Catholic attitudes towards homosexuality and marriage in Northern Uganda

What is it about?

Africa is often described as the most religious and the most homophobic continent. This article argues that these claims need to be nuanced, because not all religious groups in Africa discuss homosexuality as much or as aggressively, and belonging to a religion does not mean that Africans take that religions' proscribed sexual ethics for granted. In recent decades, homosexuality has become a topic of intense public concern in Uganda, and most Christian churches have supported 'anti-gay' legislation. However, because most media and research articles on the theme have focused on the loudest actors in the the country's capital city, important variation has been missed. In this article I show how in a rural Catholic parish in the country's northern region, homosexuality is rarely discussed explicitly. Rather, sexual minorities are implicitly marginalised through the idealisation of heterosexual marriage. Despite enormous efforts by the church to get its members to live by the ideal, however, only a tiny minority of Catholics in the area marry in church. More attention thus needs to be paid to the ways in which people actually make decisions concerning sexuality and marriage, and judge the decisions of others.

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Why is it important?

Africa is often described as the most religious and the most homophobic continent. This article shows that these claims need to be nuanced, because not all religious groups in Africa discuss homosexuality as much or as aggressively, and belonging to a religion does not mean that Africans take that religions' proscribed sexual ethics for granted.