American Moral Colonialism

In working to revise the sexual morality in African countries, certain American progressives are adopting neo-colonialist attitudes.

For instance, earlier this year the New York Times ran a front-page investigative article entitled “Wielding Whip and a Hard New Law, Nigeria Tries to ‘Sanitize’ Itself of Gays.” The article, written by Adam Nossiter, focuses on Nigerian communities in which persons convicted of engaging in same-sex behavior are jailed or beaten by civic authorities. Apparently, some communities call for the death sentence in cases that appear to be especially egregious or clear-cut. We must be cautious, of course, and try to avoid fear-mongering in our analysis of the punishment preferences of the people of Nigeria—the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, for instance, which was signed into law by the President of Uganda in February, and includes a provision for life imprisonment for persons convicted of engaging in criminalized same-sex relations, initially touched off a lot of excessive rumors about torture as a punishment for same-sex offenses.

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What these communities in Nigeria are doing to people who are engaging in same-sex sexual activity is troubling and frightening. It is clearly an overreaction by those who fear the effects of the western sexual revolution. Let me stress this again: Beating or killing persons who engage in same-sex sexual behaviors is appalling. It certainly is not in keeping with the moral teachings of Christianity or mainstream Islam for persons to be punished so severely for their sexual failings. Russell Moore has spoken out on this topic and it is admirable also that leading conservatives Robert George, Charles Colson, and Timothy George took a strong stand against such practices in a 2009 open letter to Christians in Uganda.

It is interesting to note, however, that by western legitimacy standards the morals legislation efforts of the people of Nigeria are, in principle, legitimate exercises of political authority. In part this is because, as Micah Watson has argued, “every law and regulation … has inherent in it some idea of the good that it seeks to promote or preserve.” In part this is because their morals legislation efforts do reflect the will of the (vast) political majority in Nigeria. And in part this is because morals legislation, in principle, has for a long time been viewed in the west as acceptable. For centuries it has been believed by western philosophers and politicians to be justifiable for sovereign states to protect their moral ecologies by prohibiting activities that they deem to be morally egregious and threatening to stability or citizen flourishing. For instance, throughout most of its history (until the 1965 Griswold decision), the United States more or less sought to promote a healthy sexual ecology among its citizens by restricting extra-marital sexual activity and by punishing infractions—at least in theory—with mild financial penalties.

My main reason for writing today, however, is not the legitimacy of morals legislation. It is my disturbance at the lack of self-awareness on the part of certain progressives. It is not, I think, an understatement to say that there is today a fixation among many progressives with revising our sexual standards. But as a result of this single-minded focus, many progressives have begun to take stances toward non-western cultures and peoples that are troublingly similar to the attitudes of the colonialist era. This point can be illustrated by reference to many non-western cultures, but, since Nossiter highlights Nigeria, I focus on African societies.

The statistics on the beliefs of Africans are clear. In a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, 98 percent of Nigerians said that they oppose the social acceptance of homosexual activity. Ninety-nine percent of Catholics in Africa are opposed to redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. Homosexual activity is illegal in 38 of 54 African countries, according to Amnesty International.

The implication of articles like Nossiter’s is also clear: Africa is stuck in a primitive past, and it needs sexual reforms that can only be offered by enlightened westerners. Authors like Nossiter do not appear to be knowingly advancing a colonialist agenda. On the contrary, articles such as theirs advance a message that is more dangerous than out-and-out colonialism, because it is subtler and more difficult for westerners to spot. It is seditious and pernicious in a way that old-style colonialism—of the kind that once permeated the European mind—could not be.

The gist of the neo-colonialism is as follows: without necessarily being aware that they are peddling a message of discrimination, many journalists today are cultivating a mindset in their readers that encourages them to take an imperialistic and prejudiced view toward Africans.

This kind of thinking is not new. About a decade ago, during a bruising battle in the worldwide Anglican Communion about the ordination of homosexual clergy, famous liberal John Spong asserted that African Christians have “moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity,” and that they have “yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face.” The message that Spong and his allies seem to be pushing, even if they are not always especially explicit, is that black Africa is stuck in a primitive past, and that it is time for westerners to free the Africans from their ignorant ways.

In recent years, this imperialistic trend in the thinking of progressives has become increasingly pronounced. In their quest to fight discrimination against one group of people, progressives are becoming increasingly comfortable with a new set of discriminatory attitudes toward the developing world. This is dangerous territory. I hardly need to recap here the painful history that the post-colonial West has faced in its efforts to eradicate its colonialist sentiments and to come to see other cultures, especially the peoples of Africa, precisely for what they are: rich and beautiful societies with lengthy cultural memories and longstanding rituals. The West’s increasing sensitivity to the beauty and brilliance of the African peoples has been one of the most refreshing trends of the last hundred years.

But today the focus of progressives on sexual revisions is producing myopia in some essential areas of human morality. Many progressives are failing to realize that they are, in their rush toward a victorious redefinition of marriage, producing collateral damage and destroying some of the major moral advances of the post-colonial West. The fact that so many persons are willing to seek a victorious redefinition of social morality at the expense of gains in racial and cultural sensitivity is evidence of the moral precariousness of the same-sex marriage agenda.

The neo-colonialism is likely to have lingering effects. Even if the progressives achieve their goal of altering Africans’ sexual morality, the deep-seated perception that the Africans are primitive and barbarous peoples will almost certainly remain in the public consciousness for decades to come. It would be short-sighted for progressives to say that this attitude is a temporary and necessary evil. As the pains of the 20th century have clearly shown, cultural perceptions are deep-seated things, and they are incredibly hard to change.

To be sure, I certainly am willing to acknowledge that the efforts of American progressives to pressure the Africans to change their sexual mores are—just as the conservative African sexual laws are—attempts to introduce morality into the legal code. Since, of course, we are living in an increasingly globalized world it might be thought that our cultural responsibilities to the inhabitants of other nations are being raised by our increasing connectivity, and thus that the American progressives, like the Africans, likewise have a right to agitate in Africa for morals laws—albeit of a progressive kind. But the big difference between the morals laws of the Africans and the efforts of the Americans to pressure the Africans for liberalizing changes is just that, by the mainstream standards of democratic legitimacy theory, the morals laws of the Africans are in countless ways more justifiable than is the cultural imperialism of the Americans, because the morals laws of the African countries stem directly from the collective will of their peoples. The vast majority of the Africans who inhabit the countries in which these laws are operative do desire that the laws remain in place. So the laws are legitimate because they express the will of the peoples who live under them. And unless and until the American progressives go and themselves live in these countries (and under the legal systems of these countries’ governments), any effort on their part to compel the Africans to change these laws, against the Africans’ wills, feels strongly like cultural imperialism.

In sum, the peoples of the developing world, like all peoples, have moral blind spots. Nonetheless, their convictions, shaped by their rich cultural heritages, are worthy of respect. It is time for progressives to abandon their one-sided portrayals and to give other cultures the respect they deserve.