African law and the rights of sexual minoritiesWestern universalism and African resistance

Kahn-Fogel, Nicholas Alden

doi:10.4324/9781351142366-28

Cited by 2 publications

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“…The argument put forward and especially touted by African leaders for the pushback against gay rights consists of three interrelated facets, namely that homosexuality: (i) is 'un-African'-meaning, it is alien to African cultural and historical practices, (ii) is 'unnatural'it is a cultivated vice that is against the order of things or habitual sexual practice, and (iii) is a form of 'cultural imperialism' from an immoral West [16][17][18][19][20]. Several researchers have critically examined these assertions, which have, as a central theme, the issue of African identity or 'Africanness'.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Context Matters: Change and Persistence of Homophobic Attitudes among Cameroonian Migrants in Switzerland

Lyonga

2022

Sexes

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Debates on human rights in recent years have brought to the fore stark fault lines between African countries, where societal intolerance towards homosexuality is prevalent, and Western countries, which hold more tolerant views towards homosexuality. As contention rages around African identity and homosexuality, one interesting question calls for attention: how do the attitudes of Africans towards homosexuality evolve—or not—when they migrate from their home context to a more open society where homosexuality is widely accepted? This study draws on Herek’s ‘attitudes toward lesbians and gay men scale’ (ATLG) to investigate homophobia among Cameroonians at home compared to Cameroonian migrants in Switzerland and uses in-depth interviews to understand the reasons for any change in or persistence of attitudes. Survey data shows that Cameroonian migrants in Switzerland portray significantly less homophobia compared to Cameroonians living at home. Qualitative analysis identified four factors that contributed to change in attitudes among Cameroonian migrants: (i) experiencing racial prejudice and xenophobia prompted self-reflection about their own prejudices towards others; (ii) witnessing, first-hand, the huge infrastructure and development gap between their host and home country exposed anti-homosexuality politics back home as a needless distraction from actual development priorities; (iii) greater opportunities to meet and interact with gay people in the host country challenged long-held home-grown stereotypes about homosexuality; and (iv) non-discrimination standards and codes of conduct in the workplace in the host country encouraged conformity and shifts towards greater tolerance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Context Matters: Change and Persistence of Homophobic Attitudes among Cameroonian Migrants in Switzerland

Lyonga

2022

Sexes

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Criminalization and Decriminalization of Same-Sex Sexuality

Constantinides

2024

The Oxford Handbook of LGBTI Law

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Almost a third of UN member states still criminalize private same-sex sexual conduct between consenting adults and many punish such conduct with severe penalties. Such criminalization—irrespective of enforcement—stigmatizes and discriminates against LGBTIQ persons, sustaining an intolerant social environment conducive to various forms of violence against them and denial of their human rights. The first part of this chapter focuses on the trajectory of criminalization: its religious roots in the Bible, the secularization of the crime of sodomy in England in 1533 and its worldwide expansion through (British) colonialism, and its contemporary defences in parts of the Global South, based on a combination of anti-Western/anti-colonial sentiment, cultural relativist arguments, and conservative narratives of traditional religious and family values. The second part tells the story of decriminalization: its liberal origins in the Enlightenment and in Mill’s harm principle, the evolving international human rights legal framework, and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and other international and regional courts and treaty bodies on the right to private life and non-discrimination, which has led to an ongoing wave of decriminalization through legislative reforms and especially domestic judicial decisions, particularly in commonwealth jurisdictions.

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African law and the rights of sexual minoritiesWestern universalism and African resistance

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

How Context Matters: Change and Persistence of Homophobic Attitudes among Cameroonian Migrants in Switzerland

How Context Matters: Change and Persistence of Homophobic Attitudes among Cameroonian Migrants in Switzerland

Criminalization and Decriminalization of Same-Sex Sexuality

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