnant person to include rape, incest, and danger to the health or life of the foetus), “domestic law reforms in the African region have on the whole, not translated into tangible access to safe abortion services” (Ngwena, 2012, p.  199). In addition to unavailable or inaccessible services, there continues to be a lack of popular awareness about how to access the legal right to an abortion where these rights do exist (p. 199). Today, abortion remains widely viewed as morally and culturally transgressive in many African countries. Amidst the severe restrictions on abortion that exist in most African countries, researchers have documented the high levels of unsafe, illegal abortions that are sought each year (Cleeve et al., 2017). In relation to global statistics on abortion, the region of sub-­ Saharan Africa disproportionately represents the total number of unsafe abortions sought worldwide. As reported by Ganatra et  al. (2014), between 2010 and 2014, 77% of abortions performed in sub-Saharan Africa were unsafe, a figure that towers the 45% of unsafe abortions performed globally. Even in the few countries where abortion can be legally sought for restricted reasons, unsafe abortion remains common due to lack of access to medical facilities and the stigma and shaming that abortion-­seekers encounter within medical establishments when they are accessed (see, for instance, Oduro & Otsin, 2014; Hodes, 2016). As reported by the Guttmacher Institute (2020), “As of 2019, some 6.2 million unsafe abortions occur in the region per year”, making Sub-Saharan Africa the region with the highest rate of abortion-related deaths in the world (at 185 maternal deaths per 100,000 abortions). The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (or the ‘Maputo Protocol’) that was signed by forty-nine African  countries in 2003 has been widely celebrated as a

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measure to strengthen access to sexual and reproductive health rights in the region. Yet, despite its “capacity to effect a paradigm shift in the regulation of abortion by supplanting the historical crime and punishment model with a reproductive health model” that prioritizes health and human rights, “its abortion provisions have remained largely unoperationalized, even in ratifying countries” (Ngwena, 2012, p. 200). Contrary to claims made by U.S. pro-family activists and organizations, the Protocol does not compel states to legalize abortion but declares that women should have health and reproductive rights, including the “right to control their fertility,” “the right to decide whether to have children,” and “the right to choose any method of contraception” (Article XIV). As will be discussed in this chapter, the Maputo Protocol and efforts to promote reproductive rights in some countries as part of broader sustainable development initiatives have become key reference points amongst U.S.  Christian Right groups working to mobilize pro-life campaigns at community, national, and regional levels in Africa. Before elaborating on specific U.S. pro-family campaigns against abortion in African countries, it is important to briefly outline the history of the U.S. ‘pro-life’ movement and its transformations and successes over several decades at domestic and international levels. This history provides critical insights not only into the pro-life movement, but also into contemporary U.S.  Christian Right ‘pro-family’ advocacy against LGBTIQ+ rights and Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in Africa and globally.

The U.S. Pro-Life Movement: A Brief Overview To say that the issue of abortion is one of the most polarizing topics in U.S. culture and politics is a point that needs no reference. Prevailing taboos about discussing the “A-word” amongst family, colleagues, peers, and even close friends reflect the combustibility of the issue of abortion in American society. While the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision may have led many pro-choicers to believe that the legalization of abortion was an irreversible victory, those who opposed the ruling did not see the decision as final. Rather, for conservative activists, the decision confirmed that American morality and family values were in rapid decline, igniting and intensifying pro-life organizing. Nearly half a century later, the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade in which the Supreme Court devolved the decision about whether or not abortion could be legal to state

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legislatures reflects the unwillingness of the pro-life movement to accept their decades-old defeat or waver in their commitment to outlawing abortion. The 2022 victory of the pro-life movement with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling, which astounded many in the U.S. and internationally, marks an important lesson not only for reproductive justice organizing, but for all civil rights advocacy. While legislative achievements may be cause for celebration for those struggling to gain equal rights and bodily autonomy, laws are not irreversible, and those seeking to oppose these rights do not view courtroom defeats as the end of the road for their advocacy. From a historical perspective, it is clear that while the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision  may have activated and intensified pro-life advocacy, it was not the birthplace of the pro-life movement. The movement, as Daniel Williams (2016) recounts in Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade, has a longue durée that needs to be considered when attempting to understand how the movement developed, how it changed, and how it became the social and political force that it is today. While the contemporary pro-life movement is widely associated with U.S.  Christian Right politics, those who opposed abortion were not always associated with conservative political platforms or what has today become the ‘family values’ movement. As Williams tells, opposition against abortion in the U.S. can be traced to the 1930s, and was first led by Catholic Democrats who were committed to New Deal Liberalism and the ideals of a living wage and worker’s rights, and “believed that the principle of human dignity should be the foundation for government social policy—that both the government and the Church had a responsibility to care for the less fortunate, and that the law should respect human life” (Williams, 2016, p. 4). After World War II, “Catholics began articulating their concern for fetal life in the language of both ‘inalienable’ human rights and constitutional rights, broadening the scope of their appeal far beyond the walls of Catholic churches,” winning over many Catholic liberals, some left-leaning anti-war activists, civil rights advocates, and African American Democrats by the late 1960s (p. 5). Thus, rather than grounding their campaign only in the Church’s national law theology, the Catholics who launched the pro-life movement based their arguments on twentieth-century American liberal values of individual rights, legal protections for minorities, and societal recognition of human dignity. It was their uptake of human rights-based, rather than strictly theological arguments, that ultimately enabled what had started as a small Catholic

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movement to attract and grow a broad coalition of Christian activists who rallied against the legalization of abortion (p. 5). As this approach gained widespread appeal, it was increasingly challenged by women’s rights activists, who were also using rights-based liberal arguments that related abortion to the issues of personal autonomy and gender equality. While those advocating for the legalization of abortion had previously grounded their arguments in public health and societal betterment, these arguments transformed into calls for the recognition of abortion as women’s fundamental right to have control over their bodies and reproduction (p. 7). By the 1970s, the term ‘pro-choice’ was being used by activists promoting the legalization of abortion to advocate for abortion as part of the women’s rights movement, creating a deep-seated conflict about who liberal rights applied to—foetuses or the pregnant bodies who carried them. The ideological polarization that emerged during this period remains central to pro-life and pro-choice disagreements about abortion in the U.S. today. It was with the formation of the family values movement in the 1970s and 1980s that the pro-live movement became increasingly led by evangelical protestants who connected the issue of abortion with homosexuality and feminism. Within family value narratives that exclusively defined the ‘traditional family’ as that with two heterosexual parents in which the husband was the head and primary breadwinner and the wife was a stay-­ at-­home mother,  that feminism, abortion, and gay rights became constructed as interrelated threats to the value of motherhood and the family. As Seth Dowland (2009) writes in “Family Values” and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda, “the genius of the movement was to frame opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights as ‘defense of the family’” (p. 609). In their claims that the institution of the ‘traditional family’ was instrumental to America’s success and required the country to “return to original greatness,” this rhetoric operated as a unifying narrative that was broad enough to accommodate diverse theological orientations and political commitments, yet specific enough to provide a shared vision for leaders, activists, and broader conservative publics (p.  609). Thus, it was through the narrative of ‘family values’ that the Christian Right constructed liberal reformers as enemies of the family and nation and mobilized around the narrative that opposing abortion, feminism, and gay rights “would benefit all Americans” (p. 609).

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Pro-Life Foreign Policy As discussed in Chap. 1, evangelical protestants became increasingly politicized in domestic U.S. political affairs in the second half of the twentieth century. By the 1990s, pro-life groups and U.S. evangelicals had grown into a significant political force with ambitions to expand their influence beyond U.S. borders. As Asteris Huliaras writes in The Evangelical Roots of US Africa Policy, several factors contributed to the interests and abilities of U.S. evangelicals to influence foreign affairs: First, surging numbers of U.S. missionaries in the ‘third world’ and the growing industry of evangelical missions in Africa led to a growing awareness amongst evangelical missionaries about the poverty and oppression they encountered in these contexts, as well as the persecution of Christians in countries such as Sudan and Myanmar (Huliaras, 2008, pp.  162–163); second, the events of September 11th  2001 significantly changed evangelical perspectives on the relevance of foreign affairs. According to Huliaras, prior to 2001, fewer than 2% of evangelicals considered foreign policy as ‘the most important issue’ faced by the U.S.  After 2001, however, approximately one third of evangelical Christians named foreign policy as “the most important issue on the country’s agenda” (Huliaras, 2008, p. 163). With America “at war,” not only to pursue revenge for attacks on its political and financial institutions, but in “a war of ideals” fuelled by the desire to become a “‘moral leader’ and ‘force of good’ in global politics,” evangelicals saw an important role for themselves within U.S. efforts to promote democracy and freedom internationally (Huliaras, 2008, p. 163). Finally, structural changes brought about by advances in telecommunications amongst evangelicals and other Americans became significant channels through which U.S. evangelical messages were being delivered around the world (Huliaras, 2008, p. 165). George W. Bush’s decision to significantly increase U.S. aid to Africa in the early 2000s has been seen by many as being, in part, a result of the influence of U.S. evangelicals and their lobby groups (Huliaras, 2008, pp.  164–165). At the time, U.S. federal aid to Africa was stagnating, largely due to economic analyses indicating that foreign aid to Sub-Saharan Africa had been ineffective at best and quite possibly harmful (Bendavid, 2016, p. 3). Thus, the announcement of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, which would dedicate unprecedented amounts of funding to combating HIV and AIDS in the region, went against the grain of dominant notions at the time that “foreign aid was not

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the way to help poor countries escape poverty” (Bendavid, 2016, p. 3). As researchers who have studied the role of Christian Right groups within U.S. foreign policy tell, however, it was at this time that evangelicals began to play a significant role in influencing foreign aid policy (Crane, 1994; Martin, 1999; Buss & Herman, 2003; Williams, 2016), and these groups had a keen interest in motivating for the increase in U.S. foreign aid to the region for reasons noted above. PEPFAR, which was distinct from other aid targeting economic development, has been frequently highlighted as a key site where U.S. evangelicals, and pro-life activists more specifically, exerted their influence within U.S. foreign policy. On one hand, PEPFAR is widely recognized as an enormously impactful program in terms of the amount of foreign aid it committed to combating HIV and AIDS (PEPFAR remains unprecedented in terms of the resources it committed to combating a global health crises and became the largest financial commitment by any single nation to combat any disease in history), its ambition (to reach millions of people by working with partners in host nations across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean and to train hundreds of thousands of new healthcare workers in HIV prevention, treatment, and care), and its achievements, with current reports showing that 25 million lives have been saved since the program’s inception (hiv.gov, 2023). Yet, PEPFAR programming has been widely critiqued for its ideological approach to combating HIV and AIDS (Huliaras, 2008, p.  166). While PEPFAR has upscaled the availability of Anti-Retroviral Treatment at a massive scale in its partner countries, it has also downplayed the importance of condoms and safe sex education for preventing the spread of HIV. Under pressure from evangelical lobby groups, the U.S. administration introduced a three-pronged strategy for HIV prevention: promoting abstinence, monogamy, and, the use of condoms only under certain limited circumstances (Huliaras, 2008, p. 166). PEPFAR prioritized faith-­ based partnerships with organizations that maintained abstinence-only approaches to sexual and reproductive health and required that a third of the budget for prevention programming (which itself constituted half of the overall PEPFAR budget) be dedicated to abstinence-only education (Lo et al., 2016, p. 857). The program also included measures to exclude organizations that provided counselling or information about legal abortion from receiving funding. Only organizations that were exclusively receiving PEPFAR funding were able to provide abortion counselling or services, while those who only received some of their funding from

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PEPFAR were prohibited from performing abortions, advocating for liberalized abortion policies, or even providing information or counselling on abortion procedures. The Mexico City Policy, or the global ‘Gag Rule’ prohibiting organizations that receive U.S. federal funding from providing abortion services, or even conveying information about abortion, institutionalized the Christian Right’s ‘pro-life’ agenda at a global scale. Additional PEPFAR conditions prohibited needle exchange programs, banned family planning services in Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Clinics, required grantees to sign an anti-prostitution loyalty pledge (even if they served sex workers), and allowed broad refusal clauses that could permit grantees to refuse service to anyone based on moral objections (Joyce, 2010, p. 6). While the global gag rule has been rescinded (with each Democratic president) and reinstated (with each Republican president) since it was originally declared by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the Christian Right’s international connections have become so deeply entrenched over a period of several decades that they now “wield a kind of soft power that neither a Republican nor a Democratic president could ignore” (Huliaras, 2008, p. 175). These provisions have been widely criticized by international organizations, medical and public-health scholars, and human rights activists as undermining the effectiveness of the PEPFAR program. The program has been criticized for dedicating extensive funding to abstinence approaches to HIV and AIDS prevention that are not proven to be effective measures to reduce transmission  and which resulted in the allocation of funding away from interventions with a more established evidence base for HIV prevention  and towards faith-based service providers  (Lo et  al. 2016, p. 857). According to the co-founder and executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, Paul Zeitz, this funding framework was designed to benefit conservative faith-based initiatives  (Joyce, 2010, p. 5), and in the early years of the program the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for HIV/ AIDS in Africa argued that PEPFAR’s emphasis on abstinence contributed to a shortage of condoms in some African countries (Huliaras, 2008, p. 166). One year into the implementation of PEPFAR, President Bush launched the New Partners Initiative, which enabled inexperienced faithbased groups to gain access to PEPFAR funding to promote abstinenceonly approaches in Africa. As the founder and former executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equality, Jodi Jacobson told, “The new partners, many of whom had never stepped foot in Africa, were suddenly

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getting millions of dollars to go there. As far as we were concerned, it was a slush fund for the far right” (Joyce, 2010, p. 6). At the time of writing this book, PEPFAR is currently undergoing its fourth reauthorization, and the efforts of U.S. Christian Right groups to influence this process remain poignant. In May 2023, thirty-one U.S.based pro-life activists sent a joint letter to Congress claiming that PEPFAR funding is being used to promote abortion and a “radical sexual” agenda in recipient countries, claiming that “grants from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are used by nongovernmental organizations that promote abortions and push a radical gender ideology abroad” (PEPFAR coalition letter, 2023). The signatories of the letter, which is now hosted on the Center for Family Human Rights website, urge Congress to “ensure that any reauthorization of PEPFAR ensures that taxpayer money is not used for such purposes” (PEPFAR coalition letter, 2023). A few weeks after this letter was sent to Congress by U.S.  Christian Right groups, a similar joint letter was addressed to Congress and the Senate and signed by one hundred and thirty individuals from fourteen African countries, stating their “concerns and suspicions” about new PEPFAR funding. The letter stated the signatory’s gratitude “that the original strategy respected our values and focused PEPFAR on protecting and preserving life and emphasized abstinence” yet expressed “concerns and suspicions that this funding is supporting so-called family planning and reproductive health principles and practices, including abortion, that violate our core beliefs concerning life, family, and religion” (PEPFAR and Africa’s Vales [sic], 2023). The letter, which is also hosted on the C-FAM website, specifically addressed the partner organizations who implement PEPFAR programs, asking that these organizations implement the funding in ways that do “not cross over into promoting divisive ideas and practices that are not consistent with those of Africa” and asking that “our voices be heard and acknowledged and our beliefs safeguarded in future PEPFAR programming” (PEPFAR and Africa’s Vales [sic], 2023).

U.S. Pro-Life Advocacy in Africa As Kapya Kaoma reported in 2012, abortion has become a target of Christian Right activism in several African countries even though the practice is heavily restricted, if not outlawed completely, and a significant majority of the population believes that abortion is immoral (Kaoma,

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2012, p. vii). In his reporting, Kaoma shows that the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) and Human Life International (HLI) have been at the forefront of pro-life campaigning in African countries. He reports on the 2010 constitutional reform battle in Kenya, in which the ACLJ’s East African Office (the East African Centre for Law and Justice - EACLJ) succeeded in inserting “culture war” language to erase any potential for furthering LGBTIQ+ rights or reproductive rights. As the country headed towards its national elections in 2012, the EACLJ was working with conservative professional networks and organizations, Christian universities, religious bodies and churches, members of parliament, media, and lawyers to promote anti-choice and anti-gay politicians (Kaoma, 2012, pp. 9–10). At the time of his research, Kaoma further reported that the conservative Catholic organization Human Life International (HLI) was spending approximately one quarter of its overseas budget in sub-Saharan Africa and had affiliates in thirty-seven African countries. HLI is a Roman Catholic organization founded by Paul Marx, an American-born Roman Catholic priest who became a family sociologist and leader of the pro-life movement. HLI grew out of Marx’s previously established pro-life organization, Human Life Center, and its mission has been to train and organize pro-life leaders, crisis pregnancy centres, broadcasters, and counsellors. Since its establishment in 1981, HLI has become one of the largest anti-­ abortion organizations in the U.S. and globally. Similar to their anti-abortion advocacy in Latin America and the Caribbean (Albaladejo, 2017), HLI has been campaigning to “defend African family values and campaign against the culture of death manifested in homosexuality and abortion against contraception,” echoing anti-­ LGBTIQ+ campaign tactics by claiming that birth control is a western import and population control agenda (Kaoma, 2012, p. 14). At the time of his reporting, Kaoma says that the U.S.  Christian Right had not yet been successful in portraying abortion and contraception as part of a western population crisis ‘hoax’ yet acknowledged the danger of these narratives for the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights (Kaoma, 2012, p. 17). In recent years, U.S.-based Christian Right groups have continued to further develop and disseminate these arguments against abortion and access to contraception. One of these strategies has been to attack the Maputo Protocol, claiming that it is a radical western sexual rights agenda. An additional strategy has been to accuse sexual and reproductive health and rights policy proposals of being contemporary population control

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agendas. Both strategies invoke anti-colonial frames to fuel suspicion about policies and organizations that support access to contraception and abortion and to disparage politicians who have supported initiatives to expand abortion access. The Maputo Protocol The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, or ‘Maputo Protocol’ has become a target of U.S. pro-life activists working to grow anti-abortion campaigns in the region. The Charter, which includes a wide spectrum of aims to ensure that women in all African countries have equal rights and opportunities, was signed by forty-nine African countries in 2003 and ratified by forty-­ three countries by the time it came into force in 2005 (African Union, 2003). Amongst the objectives of the Maputo Protocol are articles that speak to the elimination of discrimination against women, ensuring the right to dignity for all women, prohibiting violence against women, ensuring that women have health and reproductive rights, and guaranteeing that women have equal economic and political opportunities. The Protocol has been widely praised by African and international civil society organizations for its innovative provisions. The African Union’s Women, Gender and Development Directorate (2016) has celebrated the Maputo Protocol as “one of the most progressive legal instruments providing a comprehensive set of human rights for African women. Unlike any other women’s human rights instrument, it details wide-ranging and substantive human rights for women covering the entire spectrum of civil and political, economic, social and cultural as well as environmental rights” (para 1). While research has found that the protocol has been unevenly implemented across countries in the region (Ayeni, 2016), it has been recognized as an instrument that can be used as a basis for legal action to support and strengthen the rights of women and girls (see, for instance, Secretariat of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition, n.d.). U.S. Christian Right groups, however, have targeted the Maputo Protocol as a policy instrument, claiming it was designed to promote western liberal values in African countries. HLI, for instance, has called the Protocol “insidious” and says it will bring a “wholesale radical feminist transformation of African society and the destruction of traditional cultures.” In their report, Maputo Protocol: Clear and Present Danger, HLI (2011) argues that the Maputo Protocol

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is “a part of the decades-long campaign by Western elites to reduce the number of black Africans.” Within this “campaign,” HLI argues, “The traditional family of breadwinning father and homemaking mother is to be replaced with a genderless utopia.” The report further argues that the Maputo Protocol “calls for the legalization of what would be in effect abortion-on-demand in Africa” and “mandates a totalitarian program to brainwash Africans into radical feminist ways of thinking.” Family Watch International has also attacked the Maputo Protocol as part of its pro-family campaigning in the region. In 2019, FWI published a policy brief on the Maputo Protocol, which it calls “an assault on the African family and unborn children” (Family Watch International, 2019). Claiming that the Maputo Protocol “will contribute to the continued breakdown of the traditional family resulting in myriad negative consequences to men, women and children throughout Africa” FWI considers the Maputo Protocol to be a key instrument of the “radical feminist agenda being promoted by the West.” The International Planned Parenthood Federation and the International Commission of Jurists are specifically targeted in the document, accused of promoting “radical sexual rights that run counter to African culture.” In favour of restricting access to abortion to the greatest possible extent, FWI uses this argument to create fear about the Maputo Protocol’s assertion that states should take all appropriate measures to “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorizing medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus.” According to FWI, the requirements in this section of the Protocol “translates to abortion on demand for any reason at any time during a pregnancy as any mother who wants to abort her baby can claim that continuing with the pregnancy will cause her mental distress.” The notion that abortion, even if legalized, would be sought ‘on demand’ has been a common refrain of the pro-life movement in the U.S., and its use in African contexts is an affront to the rights of victims of sexual abuse and other forms of situational violence that results in unintended pregnancy. Such an argument further neglects the potential benefits of safe sex education, and the provision of better sexual health services, opting rather to advance rhetoric that criminalizes rather than supports vulnerable populations who, as statistics already show, are seeking abortion whether it is legal, illegal, safe, or unsafe. The entanglement of FWI’s stance against abortion with their anti-­ LGBTIQ+ politics becomes evident in the Policy Brief’s critique of the

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Maputo Protocol’s article that calls for the condemnation and elimination of “any distinction, exclusion or restriction or any differential treatment based on sex and whose objectives or effects compromise or destroy the recognition, enjoyment or the exercise by women, regardless of their marital status, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all spheres of life.” According to FWI, this article is “a sneaky way to lay the foundation for legalizing same-sex marriage”, and that the provision regarding the elimination of legal distinction between men and women “opens the door to same-sex marriage and adoption and would subject women to military and combat duties as equals with men, among other things.” This claim by FWI speaks to the underlying anti-rights ideology that informs pro-­ family efforts to reinforce the notion that sex and gender-based inequalities are logical and ‘common sense’. International Conference on Population and Development In addition to targeting the Maputo Protocol, pro-family groups have also campaigned against United Nations platforms, including the International Conference on Population and Development (ICDP). The 2019 ‘Nairobi Summit’, a commemorative conference marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ICDP, attracted the ire of African pro-family actors who were vocal about their criticisms of the sexual and reproductive rights aspects of ICPD goals and programmes. The Association for Catholic Information in Africa summarized the population narratives deployed against sexual and reproductive rights, reporting: Driven by the agenda to control population growth in Africa framed as ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights,’ the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) has been described as a ploy by some global entities to create the perception that Africans are poor and that curtailing population growth will improve things on the continent (Kahiu, 2019).

Ann Kioko, CitizenGo campaign director for Africa, has been actively campaigning in the region against sexual and reproductive rights, education, and LGBTIQ+ rights. While CitizenGo is not a U.S. Christian Right organization, it works closely with U.S. Christian Right groups such as the World Congress of Families and Family Watch International and has become a leading online platform for pro-family campaigning. CitizenGO describes itself as an online community that aims to “promote life, family,

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and liberty,” and has become a central online outlet where U.S. Christian right actors, ultraconservative European Catholics, and Russian orthodox activists work together against reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights around the world. CitizenGO declares itself a network of citizens “stopping radical lobbies from imposing their agenda on society,” and it advocates for severe restrictions on abortion through the proliferation of extreme rhetoric. For instance, it claims that “tens of millions of children are slaughtered in the womb each year.” In Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and other African countries, there is evidence that CitizenGO is exporting its model of petitions, online and offline campaigns against reproductive rights and LGBTIQ+ rights. Kioko took a leading role in the campaign against the Nairobi Summit, arguing that “we are given money with attachments…If you’re given some money, you’re told you have to legalize abortion, you have to legalise homosexuality, you have to legalise or start offering a curriculum like comprehensive sexuality education in your country” (Kahiu, 2019). Within this narrative, abortion, homosexuality, and comprehensive sexuality education are packaged in the familiar rhetoric of the U.S. Christian Right family values agenda. Yet, in addition to this familiar packaging, this narrative invokes the anti-colonial frame employed by anti-gender groups elsewhere that abortion, contraception, and reproductive rights undermine a nation’s capacity for self-reproduction, self-determination, and sovereignty. Mobilizing Community Opposition In addition to targeting regional and global policy frameworks and structures, pro-family groups have been building infrastructure at country levels to foster community-level opposition against abortion. In Kenya, for instance, efforts to create legislative guidelines to protect and advance reproductive rights have become sites of intense and ongoing mobilization by conservative groups who have used disinformation to stoke controversy and foreclose factual conversations about reproductive health needs. The Reproductive Healthcare Bill, which was first tabled in 2014, set out several guidelines that would improve access to reproductive health services. These included the provision of adolescent-friendly reproductive health and sexual health services, information and education (such as confidential, non-judgmental, and affordable health services to adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17), requiring healthcare providers to explain

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the advantages and disadvantages of contraceptives to ensure informed consent of clients, mandatory free antenatal and delivery services at every public hospital, and prohibitions against the denial of emergency medical treatment (Akimala, 2015). Notably, the bill did not aim to change existing regulations around abortion, and its provisions were consistent with the existing constitutional regulation of abortion, permitting abortion only in cases where abortion was required as emergency treatment, in cases where the life or health of the pregnant woman is at risk, or in cases of an unviable foetus. Rather, the bill set out guidelines for healthcare providers around performing abortion in these cases and stated that healthcare providers with a conscientious objection to performing abortion, in nonemergency cases, should refer a pregnant woman to another healthcare provider willing to perform the procedure. Yet, religious groups labelled the legislation an ‘abortion bill’. According to Stephanie Musho, a human rights lawyer with expertise in gender and reproductive justice, “religious groups, mostly led by the Catholic Church” were “making it look like a woman will be able to walk in, freely, into a public health care facility and ask for an abortion,” and that the bill “is going to increase promiscuity among the youth.” A claim she states “couldn’t be further from the truth,” with existing data showing that sexual activity among Kenyan youth is already high. She further emphasizes that “It’s very important that those teenagers have the correct information and that they have access to services so that they can make informed decisions and can protect their futures. We need to keep our girls in school” (Jerving, 2020). The bill failed to pass in 2015, and again in 2019, due to “lack of public awareness and political will, and misinformation by well-organised and coordinated opposition groups” according to researchers at the African Population and Health Research Center (Ajayi & Mwoka, 2020). According to the researchers, various factors made it possible for local and foreign opposition groups to circulate disinformation about the proposed legislation: low public awareness about the scientific basis of the bill, lack of awareness of the prevalence of unsafe abortion and maternal death, and oversight in terms of making a persuasive public case about why access to quality and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information and services was important. In 2020, the Kenyan senate reconsidered a new version of the original bill, which placed greater emphasis on abstinence, and included the need for adolescents to obtain parental consent if they wanted to seek reproductive health services. Once again, conservative groups mobilized

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disinformation campaigns against the proposal, attacking Kenyan politicians who advocated for the bill and reproductive rights more broadly. In addition to observations made by civil society groups that foreign conservatives were working with in-country partners to mobilize opposition against the legislation, Odanga Madung of the Mozilla Foundation (a tech research organization that advocates for fair and trustworthy use of the internet) found that CitizenGO used Twitter to manipulate online conversations around the legislation, providing individuals with “money, content, and instructions” about what to tweet and when (Madung et  al., 2022, p. 5). The Mozilla Foundation investigation found that “thousands of the problematic tweets repeated identical hashtags, phrases, and memes came from accounts that tweeted nothing but the hashtags and were carefully synchronized for certain times of day” (p. 5). The disinformation influencers who were interviewed revealed that they and others were paid between $10 and $15 per campaign by individuals on behalf of CitizenGO. WhatApp groups named and branded as CitizenGo were found to be the command centre of the campaign where “instructions and media packs were shared with influencers” and where these individuals would report back as to the progress of their campaign (p.  11). Overall, the Mozilla investigation found that the campaigns used several accounts to tweet predetermined hashtags to manipulate Twitter’s ‘trending’ algorithm. Through these campaigns, anti-choice sentiment and attacks on politicians and activists advocating for gender rights were promoted inauthentically, using cartoon caricatures and memes echoing messaging frequently used by U.S. and European right-wing groups. These caricatures and memes depicted Kenyan anti-abortion activists, such as Ann Kioko, as being under attack by western donors, while politicians advocating for the bill, such as Esther Passaris, were portrayed as evil perpetrators seeking to manipulate the lives of unborn Kenyan children. In addition to  their Twitter campaigning, CitizenGO also led online petitions to target activists that supported the  proposed legislation, LGBTQ rights, and comprehensive sexuality education. According to Martin Onyango, associate director for legal strategies for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the claims circulated by CitizenGo and other pro-family activists were “disinformation…and very outrageous misinformation based on no facts,” pointing to claims that abortion is murder and that Kenyan sexual health education was designed to encourage children to be sexually promiscuous. This disinformation

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campaigning, he tells, ultimately incited  “emotions that trigger stigma, hate and dislike for reproductive health in the region” (Jackson et  al., 2022, September 25). He continued, saying that those who campaigned against the legislation are “clear on what they want to do: get people to hate the subject, and basically then find a fertile ground to stretch the stigma and spread the dislike,” adding that “intimidation of public officials has been a key tactic CitizenGO has used—and intimidation comes in the form of doing public petitions.” While CitizenGo was a highly visible opponent of the Reproductive Health Bill, several other Kenyan and international Christian Right groups were involved in challenging the proposed legislation. The World Youth Alliance, an international pro-family youth advocacy group that campaigns across countries and at the United Nations, documented their role in opposing the bill. In 2020, a WYA Headquarters Online intern from Kenya reported, “myself and other WYA Africa members…[spoke] to Kenyan senators against this bill that went against our very essence of being. Making numerous calls and presentations to all 47 senators; we were determined to make our voices heard. The good news is that WYA Africa’s efforts paid off and the bill was withdrawn. The Ministry of Health asked for the bill to be withdrawn for further talks” (Ogwel, 2021). Crisis Pregnancy Centres In addition to working at policy levels within African countries, Christian Right organizations are developing pro-life infrastructure in the form of facilities called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ (CPCs) in several countries across the region. Heartbeat International, a U.S.-based anti-abortion association  operating the largest network of CPCs in the world with over two thousand affiliates in fifty countries, has also been leading the effort to establish and support ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ in several African countries. While the name ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ would lead one to expect that various forms of treatment and care would be available at these facilities, their purpose is to deter people from seeking an abortion or contraception, providing little to no actual healthcare services. As Bryant and Swartz (2018) discuss, CPCs “strive to give the impression that they are clinical centers, offering legitimate medical services and advice, yet they are exempt from regulatory, licensure, and credentialing oversight that apply to health care facilities” (Bryant & Swartz, 2018, p.  269). Furthermore, the religious ideology of CPC owners and employees is

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prioritized over the health and wellbeing of the women seeking care at these facilities. Far from providing clients with comprehensive, accurate, and evidence-based clinical information about their options, CPCs actively mislead women who may be seeking an abortion and refuse to provide referrals to abortion clinics. Rather, they provide “counselling” to women about the “dangers associated with premarital sexual activity” and offer resources such as maternity clothes, diapers, and parenting classes. For these reasons, the authors argue that while CPCs may be legal, they are not ethical (p. 270). According to the database on their website, Heartbeat International has one hundred and seventy four affiliate crisis pregnancy centres across southern Africa. It also has two partner organizations in Africa: the Pregnancy Help Network in South Africa and the Association for Life of Africa (AFLA), an anti-abortion organization based in Zambia, which has centres in twenty-one African countries and “over 300 affiliates across the Continent of Africa.” Similar to CPCs in the U.S.,  the AFLA website tells: AFLA does not promote abortion or abortifacients. AFLA does not promote birth control (devices or medications) for family planning, population control, or health issues, including disease prevention. AFLA does promote God’s Plan for our sexuality: marriage between one man and one woman, sexual intimacy, children, unconditional/unselfish love, and relationship with God must go together (Association for Life Africa, n.d.).

Through these organizational affiliations and partnerships, Heartbeat International and its affiliates and partners are building misleading sexual and reproductive health infrastructure in contexts where sexual and reproductive healthcare services are already limited.

Conclusion At the time of his investigations in the mid-2010s, Kapya Kaoma found that in addition to their efforts to expand existing colonial-era laws against “carnal knowledge,” U.S.  Christian Right groups were also working to support more regressive action against abortion, even though it is largely already highly restricted or illegal in most countries. At the time, he found, although abortion may be sought out through means that are not legal or medically safe, abortion had remained widely accepted as a personal

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matter even when viewed as morally wrong. For these reasons, he observed, the Christian Right has thus far not secured a foothold in further undermining reproductive rights. Just over a decade later, however, U.S.  Christian Right groups have continued to mobilize against abortion access and are working to instil a ‘pro-life’ ethos through various multilevel strategies targeting communities, national parliaments, and regional bodies. These efforts have prevented the creation of official national guidelines to deepen sexual and reproductive rights, generated suspicions about sexual and reproductive rights as neoimperialist population control agendas, and informed the rejection of efforts to provide young people with life-saving information about sexual health in favour of abstinence-only approaches to sexual health education. Furthermore, in linking abortion and homosexuality, pro-family actors are not only constituting reproductive rights and LGBTIQ+ rights as existential threats to African societies and futures but are reproducing tried-and-tested strategies for growing a diverse yet cohesive pro-family movement.

References African Union. (2003). Protocol to the African Charter on human and people’s rights on the rights of women in Africa. African Union. Retrieved from https:// au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/37077-­t reaty-­c harter_on_rights_of_ women_in_africa.pdf. Ajayi, A. I., & Mwoka, M. (2020, July 12). Kenya is having another go at passing a reproductive rights bill. What’s at stake. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/kenya-­is-­having-­another-­go-­at-­passing-­a-­ reproductive-­rights-­bill-­whats-­at-­stake-­142387. Akimala, H. (2015, July 3). Kenya: Senate to debate reproductive health care bill. Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung. Retrieved from https://www.dsw.org/ en/2015/07/kenya-­senate-­to-­debate-­reproductive-­health-­care-­bill/. Albaladejo, A. (2017, October 26). US groups pour millions into anti-abortion campaign in Latin America and Caribbean. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global-­d evelopment/2017/oct/26/ us-­g roups-­p our-­m illions-­i nto-­a nti-­a bortion-­c ampaign-­i n-­l atin-­a merica-­ and-­caribbean. Association for Life Africa. (n.d.). About us. Retrieved from https://www.afla.org. zm/about.php. Ayeni, V. O. (2016). Introduction. In V. O. Ayeni (Ed.), The impact of the African Charter and the Maputo Protocol in selected African states (pp. 1–16). Pretoria University Law Press.

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Bearak, J., Popinchalk, A., Ganatra, B., Moller, A.  B., Tunçalp, Ö., Beavin, C., et al. (2020). Unintended pregnancy and abortion by income, region, and the legal status of abortion: Estimates from a comprehensive model for 1990–2019. The Lancet Global Health, 8(9), e1152–e1161. Bendavid, E. (2016). Past and future performance: PEPFAR in the landscape of foreign aid for health. Current HIV/AIDS Reports, 13(5), 256–262. Bryant, A. G., & Swartz, J. J. (2018). Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers are legal but unethical. AMA Journal of Ethics, 20(3), 269–277. Buss, D., & Herman, D. (2003). Globalizing family values: The Christian Right in international perspective. University of Minnesota Press. Cleeve, A., Faxelid, E., Nalwadda, G., & Klingberg-Allvin, M. (2017). Abortion as agentive action: Reproductive agency among young women seeking post-­ abortion care in Uganda. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 19(11), 1286–1300. Crane, B.  B. (1994). The transnational politics of abortion. Population and Development Review, 20, 241–262. Dowland, S. (2009). “Family values” and the formation of a Christian right agenda. Church History, 78(3), 606–631. Family Watch International. (2019). The Maputo Protocol: Family Policy Brief. Retrieved from https://familywatch.org/wp-­content/uploads/sites/5/2019/ 10/The_Maputo_Protocol_updated_10-­21-­19.pdf. Ganatra, B., Tuncalp, O., Johnston, H. B., Johnson, B. R., Jr., Gulmezoglu, A. M., & Temmerman, M. (2014). From concept to measurement: Operationalizing WHO’s definition of unsafe abortion. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 92, 155–155. Guttmacher Institute. (2020). Abortion in Sub-Saharan Africa. https://www. guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/abortion-subsaharan-africa#. HIV.gov. (2023, March 2). What is PEPFAR? Retrieved from https://www.hiv. gov/federal-­response/pepfar-­global-­aids/pepfar/. Hodes, R. (2016). The culture of illegal abortion in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 42(1), 79–93. Huliaras, A. (2008). The evangelical roots of US Africa policy. Survival, 50(6), 161–182. Human Life International. (2011). Maputo Protocol: A clear and present danger. Retrieved from https://maputoprotocol.com/about-­the-­protocol. Jackson, J., McIntyre, N., Khan, M., Roussi, A., & Kove-Seyram, S. (2022, September 25). Unholy alliance: The far-right religious network attacking reproductive and LGBTIQ+ rights. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved from https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-­09-­25/ unholy-­alliance-­the-­far-­right-­religious-­network-­attacking-­reproductive-­and-­ lgbtq-­rights.

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Jerving, S. (2020, September 22). Q&A: Kenya’s second go at a reproductive health bill. Devex. Retrieved from https://www.devex.com/news/q-­a-­kenya-­ s-­second-­go-­at-­a-­reproductive-­health-­bill-­98134. Joyce, K. (2010). Seeing is believing Questions about faith-based organizations that are involved in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Catholics for Choice. Retrieved from https://www.catholicsforchoice.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2013/12/SeeingIsBelieving-­WebVersion.pdf. Kahiu, M. (2019, November 12). Countering ICPD25: Population, underdevelopment narratives, ploy to impoverish Africa. Association for Catholic Information in Africa. Retrieved from https://www.aciafrica.org/news/376/countering­icpd25-­population-­underdevelopment-­narratives-­ploy-­to-­impoverish-­africa. Kaoma, K. (2012). Colonizing African values: How the U.S.  Christian Right is transforming sexual politics in Africa. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from https://politicalresearch.org/sites/default/files/2018-­10/Colonizing-­ African-­Values.pdf. Lo, N. C., Lowe, A., & Bendavid, E. (2016). Abstinence funding was not associated with reductions in HIV risk behavior in sub-Saharan Africa. Health Affairs, 35(5), 856–863. Madung, O., et al. (2022). Exporting disinformation: How foreign groups peddle influence in Kenya through Twitter. Mozilla Foundation. Retrieved from https:// assets.mofoprod.net/network/documents/Exporting_Disinformation.pdf. Malvern, C., & Macleod, C. (2018). Cultural de-colonization versus liberal approaches to abortion in Africa: The politics of representation and voice. African Journal of Reproductive Health, 22(2), 49–59. Martin, W. (1999). The Christian Right and American Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy, 114, 66–80. Ngwena, C. (2012). State obligations to implement African abortion laws: Employing human rights in a changing legal landscape. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 119, 198–202. Oduro, G.  Y., & Otsin, M.  N. A. (2014). “Abortion—It is my own body”: Women’s narratives about influences on their abortion decisions in Ghana. Health Care for Women International, 35(7–9), 918–936. Ogwel, M. (2021, August 4). The fate of Kenya’s Reproductive Health Bill. World Youth Alliance. Retrieved from https://wya.net/the-­fate-­of-­kenyas-­ reproductive-­health-­bill/. PEPFAR and Africa’s Vales [sic]. (2023, June 6). Retrieved from https://c-­fam. org/wp-­content/uploads/Request-­to-­U.S.-­Congress-­to-­Align-­PEPFAR-­to-­ Africas-­Pro-­Life-­Values.pdf. PEPFAR Coalition Letter. (2023, May 1). Retrieved from http://c-­fam.org/wp-­ content/uploads/PEPFAR-­Coalition-­Letter_Final-­1.pdf.

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Secretariat of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition. (n.d.). The Maputo protocol: Protecting African women’s rights. Equality Now. Retrieved from https://www.equalitynow.org/promoting_african_womens_rights/. Williams, D. K. (2016). Defenders of the unborn: The pro-life movement before Roe v. Wade. Oxford University Press. Women, Gender and Development Directorate. (2016). Maputo protocol on women’s rights: A living document for women’s human rights in Africa. Retrieved from https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/31520-­doc-­maputo_ protocol_on_womens_rights_a_living_document_for_womens_human_ rights_in_africa_submitted_by_the_women_gender_and_development_directorate_wgdd_of_the_african_union_commission.pdf.

CHAPTER 5

Masking and Mobilizing Anti-LGBTIQ+ Agendas

Abstract  Over the course of the past two decades, the role of U.S. Christian Right groups in setting the stage for the creation of anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation in African countries  has become  increasingly recognised. This awareness was largely prompted in 2009 when investigative researchers uncovered connections between American anti-LGBTIQ+ Christian Right actors and the Ugandan lawmakers who proposed the original Anti-­ Homosexuality Bill. Despite their immediate efforts to distance themselves from having been  involved in the process of developing the legislation, U.S. Christian Right groups have continued to strengthen and adapt their anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning across the region. This chapter discusses how U.S. pro-family actors mask their homophobic and transphobic prejudice and present their existential attacks on LGBTIQ+ people as ‘common sense’ through alternative language and framing strategies. Keywords  Anti-LGBTIQ+ • Pro-family • Homophobia • Transphobia • Africa There is growing recognition that a great deal of the anti-homosexuality legislation emerging in some African countries has involved U.S. Christian Right actors. While U.S. Christian Right groups have denied their involvement in the creation of the legislation, there is a wealth of evidence showing the contrary. Awareness about the role of U.S. Christian Right activists © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_5

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in setting the stage for the development of extreme anti-LGBTIQ+ laws first hit international headlines in October 2009 when the Ugandan parliament tabled the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which became widely dubbed as the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’ on account of the extreme penalties it proposed, including life imprisonment and the death penalty for certain same-­ sex acts. At the time, it was no secret that Christian Right groups were at the forefront of anti-LGBTIQ+ advocacy in the U.S., and it was widely known that U.S. Christian missionaries were increasingly active in Africa. Yet, there had been little awareness of the efforts of U.S. Christian Right groups to mobilize political anti-gay agendas abroad or in African countries. By the time the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill was proposed in 2009, U.S.  Christian Right groups had well-established networks and partnerships in Uganda and other African countries. Critical observers revealed existing connections between the bill’s lead author (David Bahati), one of its main proponents (Martin Ssempa), and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who were found to have close ties with influential U.S.  Christian Right political groups. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian researcher based in the U.S., revealed that in the months prior to the tabling of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, American anti-gay evangelists had convened a seminar in Kampala called “Exposing the Homosexual Agenda,” in collaboration with Stephen Langa, Director of the Uganda based Family Life Network. As Kaoma wrote at the time, “The seminar’s very title revealed its claim: LGBT people and activists are engaged in a well-thought-out plan to take over the world” (Kaoma, 2009a, para 1). Amongst the American evangelists who convened the seminar was attorney and activist Scott Lively, who was relatively unknown in the U.S. until his anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning in Uganda made international headlines. Kaoma, who attended the Kampala seminar under cover, recorded Lively telling audience members, “The people coming to Africa now and advancing the idea that human rights serves the homosexual interests are absolutely wrong…Many of them are outright liars and they are manipulating history; they are manipulating facts in order to push their political agenda” (Kaoma, 2009a, para 3). Lively also targeted abortion rights, claiming that they are “a product of the gay philosophy” to promote sexual promiscuity and “destroy the family” (para 3). Lively’s involvement in the promotion of anti-gay legislation in Uganda attracted further media attention in 2012 when Sexual Minorities Uganda, in

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partnership with the U.S.-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, took him to court for crimes against humanity in his home state of Massachusetts. While the case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds because Lively’s actions took place outside of the U.S., the judge presiding over the case unequivocally denounced Lively’s role in repressing LGBTIQ+ Ugandans, which he said amounted to violations of international law (see Human Rights Campaign, 2017). Kaoma’s research provided extensive detail about how and why ultra-­ conservative American activists and organizations were campaigning against LGBTIQ+ rights in several countries in the region and cultivating relationships with African clerics and politicians. His report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S.  Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia (Kaoma, 2009b), received international media attention and inspired Roger Ross Williams to direct and produce what became the award-winning documentary, God Loves Uganda (2013), which brought first-hand accounts of how U.S. Christian Right groups were promoting homophobic religious doctrines in Uganda to international screens (Anderson, 2013). Jeff Sharlet, an American researcher, journalist and author, further showed that the secretive conservative network of elite evangelicals, The Fellowship Foundation (also known as The Family), had deep interests and connections in Uganda decades prior to the tabling of the Anti-­ Homosexuality Bill (National Public Radio, 2009a, November 24). According to Sharlet, the Fellowship had wanted to ensure that Uganda would become a “proxy” in the region for the organization’s foreign policy and biblical economic objectives, and  wanted to steer President Museveni “away from neutrality or leftist sympathies and bring him into conservative American alliances” (National Public Radio, 2009a). Sharlet found that David Bahati and the Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity in the Office of the Vice President in the Cabinet of Uganda, Nsaba Buturo, were deeply involved in The Family’s work in the country and had been leading organizers of the Ugandan version of the Family’s National Prayer Breakfast. In addition to the specific Christian Right activists and organizations identified by Kaoma and Sharlet, civil society groups also began to investigate and name the World Congress of Families as another instigator of anti-LGBTIQ+ policies in Africa and other regions. Human Rights Campaign (2015), for instance, documented the significant role of WCF in the facilitation of discussions that have set the stage for anti-LGBTIQ+

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legislation in Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Citing WCF convenings in Africa (i.e. Family Congress—2005/Nairobi, World Congress of Families: Dialogue of Civilizations—2009/Abuja, The School, The Family, The Student—2012/Lagos) and the activities of WCF members at high-level events in the region, the report argues that “WCF’s presence in the region has corresponded with a disturbing rise of harsh penalties for LGBT Africans in countries like Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria” (p. 18). Southern Poverty Law Center (n.d.) also designated WCF as a ‘hate group’, citing the efforts of WCF to mainstream its ‘natural family’ doctrine, which has been used to curtail LGBTIQ+ and reproductive rights worldwide. Western donor countries responded to these findings and growing international pressure to withdraw support for African governments that were enacting anti-homosexuality legislation, issuing warnings to Uganda that foreign aid would be withdrawn if the bill was adopted. In 2014, when the Anti-Homosexuality Act was signed into law, the U.S., the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the World Bank withheld or diverted approximately $110 million in aid (Saul, 2014). In an effort to deflect the media attention and accusations about their role in creating Uganda’s anti-homosexuality legislation, the far-right U.S. activists named in these investigations attempted to distance themselves from the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill and its authors. Scott Lively, for example, claimed that he was “very disappointed” in the way the law was written “with such incredibly harsh punishments” (National Public Radio, 2009b, December 18). His advice, he told, “was to go the other direction from what they did to actually go on a proactive positive message promoting the family, promoting marriage, etcetera…and that if they were going to continue to criminalize homosexuality that they should focus on rehabilitation and not punishment.” And, despite David Bahati’s assertion that his American counterparts from The Family supported the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (Sharlet, 2010, p. 190), fellow member, Bob Hunter, distanced The Family from the bill in an interview in 2009, stating, “In my opinion it’s a terrible bill and shouldn’t be adopted…I know of no one who supports it in the Fellowship” (National Public Radio, 2009c, December 22). Family Watch International (FWI) was also named as having links to the bill through their connections with Martin Ssempa, who had been serving as Family Watch International’s Africa coordinator. In a press statement in which they distanced the organization from the anti-­ homosexuality bill, FWI claims that “FWI was never involved in the drafting or promotion of Uganda’s law calling for the so-called ‘kill the gays’

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bill” (Family Watch International, n.d., para 5). The statement sought to clarify that FWI’s involvement with Ssempa was limited to their work opposing sexuality education. The statement says that “Mr. Ssempa agreed to help coordinate FWI efforts to promote abstinence-based education in Africa” (para 1). As Chap. 6 will discuss, FWI’s campaigning against comprehensive sexuality education has become a primary vehicle through which FWI is packaging their anti-LGBTIQ+ messaging across Africa and at the United Nations.

Finding New Narratives: U.S. Christian Right Efforts to Mainstream Anti-LGBTIQ+ Agendas Revelations about the strong anti-LGBTIQ+ messaging promoted by U.S. Christian Right groups in Africa have not curtailed their activities. Rather, U.S. Christian Right groups have only strengthened their ties with anti-LGBTIQ+ political and religious leaders in the region in recent years. New rhetorical strategies used by the pro-family movement in African contexts and globally provide insight into how this movement has expanded its support base domestically and internationally, and how it has retained political and social influence. At the 9th annual World Congress of Families, which took place a few months after the 2015 US Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges granting same-sex couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples, U.S.  Christian Right groups were reflecting on the need for new packaging for their anti-gay messaging. John Henry Western, an established American pro-life activist, advised how anti-gay rhetoric could be recoded in order to survive and gain support despite growing acceptance of LGBTIQ+ people and families in American society. In doing so, he recounted the pro-life/anti-abortion movement’s success in transforming its language and messaging, explaining: “the pro-life movement underwent a metamorphosis some years ago… it was first about the children, they’re killing children, so there was a natural outrage… But, over the years, we’ve learned a new language—a language of love” (Western, 2015). The sweetened ‘language of love’, according to Western, had been an effective replacement for language that focused on harm and condemnation as ways of deterring people from having abortions or supporting the right to an abortion. Arguing that the pro-family movement must also learn the language of ‘love’, Western says that this will take ideological

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work, pointing to the fact that the movement does not accept non-­ heterosexuality and same-sex marriage: We need to take that love and apply it also in the fight for family…. we need to answer the question of same-sex marriage all over the world. If these two ladies or these two guys loveth one another how come they can’t get married?… And if our answer back can’t be love, we’re going to be in deep trouble (Western, 2015, emphasis added).

Alluding to the inherent tensions and contradictions within pro-family rhetoric that only some families are considered acceptable and loveable, Western delivered an impassioned speech about the need for the pro-­ family movement to shift its discursive strategy in order to remain convincing and relevant. As will be discussed in this chapter, while pro-family interlocutors have worked to recode their condemnation of homosexuality and queerness as love for the heteropatriarchal family, they have also crafted rhetorical strategies that align heterosexism with mainstream discourses and political frameworks, particularly amongst audiences that have been marginalized within international orders of power. Like the anti-abortion movement’s refusal to relinquish their efforts to outlaw abortion after the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, pro-family activists and their agendas have not withered from defeat in the courts of the law and public opinion surrounding marriage equality. As discussed further below, emerging strategies used to promote pro-­ family agendas against LGBTIQ+ rights have involved the articulation of the ‘natural family’ in relation to the democratic principle of ‘freedom of speech’ and the construction of compulsory heterosexuality as a matter of national sovereignty and economic development. As discussed in previous chapters, arguments against homosexuality and reproductive rights have also drawn significantly upon anti-colonial frames of population control to argue that LGBTIQ− rights and abortion are both covert western operations aimed at reducing fertility rates in African countries. Constructing Hate Speech as Free Speech and Religious Freedom  Christian Right actors operating in the U.S. and in Africa have increasingly argued that the censorship of homophobic and transphobic hate speech is a form of ‘reverse discrimination’ that violates their freedom of speech and

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freedom of religion. Drawing attention away from the consequences of their rhetoric for LGBTIQ+ people and families, pro-family actors centre their freedom to delegitimize the existence of  queer, transgender, and non-binary individuals. A 2017 pro-family initiative called the #FreeSpeechBus led by the International Organization for the Family (IOF) in partnership with the U.S.-based National Organization for Marriage  (NOM) and CitizenGo provides an entry point for understanding how pro-family groups are positioning their discriminatory language and agendas as an expression of their democratic rights to freedom of speech. Touring parts of the U.S., France, and Spain with an enormous orange bus, the IOF and NOM toured their #FreeSpeechBus to promote what they claimed to be the ‘truth of gender’: ‘It’s biology: Boys are boys… and always will be. Girls are girls… and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all.’ In 2018, CitizenGo announced on its social media platforms that “Nairobi, Kenya will be the first city in Africa to host the #FreeSpeechBus in defense of #ReligiousFreedom,” but there were no subsequent reports confirming that the bus tour ever occurred (CitizenGo Africa, 2018, April 11). While the #FreeSpeechBus claimed to ‘respect all’ and its name evokes a general democratic principle, the text and imagery on the bus revealed that the bus was designed to mobilize a specific agenda against gender-­ diverse expression and identities. On one hand, the text and imagery on the bus claimed that gender queer and transgender expressions do not have a scientific claim to existence. At the same time, this text and imagery aimed to demonstrate that the expression of this argument was under attack. Thus, the bus demonstrated a key objective of pro-family, or ‘anti-­ gender’, ideology: co-opting the dual status of privilege (defining cisgender people as the only people who can legitimately claim to exist) and victimhood (for those seeking the right to target gender-diverse and transgender individuals with the argument that their existence is illegitimate). The right to proclaim gender as binary and fixed is thus equated with the right to deny equal rights and freedoms to those who do not conform to ‘male’ or ‘female’ and/or the sex and gender identity they were assigned at birth. Freedom of speech is co-opted as a tool through which expressions, no matter how hateful or flawed, can be wielded in the name of defending democracy. The narrative emblazoned on the #FreeSpeechBus is not new or unique but has been a staple of U.S. Christian Right advocacy against LGBTIQ+ rights for several years.

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The argument that discriminatory language directed towards LGBTIQ+ people is a matter of freedom of speech and religion has been taken up by South African pro-family activists who have been lobbying against the proposed Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill. Arguing that the Bill would have a ‘chilling effect’ on the freedom of religious groups to express their beliefs, Freedom of Religion South Africa (FORSA) and Family Policy Institute (FPI) have been at the forefront of opposition against the legislation. FPI’s founder, Errol Naidoo, who has been connected with the World Congress of Families and other U.S. Christian Right groups for several years, has repeatedly warned his followers that  the legislation would criminalize religious leaders who preach the idea that homosexuality is a sin. Imploring the public to write to Parliament to oppose the legislation, he warns, “Hate Crimes laws can be used to attack and punish Bible-believing Christians for their Biblical beliefs and convictions. The objectives of… the ‘Hate Crimes Bill’ is to silence any religious debate or criticism of LGBTQ lifestyles” (Naidoo, 2021, September 21). The conservative strategic litigation organization Freedom of Religion South Africa (FORSA), which employs legal tactics akin to those used by the far-right U.S. strategic litigation group Alliance Defending Freedom, has also made submissions to the parliamentary committee handling the bill, arguing that the proposed legislation would infringe upon religious freedom and the right to freedom of expression. Within their critique of the legislation, FORSA reveals its specific concerns with the implications of the bill for those who seek to continue denying the existence of transgender and non-binary individuals saying, “The bill’s specific groups listed include a wide range of grounds, currently hotly debated in the media, including gender identity…one might wonder how many of 2022’s opinions dealing with the unisex bathroom saga in schools would have landed their authors in jail if this Bill was already law” (Ellerbeck, 2023, March 6). In addition to lobbying against this particular piece of legislation, both FPI and FORSA have actively campaigned against other legislative and policy proposals that promote inclusion for LGBTIQ+ people, including the delivery of Comprehensive Sexuality Education, the implementation of SOGIESC guidelines for schools drafted by the South African Department of Basic Education, and the creation of a single marriage statute that would consolidate and reconcile several enactments regulating marriage in South Africa and assign equal legal status to heterosexual and

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same-sex marriages, as well as traditional marriages currently regulated under separate legislative guidelines (Francis & McEwen, 2023). Pro-Family Development Discourse In addition to arguing that anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric should be protected by freedom of speech, pro-family actors have worked to align their agendas with mainstream development agendas. One decade ago, Doris Buss and Didi Herman (2003) were doubtful that the pro-family movement could articulate a pro-family politics in relation to development imperatives. At the time, they hypothesized that the movement would not be able to reconcile its construction of the United Nations, as ‘an agent of the Antichrist’ that threatens the ‘natural’ family, religious values, and U.S. sovereignty with a development-friendly politics (p. 78). Two decades later, it has become apparent that pro-family groups have made noticeable advances in aligning their agendas with mainstream development language and frameworks. This has required social-scientific concepts and arguments that complement religious justifications for discrimination against gender non-conforming, transgender, and queer people. Pro-family actors draw heavily on the idea that there are individual and collective economic benefits associated with heterosexual marriage. To be certain, the systematic entanglements of heteropatriarchy and capitalism that disadvantage non-nuclear families are not a part of their analysis. Rather, emphasis is placed on the economic rewards of heterosexuality and the costs of non-conformity to heteronormative kinship. Concepts such as ‘marriage premium’ are used to claim the economic benefits of heterosexuality, as proclaimed by Janice in her keynote address at the 9th World Congress of Families. She explained, the economic concept of “marriage premium” describes the benefits of marriage in financial terms: “There’s a clear and inextricable link between the breakdown of marriage, the slowdown of economic growth, and the increasingly burdensome taxes that are required to finance the exorbitant growth in the need for social safety nets and there’s an unprecedented increase in dependency” (Crouse, 2015). Within this formula, heterosexual marriage is seen as economically productive for individuals and the state, with declining rates of heterosexual marriage presenting economic consequences. Furthermore, those who do not participate in heterosexual marriage and reproduction are viewed as economic liabilities in relation to married heterosexuals.

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Pro-family researchers, such as Brad Wilcox (Director of the National Marriage Project), have generated research to provide the pro-family movement with a development-oriented rationale to support anti-­ LGBTIQ+ agendas with ‘evidence’ of the economic advantages of heterosexuality. Discussing his report, Strong Families, Prosperous States, which was produced in association with the U.S.-based neoliberal think tank  American Enterprise Institute, Wilcox says: “we’re hypothesizing there’s a connection between strong families and state prosperity because marriage, family life, have deep connections to the labour force, they boost family income access, and they encourage the accumulation of capital in today’s contemporary world” (Wilcox, 2015). Here, neoliberal imperatives of economic growth and individual wealth are provided as reasons why the ‘natural family’ model should be a universal ideal. Constructing the heterosexual family as instrumental to “state prosperity” in its capacity to reproduce the labour force, this logic folds compulsory heterosexuality and parenthood into the already hegemonic notion that there is no alternative to the current neoliberal economic order, aligning the natural family with the ideals of capitalist accumulation and prosperity. Sexual minorities and gender non-conforming people, and their struggles for inclusion and equal recognition under the law are rendered invisible, yet co-constitutive, ‘others’. Neoliberal ideology, which claims that we are all ‘simply individuals who control our own destinies through our worthiness, entrepreneurship, self-belief and positive attitudinal toolkit’ (Steyn, 2015, p.  383), is therefore applied to pro-family discourse, which claims that this ‘worthiness’ is fixed to one’s conformity to heteropatriarchal expectations and norms. U.S. Christian Right organizations have been delivering this messaging to African audiences, positioning themselves as experts on the national, societal, and economic costs of homosexuality and LGBTIQ+ rights. In 2011, Family Watch International’s president, Sharon Slater, delivered a keynote address at the Nigerian Bar Association, warning delegates that non-reproductive sex has economic consequences, imploring them to avoid “manipulation” by western countries where, she claims, declining fertility rates are causing economic crisis: […] the world in general, but especially the West, is experiencing a population crisis, meaning, there are not enough children being born to replace the dying…they do not have enough workers to fuel their economies and ­support their older populations. Nigeria will eventually face the same problem if you adopt the anti-child values of the West. (Slater, 2011)

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Constructing deviance from procreative heterosexual marriage as bad economics, Slater names sex outside of marriage as the sole cause of population decline, which she states as being responsible for economic crisis in western countries. Such pro-natalist arguments about the links between population and economy have been a consistent feature of pro-family claims that feminism and LGBTIQ+ movements are promoting a ‘culture of death’. A phrase that was first used by Pope John Paul II in his warning that abortion, contraception, and the delinking of marriage and reproduction were part of a “conspiracy against life” (Robcis, 2015, p. 915), the idea of ‘culture of death’ has since become prolific within the pro-family lexicon against the human rights of LGBTIQ+ people and reproductive justice. This notion has also come to inform the development-related narrative that feminism, sexual and reproductive rights, and LGBTIQ+ rights are to blame for ‘demographic winter’, or declining fertility rates, in the global north (Trimble, 2013). In African contexts where colonial conquest and enslavement by western nations have led to the death of millions of people, the idea that feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights are new wine in an old imperial bottle works with the grain of already existing suspicions about how the West, and western elites, are trying to retain their grip on power over the continent and its people. This narrative also lays the basis for Slater to propose that pro-family activists like herself are more closely aligned with African interests than those who promote sexuality and gender-based rights, emphasizing the necessity of high fertility rates for economic prosperity. During her speech at the Nigerian Bar Association in 2011, Slater implored the audience: Please, whatever you do, do not listen to those who are telling you that you need to limit your families to one or two children. Children are Nigeria’s greatest asset. They are your wealth, they are your future. It is no accident that Nigeria, the most populous African country, is also one of the wealthiest. (Slater, 2011)

Arguments that homosexuality generally, and LGBTIQ+ rights, will have negative effects on African economies and nations have become central to narratives that construct homosexuality as a threat to national sovereignty and security. Within these arguments, international sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations, United Nations agencies, and western states are accused of manipulating African countries into adopting values and rights that will negatively impact economies and the

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integrity of the national borders. In what follows, I discuss recent pieces of anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation that have come to the fore in recent years, focusing on the links they construct between sexuality and sovereignty. Sovereignty, Sexuality, and Family The argument that LGBTIQ+ human rights are an infringement on the sovereignty of nations in the global south has become a dominant theme within anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric in African countries. The use of an anti-­ colonial frame to construct LGBTIQ+ rights as neo-imperialist has become a prevailing paradigm used by anti-gender actors not only in African contexts but across global souths and easts. This anti-colonial frame, as Korolczuk and Graff (2018) argue, is not about actual colonial histories of conquest, enslavement, or theft of indigenous land by Europeans, “equates gender egalitarianism with colonization and often compares it with twentieth-­century totalitarianisms and global terrorism” (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018, p. 799). Through this narrative, opposition against gender and sexuality diversity and reproductive rights is positioned as a defensive action against western influence and infiltration. Moreover, the  anti-­ colonial frame has become a strategic discursive mechanism through which pro-family actors position themselves  as  being more in touch with the needs and desires of African populations than feminists and LGBTIQ+ activists. Research conducted by queer and feminist international relations scholars has critically interrogated the ways in which western global gay rights campaigning have spurred the politicization of sexual orientation and gender identity through the use of civilizing narratives about LGBTIQ+ rights (Puar, 2006, 2018; Weiss & Bosia, 2013; Rao, 2015). In their critiques of prevailing western understandings of states in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South as ‘disorderly’ or ‘pathological’ for their refusal to recognize gay rights as human rights, critical queer and feminist analyses have critically unpacked the role of western neoliberal sexual politics and homo(inter) nationalisms in producing anticipatory countermobilization against LGBTQ+ rights. To be certain, these scholars do not agree that homophobia is a means of securing national sovereignty for formerly colonized nations, but provide a nuanced critique of how western gay rights agendas have been incorporated into western notions of its own supremacy and do not necessarily serve the interests of LGBTIQ+ people living in the U.S. or abroad.

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The Obama administration’s positioning of the U.S. as a global defender of ‘gay rights’ is referred to by several scholars as a pivotal moment in international politics, prompting African and other non-­ western governments to create severe penalties for ‘homosexuality’ as an expression of defiance against the West. In addition to drawing rebuke from African political leaders in several countries, including Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, and Liberia, the announcement by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 at the United Nations in Geneva that “gay rights are human rights” is said to have had the effect of catalysing several anti-gay bills at the policy level as well as violence and discrimination against queer Africans on the ground (Encarnación, 2016, p.  21). As Wahab (2016) writes, this speech “effectively reset the pulse of human rights discourse within foreign relations policy—tying ‘gay rights’ to assessments of aid, refugee protection, multilateral NGO’s,” producing ‘gay rights’ not only as a neoliberal mobilization of homo-nationalism, but as a “vehicle for neoliberal ways of producing politics and subjects more broadly” (p. 700). The emergence of “anticipatory homophobia,” Wahab argues, must be more fully interrogated in relation to relevant socioeconomic and political contexts, and the ways in which globalizing western neoliberal discourses and arrangements have produced national vulnerabilities (p. 703). In addition to  serving as a means of resisting the vulnerabilities produced by neoliberalism, opposition against LGBTQ+ rights can also be interpreted as a means through which non-western nations are articulating counter-­narratives against western powers  and asserting geopolitical boundaries. As Emil Edenborg (2023) argues, the rejection of LGBTQ+ rights may not only be “the other side of the homonationalist coin” but a constitutive part of new geopolitical boundary-making practices (p. 3). In a global political context in which the figure of ‘LGBT’ has become tied to imaginations of sovereignty and identity borders, Edenborg argues, anti-gender “traditionalist” narratives provide a counter-narrative against homonationalist discourses that construct the presence of LGBTIQ+ rights as a method for ranking the modernity of a nation-state (pp. 2–3). These dynamics constitute what Aggestam and True (2021) have defined as “gendered multilevel games,” or the ways in which political leaders “navigate and harness pro- and anti-gender norms in global politics to further their power, status, and authority” within contemporary global politics (p. 387).

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At the time of writing this book, several new anti-LGBTIQ+ laws are being developed, debated, and enacted in African countries. Significantly, these pieces of legislation share a common set of themes that have become predictable within newly emerging efforts by lawmakers in the region to prohibit gender and sexuality diversity. Within the discussed legislation, a consistent claim that “traditional” African families, family values, and the nation require protection from foreign influences promoting LGBTIQ+ rights. Each piece of legislation draws upon pro-family discourse as a means of asserting national sovereignty within the global geopolitical landscape, positioning sexual orientation and gender identity as fault lines upon which national sovereignty is surrendered or asserted. Such claims are not entirely new or unique in that anti-colonial rhetoric has long been used as a strategy for both resisting and promoting gender equality, feminism, and women’s rights in African and other non-western countries (Hoodfar, 1997; Narayan, 1997). In relation to contemporary discourses against ‘gender’, anti-colonial frames are being used to position gender and sexuality diversity as forms of cultural imperialism  and contamination. In Eastern and Central European countries, “gender ideology” has been metaphorically described as “ebola from Brussels” in reference to European Union gender-equality legislation (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018). As Korolczuk and Graff write, this narrative “capitalis[es] on a rhetoric of both victimhood and cultural superiority” to position the EU and other western institutions of power associated with the ‘left’ as colonisers and sources of contagion set on destroying “the heathy body” of the nation (p.  297). In Latin America too, transnational networks promote the idea that the family, and ultimately the nation, are at risk if “gender ideology” is not stopped. Such rhetoric was instrumental to the launching of movements such as the Frente Nacional por la Familia (National Front for the Family) in Mexico, the  #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas (Don’t Mess with My Children) campaign against Comprehensive Sexuality Education  in Peru, and in Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019 inauguration speech which he declared “We will unite people, value the family, respect religions and our Judeo-Christian tradition, combat gender ideology and rescue our values” (Faiola & Lopes, 2019). Recent anti-homosexuality legislation in some  African countries further illustrates how gender and sexuality are being defined as linchpins of state sovereignty, and how anti-colonial frames that ignore the coloniality of heteropatriarchy are being deployed against LGBTIQ+ people. In 2023, Ugandan parliamentarians passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill,

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which resurrected capital punishment  for ‘aggravated homosexuality’. Like its 2009 predecessor, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 is framed as an initiative to “establish a comprehensive and enhanced legislation to protect the traditional family.” To achieve this objective, the bill prohibits same-sex sexual relations, and their “promotion or recognition.” Protection of the family, according to both versions of the bill, requires “strengthening the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional, heterosexual family,” and “protecting…legal, religious, and traditional family values of Ugandans against the acts of sexual rights activists seeking to impose their values of sexual promiscuity on the people of Uganda.” Drawing upon the narrative that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’, this essentialist framing of Ugandan traditional family values and people as being homogenously heterosexual sets the scene for the legislation to be presented as an anti-colonial intervention that will secure Uganda’s sovereignty. The claim that anti-homosexuality legislation is a means of asserting the  post-colonial state sovereignty of African nations is not unique to Uganda, and has become cause for unprecedented levels of  regional engagement on  sexuality and gender related  rights and education.  The passing of the Ugandan legislation in 2023 was followed by a family policy conference and regional inter-parliamentary forum that was hosted by the Ugandan Parliament and sponsored by Family Watch International and its Africa office (Family Watch Africa), the Nigerian Foundation for African Cultural Heritage, and the African Bar Association. The African Family Policy Conference and the first African Inter-Parliamentary Forum on Family Values and Sovereignty brought together African parliamentarians from twenty-three countries in the region as well as U.S. and Ugandan Christian Right actors. The theme of the conference, in addition to its programme of speakers and presentation topics, focused on sovereignty, which was in turn presented as a matter hinging solely upon the heterosexual nuclear family model and the rejection of LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE. The conference was opened by Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, whose keynote address  was titled “Protecting National Sovereignty and the Institution of the Family: An African Imperative.” The First Lady and Minister of Education, Janet Museveni, delivered a keynote speech on the topic “Safeguarding Africa’s Children and Families.” Sessions included one titled “Protecting Children, Life and Family at the African Union,” led by Seyoum Antonios Teklemaran (founder of United for Life Ethiopia

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and director of Family Watch Africa); “Protecting Children, Life and Family at the United Nations,” led by the former Sudan ambassador to the United Nations, Omer Dahab; a screening of FWI’s documentary, The Family and Sustainable Development: Strong Families, Prosperous Nations, and a film called Understanding Transgender Issues. Stephen Langa (founder of Family Life Network Uganda) spoke about “Protecting Children from CSE.” Notably, agenda items that overtly mention ‘homosexuality’ are  absent from the program. Rather, the issues of abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, “transgender issues,” “cultural imperialism,” the “SRHR agenda,” and “the youth radicalization agenda of the West” are formally tabled on the program. The final session in the two-day program involved group discussion and brainstorming on “countering foreign agendas at the local, state, national, regional and international levels.” The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021 also draws connections between the prohibition of homosexuality and the ‘defense’ of African families as a matter of national sovereignty. The Bill, which at the time of writing is still being debated in the Ghanaian parliament, aims not only to criminalize gender and sexuality diversity but also to enact far-reaching prohibitions on media, education, and advocacy that depict homosexuality in a positive light. The lead author of the bill, Samuel Nartey George, attended the 2022 African Family Policy Conference hosted by FWI in Utah. Posting an update about the conference on Twitter, he wrote: I am currently in Utah, USA attending an African Family Policy Conference aimed at strengthening the role of the family as the base unit of society. We are focusing on the Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) agenda…a trojan horse poised to promote the LGBTQI agenda.

He continued, elaborating that the proposed bill was applauded by other conference delegates, writing: “I am excited that our Bill, which has been celebrated by participants at the conference, is a major tool to fight this international agenda to destroy the fibre of our societies.” Like Uganda’s iterations of anti-homosexuality legislation, the Ghanaian bill is proposed as a mechanism for not only criminalizing LGBTIQ+ people but also securing national ‘value systems’ from western influence. According to the authors of the Bill:

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LGBTTQQIAAP+ activities threaten the concept of family and the associated value systems that are central to the social structure of all ethnic groups in Ghana. The concept of family for Ghanaians has always been a unit of society initiated by marriage between a man and a woman, each of those whose gender is assigned at birth (George et al., 2021).

The introduction to the Bill positions the proposed legislation as a necessary intervention for the preservation of the territorial integrity and political independence of Ghana within a globalizing world: […] the UN Charter recognises the principle of sovereignty and equality […] all member states are required to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state […] In a vastly globalised world where the threat of the infiltration of foreign cultures is ever-present, states rely on the right to self-determination to preserve their socio-cultural values by enacting legislation to minimise the effect of unacceptable foreign influence (George et al., 2021).

Referring to the “rights of states to self-determination,” “sovereignty,” “territorial integrity” and the preservation of socio-cultural values, the Bill’s authors set out their proposal as being consistent with the UN Charter. The authors position LGBTIQ+ rights as infringements upon the “strength and values” of Ghanaian society and an unwanted western influence visited upon Africa by “threat” and “force.” In their depiction of LGBTIQ+ people and rights as forms of “infiltration,” the authors not only erase the existence of gender and sexuality diversity in Ghana but also assert (hetero)sexed and (cis)gendered geopolitical boundaries, arguing that the rejection of LGBTIQ+ identities and rights are expressions of each nation’s right to “self-determination.” According to the Bill, the preservation of Ghanaian socio-cultural values and “proper human sexual rights” requires not only the prohibition of non-heterosexual identities and sexual activities but also the banning of materials that could be said to be supporting or advocating for LGBTIQ+ persons and rights. Similar to the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the Ghanaian bill proposes far-reaching prohibitions against “propagation,” “advocacy” or “promotion” of LGBTIQ+ activities, including the production, procurement, marketing, broadcasting, dissemination, publication, and distribution of materials that include positive representations of LGBTIQ+ people. LGBTIQ+ inclusive content for young people is also

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specifically prohibited, with penalties for “material or information directed at a child whether directly or indirectly with intent to […] teach the child to explore any gender or sex other than the binary category of male or female” (George et al., 2021). After a series of public hearings, the bill is in deliberations at the committee level in parliament at the time of writing. Although the legislation has not yet been passed, it has already intensified hostilities towards queer communities as reported by Rightify Ghana and journalists in the country (Akinwotu, 2022). Amidst the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda and parliamentary debate in Ghana around the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, a Kenyan lawmaker, MP George Peter Kaluma, proposed The  Family Protection Bill, 2023. The proposed Kenyan legislation advances a similar discourse of homosexuality as a form of western interference and includes specific clauses against Comprehensive Sexuality Education, sexual and reproductive health and rights. The purpose of the bill, as stated, is: to provide for the protection of the family in furtherance of Article 45 of the Constitution, to prohibit homosexuality and same sex marriage, to prohibit unnatural sexual acts and related activities and to proscribe activities that seek to advance, advocate, promote or fund homosexuality and unnatural sexual acts and for connected purposes (The Family Protection Bill, 2023).

Amongst the objectives of the bill, which largely centre on recognizing and promoting the heterosexual family as “the natural and fundamental unit of the Kenyan society”, are aims that draw a direct connection between sexuality and national sovereignty: “to strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the family and to the cultural sovereignty of the nation”; “to preserve and protect the cultural and family values of the Kenyan people against emerging threats; and, to uphold Article 44 of the Constitution which provides that “a person shall not compel another person to perform, observe or undergo any cultural practice and rit”; “to recognize, uphold the right of the parents to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children as provided in Article 26 (3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”; and, “to secure respect for the liberty of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions as set out in Article 18 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

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These pieces of legislation and the actors promoting them are  not invoking  new conceptualisations of the role of the family in relation to development imperatives and statecraft, but repurposing functionalist visions of the family produced within modern theorisations of social systems and development. As Weber (2016) writes, modern era social systems and development theory developed in the West positioned the “presumptively Christian…procreative, white, cisgendered, able-bodied bourgeois, heterosexual nuclear family” as foundational to social and political development (p. 62). The nuclear family, within this schema, was set out as a necessity within linear conceptualizations of development and civilizing processes, believed to ensure “the survival of the social system as a whole by fulfilling its function of producing children and socialising them to embrace the dominant norms and values of the society’s culture” (p. 63). As such, this model of ‘family’ was purported to be foundational not only to social development but in the development of the political system, considered to play “a major role—if not the most important role— in the political socialisation of children,” and therefore serving the reproductive and civilizational requirements of the state (p. 66). Within these nineteenth and twentieth century civilizational prescriptions for the function of the nuclear family, the ‘homosexual’ was cast as ‘decadent’ and ‘undevelopable’, marking the “limits of the development process itself” and further serving as a scapegoat for the failures of social and political development (Weber 2016, p. 67). In this regard, as Weber writes, the ‘homosexual’ functioned not only as “a figure of the biological management of development life” but as a “figure of the necropolitical management of development death…threatening the development process itself” (pp.  67–68, my emphasis). Contemporary desires to eliminate homosexuality and LGBTIQ+ people as a means of preserving and promoting African national interests thus invoke and reproduce modernist  framings of development and sovereignty that reinforce, rather than repudiate, western influence. The penalties of death or life imprisonment for LGBTIQ+ individuals, and the justification  of these penalties in the name of defending the nation and its futurity, realize heteropatriarchal  western machinations of development life and death to their fullest extent.

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Conclusion Anti-homosexuality legislation in African countries has emerged within a broader context in which conservative christonormative discourses of sex, gender, and the so-called “natural” family have gained momentum within international political spheres, presenting an immediate and existential threat to LGBTIQ+ communities and advocacy organizations. In framing this legislation as a measure to protect  national sovereignty, pro-family actors attempt to frustrate and silence efforts by LGBTIQ+ communities to advocate for equal recognition, rights, and opportunities. This chapter has discussed the various arguments that have been crafted by U.S.-based anti-LGBTIQ+ groups to promote their agendas internationally and in African countries specifically. These strategies enable U.S. Christian Right actors to anchor their arguments not only in religious belief, but in socio-scientific ‘evidence’ that they craft  and geopolitical arguments about the protection of national sovereignty. In doing so, U.S. Christian Right pro-family actors present themselves as being more in touch with the realities and needs of African people than their progressive counterparts in the West. This approach achieves multiple objectives within national and international political forums: obscuring the intolerant and genocidal logic within their claims about LGBTIQ+ people by attempting to align their anti-LGBTIQ+ agendas with dominant global frameworks relating to human rights, development, and democratic values; eliding the coloniality of their messaging and positionalities as predominantly white, economically privileged, Christian Americans in relation to African audiences; and, recontextualizing North American ‘family values’ narratives in ways that give them wider appeal and influence in African countries. While U.S.  Christian Right groups may have made modest performances to distance themselves from the creation of anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation in Africa, the impact of their financial support, networks, and the transmission of pro-family agendas speaks louder than words. Furthermore, despite U.S.  Christian Right claims they do not condone severe anti-­ LGBTIQ+ legislation, their homophobic and transphobic pro-family rhetoric has been packaged into campaigns against comprehensive sexuality education and access to abortion that serve as alternative vehicles through which they can continue their anti-LGBTIQ+ advocacy in Africa.

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References Aggestam, K., & True, J. (2021). Political leadership and gendered multilevel games in foreign policy. International Affairs, 9(2), 385–404. Akinwotu, E. (2022, August 3). ‘Erasing our existence’: Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ+ bill blamed for rise in attacks. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/global-­development/2022/aug/03/ghana-­anti-­lgbtq-­bill-­ blamed-­for-­rise-­in-­attacks. Anderson, T. (2013, August 19). The making of God Loves Uganda: A web exclusive interview with Roger Ross Williams. Political Research Associates. Retrieved from https://politicalresearch.org/2013/08/19/making-­god-­loves-­uganda. Buss, D., & Herman, D. (2003). Globalizing family values: The Christian Right in international perspective. University of Minnesota Press. CitizenGo Africa. (2018, April 11). #FreeSpeechBus. Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/CitizenGOAfrica/photos/a.18141407242 3395.1073741829.166395887258547/234845577080244/?typ e=3&theater. Crouse, J. (2015). Welcome address. World Congress of Families IX, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 27–30. Edenborg, E. (2023). ‘Traditional values’ and the narrative of gay rights as modernity: Sexual politics beyond polarization. Sexualities, 26(1–2), 37–53. Ellerbeck, D. (2023, March 6). Parliament’s First House approves Hate Speech Bill. Freedom of Religion South Africa. Retrieved from https://www.forsa.org. za/articles/parliaments-­first-­house-­approves-­hate-­speech-­bill. Encarnación, O. G. (2016). The troubled rise of gay rights diplomacy. Current History, 115(777), 17–22. Faiola, A., & Lopes, M. (2019, February 17). LGBT rights threatened in Brazil under new far-right president. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/lgbt-­rights-­under-­attack-­in-­ brazil-­under-­new-­far-­right-­president/2019/02/17/b24e1dcc-­1b28-­11e9-­ b8e6-­567190c2fd08_story.html. Family Watch International. (n.d.). Uganda Press Release. Retrieved from https:// familywatch.org/2019/01/04/uganda-­press-­release/. Francis, D., & McEwen, H. (2023). Normalising intolerance: The efforts of Christian Right groups to block LGBTIQ+ inclusion in South African schools. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 1–12. George, S. N., Sowah, D. A., Bedzrah, E., Forjour, J. N., Suhuyini, A. S., Sowah, R. N. O., Ntoso, H. A., & Dafeamekpor, R.-N. (2021). Promotion of proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values bill. Parliament of Ghana. Hoodfar, H. (1997). Between marriage and the market: Intimate politics and survival in Cairo. University of California Press.

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Saul, H. (2014, March 3). Uganda anti-gay bill author David Bahati says western aid cuts are a small price to pay. Independent. Retrieved from https://www. independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uganda-­antigay-­bill-­author-­david-­ bahati-­says-­western-­aid-­cuts-­are-­a-­small-­price-­to-­pay-­9165421.html. Sharlet, J. (2008). The Family: The secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power. Harper Perennial. Sharlet, J. (2010). C-Street: The fundamentalist threat to American democracy. Back Bay Books. Slater, S. (2011). Human rights gone awry: Myths and facts regarding International Human Rights affecting women and children. Nigerian Bar Association Conference, Lagos, Nigeria. Retrieved October 2, 2015, from http://www. familywatchinternational.org/fwi/Human_Rights_Gone_Awry_Nigeria_ Speech.pdf. Southern Poverty Law Center. (n.d.). World Congress of Families. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-­h ate/extremist-­f iles/group/ world-­congress-­families. Steyn, M. (2015). Critical diversity literacy: Essentials for the twenty-first century. In S.  Vertovec (Ed.), Routledge international handbook of diversity studies (pp. 379–389). Routledge. The Family Protection Bill. (2023). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonblade.com/content/files/2023/04/Family-­Protection-­Act-­2023.docx. Trimble, R. (2013). The threat of “demographic winter”: A transnational politics of motherhood and endangered populations in pro-family documentaries. Feminist Formations, 25(2), 30–54. Wahab, A. (2016). “Homosexuality/homophobia is Un-African”?: Un-mapping transnational discourses in the context of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill/ act. Journal of Homosexuality, 63(5), 685–718. Weber, C. (2016). Queer international relations: Sovereignty, sexuality and the will to knowledge. Oxford University Press. Weiss, M. L., & Bosia, M. J. (Eds.). (2013). Global homophobia: States, movements, and the politics of oppression. University of Illinois Press. Western, J. H. (2015). Abortion: The modern-day civil rights tragedy. Presented at World Congress of Families IX, Salt Lake City, Utah, 27–30 October. Wilcox, W. B. (2015). The connections between marriage and economic wellbeing. Presented at World Congress of Families IX, Salt Lake City, Utah, 27–30 October.

CHAPTER 6

Globalizing ‘Abstinence-Only’: The U.S. Christian Right Campaign Against Comprehensive Sexuality Education

Abstract  This chapter discusses the role that U.S.-based pro-family groups have played in mobilizing and coordinating campaigns against Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in African countries. The U.S. abstinence-only movement is discussed, providing historical context to the contemporary Stop CSE campaign that gained momentum in several African countries in the late 2010s. In addition to their activities to create moral panic about sexuality education in Africa, the chapter examines the efforts of pro-family groups to grow a coalition against Comprehensive Sexuality Education at the United Nations. The anti-­ LGBTIQ+ underpinnings of the Stop CSE campaign are further considered as a strategy through which pro-family groups are mainstreaming intolerance towards queer and transgender people and communities. Keywords  Abstinence • Comprehensive sexuality education • Stop CSE campaign • Africa Opposing in-school education about contraception, consent, and gender and sexuality diversity has been a cornerstone of U.S. Christian Right efforts to maintain the dominant status of conservative Christian worldviews within U.S. policy, institutions, and socio-cultural norms. Since the 1960s, Christian Right groups have called for an abstinence-only approach © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_6

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to sex education in the U.S. that excludes mention of any form of sexual activity (from open-mouth kissing to touching to intercourse) and prohibits teaching about contraception except in terms of its failure rates (PRWORA, 2015, pp. 104–193 in Williams, 2011, p. 417). Teaching that virginity before marriage is the socially ‘expected standard’ of human sexual activity, the abstinence-only approach is further grounded in the assumption that all learners are heterosexual and cisgender. Efforts to provide scientifically accurate, non-judgmental, and contextually relevant curricula that takes a rights-based approach to sexual health, sexuality, and relationships, or what has now come to be called ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’ (CSE) (Miedema et al., 2020, p. 748), have been vehemently opposed by abstinence-only activists in the U.S. who argue that this approach encourages young people to engage in sexual activity. Despite evidence that abstinence-only approaches to sex education are not only ineffective, but can increase levels of unsafe sexual activity amongst young people (see Stanger-Hall & Hall, 2011; Fox et al., 2019), abstinence-­only activists have been relentless in their campaigning against safe-sex education and content that is inclusive of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). American abstinence-only campaigners have become increasingly active beyond U.S. borders in recent years, stoking moral panic and fear about sexuality education in several African countries and mobilizing coalitions against sexuality education at the United Nations. In recent years, the abstinence-only movement has played a significant role in facilitating the globalization of the pro-family movement, providing a strategic entry point for undermining LGBTIQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights. While U.S.-based abstinence-only arguments have positioned liberal sexual culture as the enemy to be defeated, their global advocacy strategy has incorporated anti-colonial rhetoric that accuses safe-sex education, and education on gender and sexuality diversity, of violating the national sovereignty and ‘traditional’ culture. Yet, as this chapter will discuss, the anti-colonial arguments they invoke ultimately reinforces colonial imaginaries of African nations and people as ‘childlike’ and in need of saving by ‘rational’ adults and governments from the global north. The U.S. abstinence-only movement began to take shape in the 1960s and gained significant political power domestically in the 1990s. At the time, the movement was bolstered by substantial increases in federal funding, and several single-issue organizations were established that were dedicated to promoting abstinence and reforming “sex saturated” U.S. society

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(Williams, 2011, p. 418). These organizations formed part of the broader network of ‘pro-family’ actors that view abstinence as one dimension of a broader conservative agenda against feminism, the women’s liberation movement, and gay rights. In the 1990s, Christian Right groups were reported to have created more than eight hundred controversies over sex education in the U.S. through the use of “carefully calculated, emotionally charged rhetoric to steer public anxieties over how sex is taught in schools towards conservative political ends” (di Mauro & Joffe, 2007, Irvine, 2008, Kendall, 2013 in Moore et al., 2021, p. 679). In the early 2000s, the abstinence-only movement and the U.S. Christian Right more broadly began to assert its influence within U.S. foreign policy, pushing for regulations within federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention programming, or PEPFAR (Santelli et al., 2013). Playing an integral role in promoting abstinence as the leading form of HIV/AIDS prevention and downgrading condom use in USAID’s PEPFAR program, abstinence-­ only approaches to sex education and HIV transmission became instrumental in limiting the kinds of sexual health services and education that U.S. federal funding could support at global scales (p. 2). In addition to creating infrastructure and aid conditionalities that would promote abstinence-only approaches to sexual education and health in African countries, PEPFAR contributed to the formation of transnational links between conservative Christian Right actors and African political and religious leaders that have continued to strengthen over time (Leventhal, 2010). This recent history created welcoming conditions for Family Watch International as it rolled out an abstinence-only campaign across several countries in East and Southern Africa in the 2010s. Coordinated actions by U.S. Christian Right campaigners to discredit Comprehensive Sexuality Education in East and Southern Africa provide a poignant illustration of how the U.S. abstinence-only movement has transformed into a transnational campaign that occupies a strategic role within broader pro-family advocacy to protect heteropatriarchal systems of power.

Abstinence-Only in Africa Until the late 2010s, sexuality education had not been particularly controversial or an issue that inspired ultra-conservative political mobilization in East and Southern African countries. While academic research (see, for instance, Mufune, 2008; Francis, 2012; Smith & Harrison, 2013; Yego,

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2017) has noted varying degrees of teacher readiness and support for delivering safe-sex education, there has been a relatively high degree of government and civil society support for providing young people with education and access to sexual and reproductive health services in order to curb the high rates of unintended pregnancy and the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) amongst youth in the region. Providing young people with evidence-based and scientifically accurate sexuality education has been largely viewed as a means of addressing these persisting sexual and reproductive health (SRHR) challenges in the region. In 2013, government ministers of health and education across Eastern and Southern Africa1 endorsed the East and Southern African Ministerial Commitment on comprehensive sexuality education and youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services (the ‘ESA Commitment’), agreeing to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes, strengthen HIV prevention through access to comprehensive sexuality education, and integrate sexual and reproductive health services for young people. The signing of the ESA commitment by ministers in the region was the outcome of a two-year process led by UNAIDS and supported by East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. UNESCO led the process of developing the commitment with the involvement of civil society, bilateral, and UN partners through sub-regional civil society and government consultations (UNESCO, 2013a, p. 10). The CSE curricula described within the ESA Commitment drew upon the sexuality education model created in Uganda in 2003 to reduce HIV transmission and early pregnancy (Vanwesenbeeck et al., 2016, p. 473), and which was developed by UNESCO and civil society partners for use internationally (p. 473). The ‘ESA Commitment’ served as confirmation that governments in the region had reached a level of consensus about CSE as a strategy for improving the educational and health outcomes of young people. Furthermore, the signing of the ESA commitment by ministers of health and education also responded to the demands of civil society actors for 1  Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, eSwatini (formerly Swaziland), Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Seychelles.

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governments to improve youth-focused SRHR support and education in line with existing constitutional mandates. In the years prior to the signing of the ESA commitment, existing evidence painted a worrying picture of youth sexual health in the region: no less than 20% of young women in six countries in the region had started childbearing by the age of 17; between 15% and 35% of women reported having experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives in the nine countries for which data on gender-­ based violence was available; an estimated 34% of women aged 20–24 years were married or in union by the age of 18; approximately 2.6 million young people aged 15–24 were living with HIV with an overall prevalence rate amongst young women being over two times higher than amongst young men of the same age (Watson et al., 2021, p. 265). Notably, the ESA commitment did not contain any new policy directives but rather aimed to consolidate and strengthen progress that had already been made in the region towards youth SRHR by setting specific targets: Reducing new HIV infections among young people (by 90%), reducing unplanned pregnancies among young women (by 75%), eliminating child marriage and gender-based violence, and implementing good-quality CSE curricular frameworks and sexual and reproductive health training for teachers, health workers, and social workers in order to increase the numbers of people with comprehensive knowledge about HIV prevention. Linked to these targets, the commitment contained a regional accountability framework to track progress made at country and regional levels (UNESCO, 2013b). Prior to the ESA commitment, governments in the region had already endorsed several regional and international commitments for supporting youth access to sexual and reproductive health services, education, and rights. These included the Millennium Development Goal Framework (which recognized the importance of adolescent and reproductive health and rights), the Abuja Declaration of 2001 (in which governments pledged to commit 15% of their annual budgets to improve the health sector), the 2003 Protocol to the African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (which was developed by the African Union to serve as a continental policy framework to operationalize sexual and reproductive health and rights) (African Union, 2003), and the 2013 Maseru Declaration on the Fight Against HIV/AIDS in the SADC Region (which involved initiatives to eradicate HIV/AIDS such as mobilization campaigns and committing adequate funding for healthcare).

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In stark contrast to the minimal attention paid to the initial signing of the ESA Commitment in 2013, its pending renewal seven years later was marked by a sequence of opposition campaigns against Comprehensive Sexuality Education, and the ESA commitment specifically. Suddenly, CSE was becoming a site of moral panic and outrage, with groups of ‘concerned parents’, church groups, and policymakers condemning CSE as a foreign agenda to sexualise African children. Disinformation about the content of CSE curricula was going viral across social media platforms, parents and conservative civil society groups were organizing anti-CSE demonstrations, and a series of nearly identical petitions to governments asking them to withdraw from the ESA commitment were circulating online. The sequence of events that unfolded, and their effects, were not spontaneous. Rather, this timeous surge in opposition had been carefully planned and orchestrated as a strategy of discrediting and eliminating the ESA commitment and ultimately eroding consensus in the region about CSE and youth sexual and reproductive health rights.

Laying the Foundations for the Stop CSE Campaign While campaigns to persuade ministers in the region to withdraw their support for the ESA commitment intensified in 2019, the work of sewing discord about CSE had been underway since the mid-2010s largely through the efforts of Family Watch International and its founding president, Sharon Slater. It was in 2015 that Slater began touring the region in an effort to generate alarm about CSE. Notably, this tour followed in the wake of international controversy over Uganda’s proposed ‘Kill the Gays’ bill, and accusations that FWI and Slater, amongst other U.S. Christian Right actors, had encouraged Martin Ssempa and David Bahati to create the bill. FWI had been associated with Ssempa in the early 2000s when Slater appointed Ssempa as FWI’s African coordinator, describing him as an “internationally renowned family activist” (Salinas, 2011). However, FWI denied its involvement in the Ugandan legislation, issuing a press release refuting accusations that FWI supported the punishment of “people with same-sex attraction” (Family Watch International, n.d.-a). The press release elaborated that Ssempa had been approached as the FWI Africa coordinator because he had been involved in the “youth abstinence movement” in Uganda, and “agreed to help coordinate FWI efforts to promote abstinence-based education in Africa” (ibid).

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In the press release, FWI claimed that “exposing” CSE was Slater’s main objective during her time in the region, not promoting anti-­ homosexuality legislation. Incidentally, in an effort to distance FWI from the controversial anti-homosexuality legislation, the statement offers details of when and how the Stop CSE campaign was brought to Eastern and Southern African countries: In 2015, while en route to Kenya, Mrs. Slater stopped in Uganda for two days to give presentations regarding the ESA Ministerial Commitment on Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). The purpose of her presentation was to expose the graphic nature of CSE programs, which promote sexual pleasure as a right to children at all ages and that promote masturbation to preschoolers, among other things. At no time did Mrs. Slater address Uganda’s laws relating to homosexuality, but rather she promoted protections for the rights of parents to guide the education of their children and encouraged Uganda to enact policies that discourage children from engaging in sexual activity (Family Watch International, n.d.-b).

In an effort to obscure FWI’s role in Ssempa’s proposed bill, the statement provides an indication that FWI’s Stop CSE campaign efforts in ESA began in 2015. It also says that Slater made further visits to Uganda in 2016 and 2018. One year after Slater’s first visit to Uganda in 2015, “blistering debates over sex education” erupted in the country over claims that learners were being taught “homosexuality,” resulting in the banning of CSE (Moore et al., 2021, p. 678). The World Congress of Families has also been convening regional gatherings across the region since 2017, creating strategic sites for anti-CSE campaigning. In 2019, the World Congress of Families hosted a regional conference in Accra, Ghana, on the theme The African Family and Sustainable Development: Strong Families, Strong Nation. According to the conference website, the purpose of the gathering was to “bring together all pro-life and family advocates and believers” and “to establish an active collaboration with government officials, the media, academia, religious & traditional bodies, civil societies, NGOs and interest groups to deliberate intensely on the state of the family” (International Organization for the Family, 2019). Speakers at the event included both American and African pro-family activists, including Sharon Slater, Brian Brown (President of the WCF/International Organisation for the Family), Theresa Okafor (Founder of the Nigeria-based Foundation for African

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Cultural Heritage), and Catherine Onwioduokit of Family Renaissance International (WCF’s local partner and host for the event). This conference had been preceded by a series of other regional WCF gatherings in Lilongwe (2017), Lagos (2017), Cape Town (2017), Nairobi (2018), and Kampala (2018). A series of online events were also convened in the region in the run-up to the 2020 renewal of the ESA commitment in a bid to mobilize wider publics against CSE. In 2020, FWI, the Protect Child Health Coalition and United Families International hosted a series of webinars about various pro-family topics such as “Sexualizing Children Worldwide: UNESCO’s ‘educational’ agenda (Part 1 & 2),” “UN Human Rights: A blatant abuse of power,” “Protecting Children from the SRHR/CSE Agenda in Zambia,” and “Protecting Children from the SRHR/CSE Agenda in Kenya.” FWI has also formulated copy-and-paste coalitions in Eastern and Southern Africa (i.e. Protect Children South Africa Coalition, Protect Namibian Children Coalition, Protect Uganda Children Coalition, Protect Tanzanian Children Coalition, Protect Zambian Children Coalition, and others) that created platforms for further opposition campaigns. According to FWI, Stop CSE is an “alliance” that aims to “increase awareness and strengthen individual and community efforts to stop CSE” (Family Watch International, n.d.-b). The campaign website claims that the movement includes partners working in more than seventy countries and that these partners include individuals, families, businesses, organizations, foundations, churches, groups, and clubs. The wide-ranging types of partners involved in the Stop CSE Alliance reveal the extent to which FWI is working to involve and engage all potential opportunities for growing its efforts to prevent CSE content from entering school curricula and removing it where it does exist. FWI’s Stop CSE campaign website also houses several resources that it circulated among policymakers in ESA such as the War on Children documentary and a policy tool called “The Fifteen harmful effects of CSE Analysis Tool.” One of the key functions of the website is to house resources for anti-CSE advocacy, providing conservatives with a set of tools that can be used to lodge ‘evidence-based’ arguments against CSE. These resources include videos, policy briefs, reports, and other forms of ‘evidence’ to support their claims about the dangers of CSE. A review of these resources also provides a useful overview of Stop CSE claims, focus areas, and discourses for mobilizing outrage and fear about

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CSE. For instance, the Stop CSE campaign video, War on Children, accuses CSE content of being a form of “mental molestation” that manipulates, indoctrinates, and confuses children through its “pornographic” and “obscene” content. And, according to the Stop CSE petition hosted on the campaign website: We are deeply troubled that these dangerous programs that are sexualizing children around the world, threatening their health and compromising their innocence are being aggressively promoted and/or funded by organizations…as well as various UN agencies… largely funded by Western governments and donors.

The resources and narratives present on the website eliminate any ambiguities about the origins of the anti-CSE rhetoric and campaigning that took shape across East and Southern Africa in 2019. As discussed below, the arguments that were levelled against CSE in the region drew explicitly on the narratives that were circulated within FWI’s Stop CSE campaign materials, which were created prior to the rolling out of the campaign across ESA. In addition to circulating materials online, FWI and other pro-family groups host international forums in which they provide mentorship to African policymakers who are impacting sexual and reproductive health, rights, and education policy in their countries and within international governance arenas. In 2019, Family Watch International convened a two-­ day Global Family Policy Forum in its home city of Gilbert, Arizona. Speakers and participants in the forum came from several regions, including Africa (Theresa Okafor, founder of the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage and Emmanuel Mwamba, Ambassador of Zambia to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the African Union), Brazil (Hon. Angela Vidal Gandra de Silva Martins, State Secretary of Family Affairs, Government of Brazil), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (Marghoob Saleem Butt, Executive Director of the OIC’s Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission), and the U.S. In addition to a series of presentations, the program included ‘practicums’ on “Negotiating ECOSOC Commission & UNGA Resolutions2,” “Negotiating gender 2  ECOSOC: United Nations Economic and Social Council; UNGA: United Nations General Assembly.

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policies,” and “Negotiating sex education policies.” These practicums, undoubtedly, prepare participants to engage in policy debate, equipping them with the strategies to promote pro-family perspectives and language within national policy debates and at the United Nations.

Mounting the Coordinated Stop CSE Campaign in East and Southern Africa One year before the ESA Commitment was due to be reaffirmed in December 2020, Family Watch International released a policy brief, “The Deceptive ‘Eastern and Southern African (ESA) Commitment’ on Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE).” The brief patronizingly claims that the African health and education ministers who signed the commitment in 2013 were deceived into agreeing to something that they did not fully understand: It is highly unlikely that the African ministers who were invited to this conference for the purpose of signing this agreement were ever shown the highly controversial CSE curricula and manuals being promoted by conference sponsors. If they had actually seen the CSE curricula, they likely would have strongly opposed the ESA commitment and refused to sign it (Family Watch International, 2019, p. 1).

Claiming that the twenty health and education ministers who signed the ESA commitment were misguided by ‘conference sponsors’ into agreeing to CSE, the brief neglects to mention that the ESA commitment was not aimed at introducing something ‘new’ to the region but at strengthening existing initiatives towards improving youth access to sexual and reproductive health rights, education, and support services. This critical omission enabled FWI to claim that UN agencies were driving a hidden agenda in an attempt to unscrupulously promote sexualizing agendas in African countries. CSE, the brief further argues, endangers children, undermines parental consent, and ultimately the societies and nations where it is implemented. The policy brief encourages African leaders to formally withdraw from the commitment; refuse to let UN agencies and foreign governments design or implement sex education; and hold a firm position against CSE in all negotiated UN and regional agreements. The brief argues that these actions should be taken by all nations in order to “protect their children

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and youth by calling out the deceptive tactics used by UN agencies, their allied organizations, and several Western governments to further their radical sexual rights agenda and promote CSE to children.” While the ESA commitment is the clear focus of this brief, Latin America and the Caribbean are also listed as regions where similar commitments have been signed and where similar actions should be taken. In 2019, various groups in the region began to mobilize in a notably synchronized manner, launching their campaigns against CSE with remarkably similar scripts and references to FWI’s anti-CSE materials. The key arguments informing the anti-CSE rhetoric revolved around four key claims: First, that Comprehensive Sexuality Education is a foreign agenda driven by United Nations agencies and western international NGOs that seek to promote abortion and homosexuality in African countries. Second, and related to the first point, was the argument that CSE threatens the national sovereignty of African nations and cultural beliefs of African communities. Third, that CSE attacks the innocence of children, sexualizing them, and encourages them to become ‘homosexual’. Finally, anti-CSE campaigners claimed that CSE was a threat to ‘parental rights’, and their rights to determine what their children learn in school. Together, these arguments had the effect of inciting moral panic about CSE as a multi-­ layered threat to children, families, societies, and nations. These talking points were deployed through repertoires of action that aimed to mobilize communities into pressuring governments to withdraw their support for the ESA commitment in the first instance, and ultimately, to change their positions on CSE. Disinformation campaigning, political demonstrations, and online petitions were the vehicles through which anti-CSE arguments were circulated amongst communities, while conservative civil society actors worked to address policymakers directly through public statements and lobbying. Together, these methods aimed to politicize the issue of CSE and to reinforce notions that the topics of sexual and reproductive rights, and gender and sexuality diversity, are ‘unAfrican’ and forms of western imperialism that endanger children and violate parental rights. The circulation of disinformation was a key tactic used to malign CSE and incite community outrage. In South Africa, for instance, a series of images began circulating on community and parent’s WhatsApp groups in November 2019, misrepresented as “leaked” content from the Department of Basic Education. The set of images depicted the process of human reproduction, beginning with images of nude white man and woman

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engaging in sexual intercourse and ending with the woman lying naked on a table, holding up a newborn baby as the now clothed man and male doctor look on, with pleased smiles on their faces. The images circulated with the following ‘warning’: This is the rubbish that the department of education will teach our kids from next year on. To think your 8 year old daughter’s private parts will be touched by a boy because it will be part of their practical. Now think about it, think about it again and again and again. Then decide what will you do about it (sic)

Far from being content from the South African school curricula, the images were screenshots of a Danish sex education book written by Per Holm Knudsen in 1971 called How a Baby is Made. More recently, the Zambian Ministry of Basic Education issued a statement to address the ongoing circulation of disinformation about sex education content in the national curricula, informing the public that “recent posts on social media are meant to tarnish Government and the great strides that the Ministry of Education and other partners have attained in combating teenage pregnancies and STI infections” (Zambian Ministry of Basic Education, 2023). The Ministry clarified that “The books circulating on social media are NOT developed by Ministry of Education” but had been photoshopped (ibid, original emphasis). The statement continued, stating that the ministry is “deeply concerned about misleading and alarmist information (both internal and through social media) on the content that is a clear misrepresentation of what is contained in the Zambian CSE curriculum framework” (ibid).

Curating Anti-CSE Campaigns: The Tsunami Strategy Against Sexuality Education If the swell of opposition against CSE felt sudden and overwhelming, it is because this was the intention of FWI’s strategy for political mobilization. On their Stop CSE campaign website, FWI explicitly sets the “Stop CSE ‘Tsunami Strategy’ step-by-step instructions” for mobilizing opposition against CSE. According to the website, the Tsunami Strategy is “the coordination of multiple, well-written, effective statements that build on each other…all aimed at the specific policy objective of protecting children from CSE, and to support abstinence-based, sexual-risk avoidance sex

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education.” These statements, it says, should be “presented by individuals at school board meetings or legislative hearings.” FWI goes as far as prescribing the number of statements that should be created (“a minimum of 30 statements if possible”) as well as a five-step process for creating them: Step 1: Identify a specific, long-term policy goal. Choose one main goal depending on your situation and stick with it. Step 2. Identify the opposition’s policy goals, main arguments, and talking points. Step 3. Decide on your short-term objective for the next public hearing or meeting. Step 4. Craft 30 statements that all ask for the same action to be taken. Step 5. Hold an emergency parents’ or stakeholders’ meeting to recruit as many people as possible to present your talking points (StopCSE.org n.d.) On FWI’s Stop CSE campaign website, several ‘tips’ are provided for how statements against CSE can be best crafted to present a consistent set of arguments for the removal of CSE. Some of these tips relate to the content of statements, and others relate to the form of their delivery. In terms of the content of statements, the Tsunami Strategy emphasizes that “each statement should give a different reason for why the legislative body or school board you may be addressing should take the action you have identified as your goal” and that it is “critical that [the statements] all ask for the same action.” Such a strategy, it would seem, has the effect of creating a perception that many people oppose CSE for different reasons relating to their individual circumstances and concerns, but are united in their demand to have sexuality education removed from school curricula. The Tsunami Strategy further advises that those writing the statements should “Write the talking points in a very respectful, non-attacking way. You want your side to come off as likeable and reasonable.” Writers are also advised to “Ensure your points are non-religious as you won’t be listened to if you insist that your religious views be taught to other students,” and that statements “Do not have points that attack sex ed in general as you will then be considered irrelevant to the discussion.” Reflecting an awareness that the statements, and those writing them, appear to be “likeable,” “reasonable,” and “non-religious” in order to be persuasive within contexts where there is a general level of support for CSE, FWI encourages anti-CSE campaigners to present themselves as rational, “respectful,” and tempered in order to be persuasive.

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The use of these discursive strategies are evident across the nearly identical petition letters that circulated throughout the region in 2019. For instance, in Malawi, a statement was addressed to the Malawian Government and the Minister of Education, arguing that “CSE is a harmful Western- and UN-driven agenda that seeks to change Malawian gender and sexual norms under the guise of HIV and teen pregnancy prevention” and that “rolling out CSE without prior parental involvement, guidance and approval violates well-established parental rights.” In Zambia, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) released a press statement in September 2020 titled “Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) and the Launch of the Protect Zambian Children Coalition,” urging the government to withdraw its support for the ESA commitment. The statement read: Yesterday, we delivered a letter to the office of the Honourable minister of General Education Honourable Dr. Dennis Wanchinga, MP and a copy of the same to the Honourable Minister of National Guidance and Religious Affairs Honourable Rev Godfridah Sumaili, MP. The letter is an appeal for the Ministry of General Education to immediately withdraw Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) from the Zambian Education curriculum (Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, 2020)

In the same month, Zambian Ambassador to Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to the African Union, Emmanuel Mwamba, also published an article in the national media, arguing that “at the heart of CSE is a determined goal to achieve, sexualise children, make them less ‘homophobic’, and let them know that sex is a right with whoever they wish to have it with” (Cullinan et al., 2020, para 6). One month later, Zambian Minister of Parliament, Sebastian Kopulande, proposed a ‘Private members’ motion to suspend CSE in schools. Although the motion did not pass, it had a chilling effect on the general levels of support for CSE amongst government officials. A Multi-Ministerial Technical Committee was appointed to review and revise the country’s CSE framework according to the concerns raised by various stakeholders. As of February 2023, the framework has yet to be validated. Amidst this process, disinformation about the content of CSE curricula continued circulating through social media networks.

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In Namibia, a public demonstration against CSE took place in Windhoek in September 2019 where demonstrators carried placards with messages such as “Stop CSE” and “Protect our Children.” In 2020, the Coalition of Churches Namibia and the Organisation for Ethical Social Justice were escalating their efforts to persuade the government to remove CSE. A writer for the Namibian Economist reported that the CCN stated, “We call upon the government to henceforth remove any reference to comprehensive sexuality education in our school curriculum, in order to protect our children and preserve the future of our beloved Nation, Namibia” (Rasmeni, 2020). Similar statements were also circulating beyond ESA. For instance, a petition started by the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage called “Stop sexualizing Nigerian children through CSE” was addressed to His Excellency Adamu Adamu, the Federal Minister for Education in Nigeria, stating: Comprehensive Sex Education is a highly controversial, “rights-based” approach to sex education that encompasses a great deal more than just teaching children and youth about sexual intercourse and human reproduction. Developed in the West, primarily in the United States, CSE is now being implemented in most countries around the world… While there is a need to teach “proper sex education to our children, Comprehensive Sex Education is the radicalized version of it” [sic] (Foundation for African Cultural Heritage, 2019).

The petition further claims that “CSE promotes disrespect for parents and religious and cultural values.” The letter concludes with the demand, “Please sign this petition asking the Cabinet Secretary for education in Nigeria Honourable Adamu to stop all efforts to implement the curriculum as we don’t approve of it.” In the same year, Lifesite News (a Catholic pro-life news website) reported that the President of the Ghanaian Catholic Bishops Council (GCBC), Bishop Philip Naameh, publicly voiced opposition to CSE, stating, “(W)e want to call on people in high positions and parents to reject [CSE] outright because this is not for us…It is a subtle way to introduce this gay and lesbian thing to our children” (Ghanaweb, 2019b). Pentecostal leaders also spoke out against CSE, including Paul Yaw Frimpong-Manso, president of the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, who was quoted as saying, “I call it comprehensive satanic engagement” (Fieve,

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2021, p. 4). Islamic leaders were also voicing their opposition to CSE, such as a spokesperson from the Office of the National Chief Imam (ONCI) who said, “We would like to state unequivocally that the Islamic community does not accept any form of educating minors and pupils on sexuality” (Ghanaweb, 2019a). Claiming that CSE is an agenda driven by western powers and the UN, the letters argue that cultural values and ‘parental rights’ are threatened by CSE, as opposed to presenting CSE as being a threat to conservative religious values. The petition letters provide important insights into the arguments that were mobilized against CSE, reflecting the ways in which explicitly religious language was avoided in the statements, and references were rather made to rights, parents, and national sovereignty in order to portray CSE as a multi-layered threat stemming from local concerns. The Tsunami Strategy also encourages those creating and delivering statements to draw upon scientific evidence and to “Support your points with peer-reviewed research wherever possible.” The “Protect Children of Malawi” letter, for instance, provides a lengthy list of academic references to support their opposition against CSE in Malawian school curricula, such as articles published in Sexual Health, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the Journal of Sexual Medicine. While the petition letter circulating in South Africa did not make explicit reference to academic research, it makes a concerted effort to ground its hostility towards gender and sexuality diversity in scientific evidence rather than religious belief, demanding that “A biological view of gender, not gender fluidity” be taught in schools, “while offering compassion and assistance for those struggling with their sexuality” (Family Policy Institute, 2016). These rhetorical tactics serve the purpose of presenting the rejection of LGBTIQ+ identities as being motivated by concerns for cultural values and “compassion,” and as being grounded in scientific evidence and rights-based frameworks, rather than motivated by explicitly conservative religious perspectives, anti-LGBTIQ+ prejudice, or bigotry. These arguments also craft a conservative decolonial rhetoric to portray CSE as a form of western neo-imperialism, asserting essentializing heterosexist imaginaries about African cultures and belief systems, and reinforcing the idea that young people have no agency in relation to their parents or other adult decision makers. As discussed in the previous chapter, this anti-colonial frame has become symptomatic of broader anti-gender ideology and campaigns against LGBTIQ+ rights and SRHR in Africa and

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elsewhere. When recontextualizing the argument that reproductive rights and LGBTIQ+ rights will destroy civilization for audiences in ESA, and audiences in the Global South more broadly, these heterosexist and patriarchal instigations of moral panic are combined with a geopolitical narrative constructing CSE and SRHR as being part of a “global sexual rights agenda” driven by UN agencies and international donors. In placing emphasis upon UN agencies and international SRHR organizations, U.S. Christian Right groups obscure the ways in which their discourse and ideology reinforce social arrangements and imaginaries that have been complicit in the exploitation and oppression of African, and other colonized, societies.

The Stop CSE Campaign in Global Governance Arenas At the level of global governance too, FWI is working to coordinate global opposition against CSE, and African member states have played a key role in supporting these efforts. At the 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2021, for instance, anti-CSE advocates joined forces to oppose references to sexuality education within a draft resolution titled, “Ending Violence Against Children Through Health Systems Strengthening and Multi-sectoral Approaches.” The 2021 WHA gathering, which focused on “Ending this pandemic, preventing the next: building together a healthier, safer and fairer world,” included a session considering the draft resolution to address the increasing forms of violence and economic burden that women and children were facing during the pandemic. The draft resolution recommended actions that member states should take to address interpersonal violence, especially against women and children (World Health Organisation, 2021). The resolution further emphasized the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s well-being, noting that school closures, the halting of protective services, deepening economic hardship, and increased burdens on households have “threatened multiple aspects of children’s physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive health” (ibid). In response to these ongoing, and worsening, forms of oppression and violence that children face around the world, the resolution proposed sixteen actions to be taken across social sectors. Amongst the actions set out in the draft resolution, sexuality education was proposed as a measure to empower young people to have greater

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knowledge and power in relation to their health and well-being. According to the resolution, member states should: …provide accessible gender-sensitive, free from gender stereotypes, evidence-­ based and appropriate to age and evolving capacities sexuality ­education to children, and with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, with the best interests of the child as their basic concern to empower and enable them to realize their health well-being and dignity, build communication, self-protection and risk reduction skills, as a fundamental part of the efforts to prevent, recognize and respond to violence against children (ibid).

In its mention of ‘sexuality’ education, rather than ‘sex’ education or ‘sexual health’ education, the resolution indicates that the curricula should not only focus on the biological aspects of sex but aim to empower young people and foster their dignity through a focus on well-being, communication, self-protection, and risk reduction. This paragraph was singled out by anti-CSE activists at the WHA, becoming a topic of intense debate between member states, who eventually voted to remove entirely, rather than amend, the recommendation. Family Watch International took credit for coordinating the effort to eliminate reference to ‘sexuality education’ from the draft resolution (Family Watch International, 2021b), reporting that the amendment to the language of sexuality education was co-sponsored by the Russian Federation, Eswatini, Egypt, Mozambique, and Zambia. Notably, Eswatini and Mozambique were also co-sponsors of the original draft resolution, indicating that some last-minute decisions were made by their WHO delegates. Earlier that day, FWI circulated an “alert” to its networks encouraging them to “pass this urgent information on to the person in your government handling WHA negotiations in Geneva”: There are serious problems with the document on ending violence against children presently under the silent procedure until 2 pm today! The proposed draft has dangerous new language in the sex-ed para that is code for LGBT education. […] Of course if the term “sexuality education” is retained, then it will encompass LGBT elements anyway so it is vital that “sexuality education” be replaced with sex education, but better yet that the whole paragraph…be deleted! (Family Watch International, 2021a)

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This intervention, although rapidly organized, was not altogether spontaneous. Rather, the targeting and elimination of reference to sexuality education in the draft resolution was the product of a long-term effort by FWI to orchestrate a network of actors who are willing and able to challenge policy and policy language that addresses youth SRHR. The alert circulated by FWI further shows how opposition against LGBTIQ+ rights is embedded within efforts to oppose CSE. While on one hand, Slater’s reference to LGBTIQ+ rights may be used to create alarm amongst some member states to oppose the language of sexuality education, the statement also reflects the converse—opposition against CSE as a package for opposing LGBTIQ+ rights.

Conclusion: The Geopolitics of CSE and the Colonial Roots of Child Fundamentalism The ‘StopCSE’ campaign had the effect of persuading some of the original signatories to withdraw their support for the 2021 ESA Commitment (Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Uganda), with just over half of the original signatories endorsing its renewal (Botswana, Namibia, eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zanzibar/Tanzania). Discourses and disinformation continue to circulate about CSE in the region, and the narrative that CSE is a neoimperialist agenda has become a cornerstone of related attacks against SRHR and LGBTIQ+ rights. Beyond African contexts, disinformation campaigns and narratives against CSE have also been observed in Latin American, Central and Eastern European contexts in recent years (see Martínez et al., 2021). The discourses informing the Stop CSE campaign are not new but are transforming existing U.S. Christian Right discourses about protecting childhood innocence to gain appeal in African and other Global South contexts. In the 1990s, Lauren Berlant (1997) argued that the figure of the child has served as a ‘stand-in’ within complicated and contradictory anxieties and desires about U.S. national identity for several decades (p. 6), while Henry Jenkins (1998) wrote that the figure of the child had been the site of “almost every major political battle of the twentieth century” (Jenkins, 1998, p. 2). While generational power relations are not ‘new’ in African countries by any means, U.S. Christian Right actors are activating a particular brand of child politics in African contexts that reinforce the

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heteropatriarchal notions of family, and the binary distinctions and hierarchies it institutionalizes between men/women and adults/children. As a way of invoking ‘the child’ as a discursive category with which one cannot disagree, abstinence-only child politics aim to constitute the child as a fixed and absolute category characterized by innocence and vulnerability, illustrating what Baird (2008) refers to as ‘child fundamentalism’: “discourse that relies wholly or in part on an insistence on the child as an impermeable category that must be defended and where the child often becomes inconised or fetishized” as “the perfect moment, the lost harmonious past, the never-never land…conceived outside of history and outside of politics” (p. 293). This rhetorical strategy not only ignores the sexual and reproductive health risks faced by young people in the region, and the role of adults/parents in creating these risks, but it obscures the racialized geopolitical power relations that are reinforced as predominantly white and middle-class pro-family actors from the U.S. position themselves as paternalistic allies who are protecting African people from other Westerners. Historically, the figure of the child has not only been instrumental within the ideological scaffolding used to construct heteropatriarchal household regimes of male dominance and power, but a global power hierarchy dominated and controlled by European men (Blaut, 1993). As decolonial critiques of child politics have shown, child protectionist rhetoric has a history within the construction of colonial-era notions of indigenous people as ‘childlike’ and in need of saving by civilized ‘adults’ in the global north. Colonial epistemologies of ‘childhood’ as a developmental state were integral to the construction of the ‘irrational’ and ‘inferior’ child and the ‘rational’ European adult male, who positioned himself as occupying “the highest stage of evolution” in relation to all women, children, and non-European men (Mills & Lefrançois, 2018, p. 508). Common characterisations of colonized people as “childlike” ultimately functioned to reframe colonial violence as necessary, legitimate, and even benevolent (p. 508). This history provides insight into the multiple power relations that are reinforced by Stop CSE efforts to constitute the figures of the child, and African nations, as vulnerable and innocent categories that require the protection of western heteropatriarchy. Claiming that educating children about their bodily autonomy and agency is a violation of both parental rights and national sovereignty, Stop CSE rhetoric aims to reinforce the heteropatriarchal basis of society as well as a global order based on heteropatriarchal institutions of family/nation ruled by a patriarchal figure whose power and supremacy are natural and unquestionable.

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When established as common sense, Stop CSE rhetoric further constructs African futurities as being contingent upon compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal forms of power and control whilst avoiding recognition of the needs of young people in the present. Consistently pointing to UN agencies as those demanding that governments in the region implement CSE, Stop CSE narratives obscure the role that African youth are playing in advocating for better SRHR services and education, reinforcing the notion that young people in the region are vulnerable, innocent, and in need of adult decision makers to speak on their behalf. Yet, young people in ESA are providing powerful interventions into these narratives, showing the agency and ability of youth not only to speak for themselves but also to influence policy-making and to shape their own futures. For instance, the Vice-President of the African Youth and Adolescents Network (AfriYAN), Hussein Melele, said that the ESA commitment “has opened doors that were closed to us as young leaders. It has provided an opportunity for further advocacy on SRHR to change the lives of adolescents and young people” (UNICEF, 2021). AfriYAN and other young activists in East and Southern Africa are actively rejecting the subjecthood of vulnerability and innocence that Stop CSE campaigners constitute for young people. In recentring the present realities faced by youth in the region, these activists assert a vision of the future in which young people have agency over their lives. Beyond their significance for young people in ESA, calls by young people for access to rights and agency subvert constructions of childhood that reinforce heteropatriarchal power relations. Heteropatriarchal interests in essentialising childhood as a category of ‘innocence’ and ‘vulnerability’ not only constitute power relations between older and younger people within specific households or communities but have been integral within civilisational projects that have constructed entire populations as ‘childlike’ and in need of saving by ‘rational’ parental figures in the global north. These power relations, which are embedded within Stop CSE campaign rhetoric, are strategically obscured through the narrative that the content of CSE curriculum is a neo-colonial tactic to influence and endanger African children. Thus, Stop CSE campaigning not only jeopardizes public health and human rights initiatives to improve the life opportunities and outcomes of young people, but it reproduces hierarchical power relations that have historically disadvantaged African people and societies more broadly.

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Vanwesenbeeck, I., Westeneng, J., de Boer, T., Reinders, J., & van Zorge, R. (2016). Lessons learned from a decade implementing Comprehensive Sexuality Education in resource poor settings: The World Starts with Me. Sex Education, 16(5), 471–486. Watson, K., Akwara, E., Machawira, P., Bakaroudis, M., Tallarico, R., & Chandra-­ Mouli, V. (2021). The East and Southern Africa Ministerial Commitment: A review of progress toward fulfilling young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (2013–2018). Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 29(1), 261–286. Williams, C. J. (2011). Battling a ‘sex-saturated society’: The abstinence movement and the politics of sex education. Sexualities, 14(4), 416–443. World Health Organisation (2021, May 26). Ending violence against children through health systems strengthening and multisectoral approaches. Seventy-­ Fourth World Health Assembly. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/gb/ ebwha/pdf_files/WHA74/A74_ACONF8-en.pdf. Yego, L. J. (2017). Exploring the use of participatory visual methods in teaching sexuality education within the HIV and AIDS education programme in selected Kenyan secondary schools. Doctoral dissertation, Nelson Mandela University. Zambian Ministry of Education. (2023). Ministry of Education clarifies misinformation on Comprehensive Sexuality Education books circulating on social media. Lusaka Times. Retrieved from https://www.lusakatimes.com/ 2023/02/22/ministry-of-education-clarifies-misinformation-on-comprehensive-sexuality-education-books-circulating-on-social-media/#:~:text=The%20 information%20covering%20various%20topics,Religious%20Education%20 and%20Civic%20Education.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Shifting Contexts, Selective Decoloniality, and Pro-Family Silences

Abstract  This chapter discusses key themes that emerged through this investigation of U.S. Christian Right pro-family advocacy against sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, and Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Africa. Pro-family developments underway in African countries are considered in relation to the shifting geopolitics that are shaping, and being shaped by, anti-gender politics. The selective decolonial rhetoric used by pro-family actors is critically reviewed, and the ways in which this discursive strategy incorporates colonial ideologies of gender, sexuality, and family are highlighted. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the consequences of pro-family advocacy in relation to additional areas of sexual and reproductive health and human rights advocacy in Africa. Keywords  Decolonial • Geopolitics • U.S. Christian Right • Pro-family

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3_7

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Shifting Contexts One decade since this project began, it has become remarkably clear that answers to the questions of how and why U.S. Christian Right groups are influencing sexuality and gender politics in African countries are one dimension of broader developments in which ultra-conservative illiberal populist social movements and transnational networks are contesting human rights and democracy in several parts of the world. Within their opposition against LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE, far-right groups are not simply rejecting the paradigm of human rights, but advancing alternative definitions of human rights premised upon the idea that some forms of inequality are natural, desirable, and necessary for national prosperity. Anti-gender, or pro-family, rhetoric and advocacy explicitly target issues of sexual and reproductive rights, attempting to retain social, economic, and political hierarchies and forms of exclusion that have historically structured male power, dominance, and authority. Efforts to restrict reproductive choice and rights undermine bodily autonomy, while their efforts to erode notions of gender equality and diversity pose an existential threat to queer individuals and communities, especially those marginalised by other axes of difference such as race, ethnicity, disability, and class status. Attempts to discredit ways of knowing the world that recognise the existence of lived realities beyond heterosexuality, patriarchy, and the nuclear family model are integral to pro-family advocacy against the civil rights of individuals whose existence challenges the modern/colonial mythology of the gender binary, compulsory heterosexuality, and the universality of the nuclear family. While anti-gender actors go to great lengths to couch their prejudice in positive terms, claiming that they seek to ‘protect’ children and families, their efforts invalidate existence beyond the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family model are genocidal. Statistical reporting on the rise of hate crimes targeting LGBTIQ+ people, and especially transgender women, indicates that the intensification of transphobic and homophobic rhetoric and policymaking in recent years is translating into sharp increases in violence and murder across several contexts where profamily politics are on the rise (see, for instance, Arcus Foundation 2019; Federal Bureau of Investigation Annual Crime Report 2022; ILGA Europe 2023). In addition to the consequences of pro-family rhetoric for LGBTIQ+ people and anyone whose life course does not conform to the nuclear

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family norm, pro-family politics have global political implications in the ‘geopolitical boundary-making practices’ (Edenborg 2023) they assert. Interrogation of the colonial concepts, such as the universality of the nuclear family, employed by pro-family actors to discredit LGBTIQ+ existence and rights, reproductive justice, and sexuality education indicate the underlying interests that animate these movements as they assert ideologies that have historically served the interests of justifying oppression and exploitation. In addition to forming the basis of their geopolitical boundary-­making practices, ultra-conservative state and non-state actors are forging new geopolitical alignments and alliances in relation to their shared opposition against gender and sexuality-related rights and education, and liberal democratic values more broadly, as made evident by recent voting patterns against inclusive policy language at the United Nations. While the U.S. Christian Right is not the only node of pro-family or anti-gender advocacy, research has indicated that it is indeed a leading financier and organizer of coordinated efforts to undermine and roll back LGBTIQ+ rights, SRHR, and CSE at national and global policy levels. The need to understand how and why the U.S. Christian Right is promoting pro-family political agendas, and how they are working with ultra-­ conservative actors from other parts of the world, has become ever-more pressing. It is my hope that this book has provided some useful empirical insights into the networks that the U.S. Christian Right’s pro-family movement has developed in Africa, specifically, and the discourses they advance in these contexts. It has also been my intention to provide critical insights into discourses that shape pro-family movement’s agendas from a perspective that is aware of the historical and geopolitical interests served by the promotion of the nuclear family as a universal norm and standard of ‘civilization’. As Ann Towns (2014) shows, debates about gender relations within international politics are nothing new, but have featured within contestations about civilizational boundaries, civilizational identities, and international hierarchies since the late eighteenth century. Amidst the rise of a twenty-first-century pro-family movement, we are confronted with the task of interrogating how sexed and gendered constructions of ‘civilization’ are being contested, resisted, and reframed as new centres of geopolitical power emerge to contest a unipolar world system. In this regard, analyses of multipolarization and the formation of a post-western international order also stand to benefit from consideration of the role that anti-gender discourses and interests are playing in the constitution of

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new geopolitical boundary- and alliance-building practices. Given the recognition of similar anti-gender discourses on sovereignty across diverse geographic contexts, it is worth considering how, if at all, the politics of gender and sexuality diversity are operating as a ‘symbolic glue’ (see Grzebalska et. al., 2017) holding together diverse political actors in global souths and easts within multilateral and bilateral relations. As some countries adopt feminist foreign policy or take measures to include gender equality and LGBTIQ+ rights in their foreign policy, there are also states that are articulating geopolitical agendas against gender equality and autonomy, asserting what might be considered ‘anti-feminist’ or ‘anti-gender’ foreign policy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provides a poignant illustration of how fundamentalist sex and gender politics are featured within shifting global politics and power relations as Vladimir Putin imposes further restrictions on LGBTIQ+ people and rights in the name of justifying the war and countering western influence. In his 2022 speech declaring that the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine would be annexed, he stated that western countries “have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family” (Villarreal, 2022). He continued: Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools […] to be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable. We have a different future, our own future.

As Moss (2017) writes, anti-gender rhetoric against same-sex marriage, abortion, and sex education in schools has been placed “at the heart of Russia’s self-identification in opposition to the decadent West as well as at the heart of Russia’s geopolitical strategy to unite like-minded traditionalist forces behind Russia” (p. 195). Targeting sexual minorities and gender-­ diverse people has become a central mechanism within Putin’s strategy to gain international status as a world leader and destabilize the European Union by supporting dissenting right-wing factions in Europe (p. 197). Countries that have subsequently adopted feminist foreign policy are increasingly faced with the task of addressing rising anti-gender politics both domestically and internationally.

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Naming Power, Challenging Injustice Through an intersectional decolonial approach cognizant of the geopolitical interests historically served by the heteropatriarchal nuclear family institution, it becomes possible to observe and unpack the multiple social hierarchies at stake within current contestations over policy language. Whether or not ‘family’ appears in its plural form families, whether the term ‘gender’ or ‘women’ is used, or whether the term ‘sexual health education’ is used rather than ‘sexuality education’ are shaping twenty-first-­ century policy debates that have immense implications for who is included, and excluded, within initiatives aiming to address inequality and injustice. Moreover, these language games are the tip of a much deeper iceberg of contestations relating to not only national and global policy, but constructions of the nation and contestations over sovereignty and human rights in the context of a globalized, and increasingly multipolar, world. The work of historically oppressed groups to name the forms of power that oppress them has been a significant achievement within struggles for equal treatment, recognition, and opportunities. As Melissa Steyn (2015) writes, being able to name dynamics of dominance and oppression “is often the first step in changing the power balances” (p. 385). The naming and theorization of whiteness, coloniality, patriarchy, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and Christonormativity within critical frameworks of power, privilege, and oppression can reframe dominant understandings of ‘Otherness’, facilitate critical understandings of social reality, and provide epistemic resources that equip historically oppressed groups to challenge systems of dominance (p. 385). In response to these advances, the so-called “war on woke” and movements organizing under the ‘pro-family’ banner have worked to generate a lexicon that can preserve the normative status of capitalist and colonial heteropatriarchy. Terms such as ‘natural family’, ‘family values’, ‘traditional family’, and ‘demographic winter’ have been created by U.S. conservative activists and researchers to develop their own epistemic resources that can reframe the exclusion, oppression, and dominance contained in their agendas as universal and ‘common-sense’, without history or politics. As Patricia Hill-Collins (1998) writes, the heteropatriarchal family structure functions not only to maintain male and heterosexual dominance but also to legitimize other forms of domination and subordination that sustain white, heterosexual, middle-class, and Christian privilege (p. 63). As a “fundamental principle of social organization” (p. 63), the

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nuclear family enables the construction and maintenance of racial, economic, and geo-political systems of domination and subordination. In mobilizing the notion that the nuclear family formation is universal and natural, pro-family discourses incorporate, whilst attempting to transcend, the history of colonialism that institutionalized the normative status of the gender binary, hierarchy, and nuclear family model as civilisational norms. These narratives, even when articulated by actors in the Global South, reinforce the authoritative status of colonial knowledge systems, showing the need to separate notions of geographic and epistemic location within analyses of African pro-family discourse. Queer and feminist social movements have significantly advanced the rights of women, LGBTIQ+ people, and racially oppressed groups through the naming and challenging of heterosexist, white supremacist, patriarchal, and Christonormative ideologies that have constructed economic, social, epistemic, and geo-political systems of raced, sexed, gendered, and spaced systems of privilege/oppression, inclusion/exclusion, domination/exploitation, and centring/peripherizing. In constructing these movements as ‘dangerous’ and threatening, pro-family or anti-gender politics create moral panic to motivate a return to ‘tradition’. The U.S. pro-­ family movement’s rhetoric of ‘values’, ‘nature’, and ‘common-sense’, which resonates with anti-gender discourses emerging in other parts of the world, strategically obfuscates its underlying objective to protect the privileges and disadvantages held in place through systemic inequalities entrenched by colonial regimes of power. What African political and civil society actors stand to gain from engaging with U.S. Christian Right groups and advancing pro-family agendas is certainly an area requiring further interrogation.

Selective Decoloniality Critical interrogation of the ideological work of the U.S. Christian Right’s pro-family movement and its efforts to grow networks in Africa reveals the strategies of the movement to gain international support and power. In addition to the millions of U.S. dollars that U.S. Christian Right groups are dedicating to their advocacy in African countries, the movement relies upon discursive strategies to gain support and mobilize communities. As decolonial scholars have shown, colonial conquest and power relied not only upon the theft of indigenous land and resources, the enslavement of indigenous people, or military power. It also relied upon epistemic

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power, or the authority of European knowledge established through the destruction and criminalization of indigenous knowledge practices, including those relating to gender, sexuality, and kinship. Through the formulation of the nuclear family as ‘natural’ and ‘universal’, pro-family groups offer an interpretation of decolonization that retains and reincorporates elements of colonial ideology and rule, claiming that the assertion of heteropatriarchal African interests is a decolonial practice. The argument that African nations can and should defend the system of heteropatriarchy from western influence incorporates western Christian notions of the nuclear family, the gender binary, and hierarchy, claiming that these arrangements are traditionally African. This narrative, as decolonial feminist and queer scholars have shown, erases indigenous knowledge systems and practices that recognized more than two genders, were organized in relation to different gender practices, and were comprised of extended, polygamous, and other diverse kinship systems. While it has been well established that colonial administrations sought to eradicate these forms of gender, sexuality, and kinship diversity and impose their own systems of knowledge and social organization as a means of gaining control over indigenous people, further interrogation is needed into the interests served by contemporary African pro-family actors who are working to maintain the dominant status of these ideologies. While pre-colonial societies may not have been free of male dominance and supremacy, colonial administrations enforced a particular system of heteropatriarchy that was best suited to the interests of capitalism and Christianity. The decolonial terms through which anti-gender/pro-family actors are asserting their arguments about the need to protect African ‘traditional’ cultures and family values from western influence reveal that amidst paradigm shifting decolonial theorization and practice, there are also interests working to gain the power of definition over decolonization with direct bearing on which systems of colonial power are challenged. Through their decolonial anti-imperialist narrative that bolsters notions that homosexuality, reproductive justice, and sexuality education are ‘unAfrican’, the pro-family movement has worked to position itself as a legitimate voice of the global south and to position western feminists and gay rights activists as the neo-imperialists. In their branding of LGBTIQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and sexuality education as western assaults on African traditional values, pro-family actors tap into long-standing suspicions across the continent about western interventions into African reproductivity, making themselves appear to be credible ‘in touch’ with African

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concerns and realities. The ongoing scramble for African natural resources (see Carmody, 2017; Wengraf, 2018) and the extent to which foreign interests and African elites are capitalizing on their extraction remain visibly absent within U.S. and African pro-family discourse, while feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights serve as convenient distractions from these causes of social inequality, increasing precarity, and threats to national sovereignty.

Pro-Family Silences This book has certainly not covered everything that can be said about the pro-family movement and the anti-gender political agendas that U.S. Christian Right groups are advancing in African countries. This investigation has focused on three of the key areas of pro-family advocacy: opposition against abortion, LGBTIQ+ rights, and Comprehensive Sexuality Education. At the time of research and writing, these have been the areas where pro-family activists are most vocal and visible in their coordinated efforts to undermine the paradigm of gender equality and equal rights more broadly. Thus, this book has not covered each instance of pro-­ family advocacy against these issues, nor has it aimed to. Rather, the objective has been to provide insight into the movement and to unpack the multilayered strategies and implications of pro-family attempts to erode sexual and reproductive health, rights, and education. Just as the visible and vocal advocacy of pro-family groups reveals the systemic power relations that the movement is working to reinforce in the name of ‘tradition’ and ‘family values’, the movement’s silences are also telling of the less visible agendas that are operating through pro-family advocacy. Beyond the purview of this book are additional issues that have been avoided by pro-family activists, but which should be further examined through additional research given the consequences of pro-­family politics for a wide range of concerns relating to sexual health and bodily autonomy. First, pro-family discourse avoids engagement with the issue of HIV and AIDS in their promotion of ‘abstinence-only’ sex education, and their efforts to criminalize LGBTIQ+ individuals and advocacy. The silence of pro-family activists in relation to the implications of their policy initiatives for HIV/AIDS prevention reveals firstly, that pro-family actors are more concerned with the imposition of a rigid moral order than dealing with the realities faced by vulnerable communities. In their anti-­LGBTIQ+ campaigning specifically, pro-family groups reveal the genocidal germs within

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their efforts to delegitimize queer existence. Through emphasis on morality and ‘tradition’, pro-family groups distract attention away from the health consequences of their policy agendas will have on LGBTIQ+ people, particularly with regards to HIV prevention and treatment, revealing that they have no concern about whether these communities live or die (when considering the death sentences prescribed in recent legislation criminalizing homosexuality, it appears as if pro-family actors who created the legislation prefer the latter to the former). Furthermore, pro-family attempts to prohibit safe-sex education leaves young people with vulnerabilities towards contracting sexually transmitted infections, threatening decades of progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Second, pro-family advocacy against policy frameworks, such as the Maputo Protocol, have consequences for the ability of African feminists to use the Protocol as a basis for their advocacy against practices that are harmful to women and girls, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). The topics of child marriage and FGM/C have been largely avoided by pro-family groups, apart from when these groups claim that feminist and queer activists use these issues to window-­ dress gender equality policy frameworks. Within their efforts to delegitimize the Maputo Protocol, U.S. Christian Right groups have claimed that the issue of FGM/C is only a superficial aspect of the Maputo Protocol, which they argue is more fundamentally a document that promotes radical western feminist agendas. For instance, Human Life International claims that “the Maputo Protocol is About the Eradication of Traditional African Family Cultures. In contrast to its passing mention of FGM, the Maputo Protocol is full of radical feminist language about the complete transformation of African cultures into a Western, Marxist-style genderless utopia” (Human Life International, 2011). Yet, the practices of FGM/C and child marriage continue to affect the lives of millions of African women (see Walker, 2012; Odukogbe et al., 2017), and the narrative that African traditions should be protected from western influence has implications for the ability of advocacy organisations to promote prohibitions against these practices and to raise awareness in communities about their consequences for individuals and collectives. These silences also point to areas where further investigation is required to better understand the human rights costs of adopting pro-family agendas within national and global policy. While anti-colonial, queer, and feminist movements have made important legislative gains, and have opened new social realities, imaginaries, and possibilities internationally, the

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advances made by the pro-family movement indicate that the struggle for equal rights and social justice is far from over. Rather, as recent developments in the U.S. indicate, the clock can be quickly set back on civil rights, despite the decades of work that it has taken to achieve them. Therefore, ongoing research and investigation into the movement is required as it adopts new strategies in relation to shifting social dynamics and geo-­ political power relations.

References Foundation, A. (2019). Data collection and reporting on violence perpetrated against LGBTQI persons in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Uganda. https://www.arcusfoundation.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/04/ Iranti-Violence-Against-LGBTQI-Persons-in-Botswana-Kenya-Malawi-SouthAfrica-Uganda.pdf Carmody, P. (2017). The new scramble for Africa. John Wiley & Sons. Edenborg, E. (2023). ‘Traditional values’ and the narrative of gay rights as modernity: Sexual politics beyond polarization. Sexualities, 26(1–2), 37–53. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2022). Hate Crime in the United States Incident Analysis. https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/ crime/hate-crime Grzebalska, W., Kováts, E., Petö, A. (2017). Gender as symbolic glue: how ‘gender’ became an umbrella term for the rejection of the (neo)liberal order. https://hal.science/hal-03232926 Hill-Collins, P. (1998). ‘It’s All in the Family’: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. Hypatia, 13(3), 62–82. Human Life International. (2011). Maputo Protocol: A clear and present danger. Retrieved from https://maputoprotocol.com/about-­the-­protocol. ILGA Europe. (2023). Annual Review of the human rights situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people covering events that occurred in Europe and Central Asia between Jaunary - December 2022. https://www.ilga-europe. org/report/annual-review-2023/ Moss, K. (2017). Russia as the saviour of European civilization: Gender and the geopolitics of traditional values. In R. Kuhar & D. Paternotte (Eds.), Anti-­ gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality (pp. 195–214). Rowman & Littlefield. Odukogbe, A. T. A., Afolabi, B. B., Bello, O. O., & Adeyanju, A. S. (2017). Female genital mutilation/cutting in Africa. Translational Andrology and Urology, 6(2), 138.

7  CONCLUSION: SHIFTING CONTEXTS, SELECTIVE DECOLONIALITY… 

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Index

A Abortion, 2, 3, 10, 30, 31, 52, 60–63, 65–70, 72–77, 82, 85, 86, 96, 100, 115, 134, 138 Abstinence-only, 65, 66, 77, 105–125, 138 Anti-gender, 1–4, 7, 32, 72, 87, 93, 120, 133, 134, 136–138 C Children’s rights, 9 Civil society, 8, 10, 18, 32, 33, 35, 69, 74, 108, 110, 111, 115, 136 Colonialism, 5, 6, 24, 25, 136 Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), 9–11, 16–19, 31, 35, 36, 61, 72, 85, 88, 95, 96, 100, 105–125, 132, 133 E Education, 2–5, 9, 16, 23, 46, 65, 70–72, 74, 77, 85, 96, 98,

105–111, 113, 114, 116–123, 125, 133, 134, 137, 138 F Foreign policy, 19, 30, 64–67, 83, 107, 134 G Gender binary, 5–7, 23, 24, 26, 29, 36, 44, 136, 137 Geopolitics, 123–125 H Heteropatriarchy, 6, 8, 24, 26, 44, 89, 94, 124, 135, 137 Homophobia, 2, 8, 16, 32, 92 Human immunodeficiency virus/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), 30, 64–66, 107–109, 118, 138, 139

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H. McEwen, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46653-3

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INDEX

Human rights, 2, 4, 9, 61, 62, 66, 69, 71, 73, 82, 91–93, 100, 132, 139 I Illiberal Politics, 3, 132 L Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex and queer people (LGBTIQ+), 2–5, 7, 10, 16–19, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 46, 61, 68, 71, 72, 77, 83–88, 90–92, 94–97, 99, 100, 106, 120, 121, 123, 132–134, 136–139

P President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), 64–67, 107 Pro-family, 7, 10, 18–21, 23, 26–36, 41–56, 61, 70–72, 75, 77, 85–92, 100, 106, 107, 111–114, 124, 132–140 Pro-life movement, 60–63, 68, 85 S Stop CSE, 35, 110–117, 119, 121–125

M Maputo Protocol, 61, 68–71, 139

T Transphobia, 3, 86, 100

N Nuclear family, 5–9, 11, 21–30, 33, 35, 36, 44, 95, 99, 133, 135–137

Y Youth, 2, 73, 75, 96, 108–110, 114, 115, 119, 123, 125