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Disruptive or Merely Alternative? A case study of a South African Gay Church
... Among the factors that influence the South African society's dissonance to sexual diversity is the dominant religious discourses that denounce minority sexual identities (Eslen-Ziya, McGarry, Potgieter, & Reygan, 2015;Potgieter & Reygan, 2011). Homosexual dissonant parental reactions are driven by egoistic beliefs of good parenthood often inscribed by hegemonic religious and cultural precepts (Svab & Kuhar, 2014). ...
This article examines how minority sexual identity plots in prime-time South African soap operas queered the family talk. It further explores how young people with (un)disclosed minority sexual identities navigate within these discursive or affirming dialogs that follow. Nine (9) participants (3 lesbian and 6 gay students) shared their narratives through one-to-one interviews on family dialogs after viewing minority sexual identities scenes in popular soap operas. The participants were selected through convenient and purposive sampling. Findings shows while minority sexual identities was a silent topic at home and marked with repression, repulsion, and threads in some families, other families appreciated the visibility, openness and realities of the contemporary South Africa. Three themes were identified. They are (1) normalization, heteronormativity & (self) regulation, (2) affirming heterosexual reactions and (3) navigating the family relations beyond the soap operas. Soap operas should be strongly considered as a pedagogical tool in various learning environments to solicit discussion about sexual diversity.
... However, in the texts analysed in this article, it appears that post-apartheid goals are not being realised in terms of LGBTI inclusion. While some of the texts attempt to represent and construct LGBTI identities in an affirming way, they generally run the risk on being tokenistic, as happens with LGBTI identities in other arenas such as religion in South Africa (Potgieter & Reygan, 2011). ...
Over the past two decades, sexual citizenship has emerged as a new form of citizenship coupled with increased interest in the challenges to citizenship and social justice faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people and, in particular, by sexual minority youth within education systems. In South Africa, the rights of LGBTI people have been institutionalised in legislation, and research has begun to consider how educators may facilitate a more inclusive school environment for LGBTI youth. Given the focus of the Department of Education on social justice, the present study examines how selected Life Orientation (LO) textbooks for Grades 7 to 12 in South African schools represent and construct LGBTI identities. The study generally finds inconsistency in the representation of these identities. Gay male identities are represented in some instances, lesbian and bisexual identities rarely so, and transgender and intersex identities not at all. Two of the four series examined are almost entirely silent about LGBTI identities. This invisibility negates the different 'ways of knowing' of LGBTI learners; tends not to facilitate students in critiquing the discrimination, prejudice and social injustices faced by many LGBTI people, and lessens the importance of social justice and citizenship education in this field in South Africa.
... This project has some notable allies, including Archbishop Tutu who famously declared that he would not worship a homophobic God (Mail & Guardian 2007). The growing research also includes an analysis of the texts of queer churches such as the MCC (see Potgieter & Reygan 2011), the Ujamaa Centre at the University of KwaZulu-Natal is leading on deepening related scholarship, and an important case was brought to the South African Constitutional Court by Rev Ecclesia de Lange (Watson 2015) of the Methodist Church of South Africa (MCSA). Therefore, while many religious traditions in southern Africa continue to be characterised by heteropatriarchy, LGBTI people are beginning to claim religious space for themselves. ...
While queer theology has foregrounded sexual and gender diversity in faith communities internationally, in South Africa, the emergence of a queer, African theology is necessary given that religion is often not a ‘safe space’ for sexual and gender minorities owing to theological violence. Advocacy for inclusion requires the development of theological capacity in queer communities so as to foster biblical, theological and interpretative resistance. There are a number of approaches available, including demythologising and reclaiming the Bible for queer communities, developing more redemptive interpretative options for queer inclusion and developing alternative discourses that challenge the heteropatriarchy of the Bible. Entry points for this work include Bible study; workshops and seminars for faith communities on sexual and gender diversity; the acceptance of a minimum pastoral threshold (or minimum levels of preparedness) for engaging with issues of sexual and gender diversity; and creating ecumenical spaces, cognizant of the local context, where such engagements can take place. This involves moving beyond a theology of compassion and essentialised notions of sexuality and gender so as to develop a queer, African, people’s theology that recognises the trauma experienced by sexual and gender minorities in faith communities.
The constructions of genders and sexualities in different global spaces continue to be influenced by Christian and imperial ideologies. In Africa, genders and sexualities were (mis)construed by colonial and missionary enterprises, and they continue to be defined according to Eurocentric terms and perceptions. This has produced ‘modern sexual repression’. The use of Biblical discourses to construct African genders and sexualities is one way that this repression is mirrored in South Africa. Because of this, African genders and sexualities are marginalised, treated as taboo and depicted as backward and uncivilised, thus, promoting hegemonic heteronormative and monogamous marriages. This article examined how Biblical discourses contributed to this narrative. It further advanced a call for transforming this dominant narrative by engaging theology, gender and sexuality studies and socio-political sciences from the premise of a multidisciplinary epoch. The decolonial motif, with a focus on delinking African genders and sexualities from the Western agenda of sexual repression, serves as the theoretical framework for this research. On the other hand, race, gender and sexuality serve as lenses used to better understand the phenomenon and to explore the use of biblical discourses in this context. Thus, the article makes use of a secondary research approach to carry out this task.Contribution: This article seeks to add to the body of knowledge that endeavours to change the way that biblical discourses are used in South Africa today to construct a narrative that represses non-normative genders and sexualities.
The South African Constitution and the law have ensured noticeable progress in acknowledging the LGBTQI community’s rights. Consequently, there is now a legal framework that protects LGBTQI people, and any discriminatory behaviour and utterances can be prosecuted by law. The struggle now lies within the religious sector, where limited progress has been made. This paper focuses on the progress made within the Christian religion in terms of creating policies and regulations to protect LGBTQI community members’ safety. We focus on same-sex relationships by arguing that even today, such relationships are not openly accepted by the Church. Using lived religion theory, we revisit Ntombana et al.’s (2020) findings and argue that queer people are closer to God and more spiritual than the homophobic Christians who attend daily Christian fellowship meetings. As queer people are in the minority and oppressed by the church system, we use Tutu and Boesak’s theology to argue that they are closer to God than homophobic Christians. We highlight that during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Christian community suffered, while the queer community flourished because their spirituality is not based on the Church’s orthodox tradition but on their relationship with God.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ or LGBTQ+ if the latter context includes other identities) individuals tend to experience high levels of minority stress, which might increase their mental health challenges. Especially for LGBTQ individuals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), they might additionally experience inadequate access to physical and mental health services, limited financial support, low levels of education, and limited capacity of their governments to solve the societal oppression of this population, which can aggravate minority stress. Social support can buffer the negative effects of minority stress and allow someone to feel cared for, loved, esteemed, valued, and as belonging in their communities. This chapter presents a general overview of social support LGBTQ people may receive from their parents, siblings, school peers, teachers, intimate partners, and colleagues. We also describe the benefits of specific communities of LGBTQ-identifying people, including those who identify as a nonbinary gender, intersex, or asexual/aromantic; those with interests in BDSM, leather, or polyamory lifestyles; people living with HIV; LGBTQ youth and seniors; and virtual and religious communities.
This article highlights several resources developed and applied in South Africa regarding LGBTIQ+ persons and faith. It charts the evolution of human sexuality workshops for faith communities in South Africa; key findings from a 2019 empirical research study with local church congregations around LGBTIQ+; and offers participant feedback from 'safe space' work that brings together people of diverse sexualities and genders from Christian faith contexts in South Africa. It draws on, and adapts, methodologies developed initially in the USA but also shaped by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It reworks these to go beyond binaries into a continuum approach to sexuality and gender identity by also developing new tools and using the lens of intersectionality. It showcases the importance of creating safe spaces for LGBTIQ+ and straight engagement and to build solidarity among local churches in South Africa. The article explores the potential of these human sexuality workshops by drawing on participant feedback from its two pilots in 2020. It suggests that it be used more widely in faith settings, to create spaces for safe encounters between LGBTIQ+ and straight people by engaging in questions on human sexuality and spirituality, and seeking to build solidarity, and strengthen ally-ship. It concludes that this African liberationist queer theological workshop pedagogy can help bridge a gap in both LGBTIQ+ activism and LGBTIQ+ theology.
The question of how to write about queer Africa has been a significant debate in scholarship over the last decade. One of the key emerging areas, in the development of ‘queer Africa scholarship’ has been through the framing of queer African subjects at the intersections with religion and in particular, Christianity. As scholars begin to further imagine queer African subjects as Christian, it is important to explore how and in what ways these subjectivities are constructed. In this article, I apply a qualitative analysis to academic literature that explicitly focuses on, or includes a substantive analysis of queer Christians and/or queer Christianity in Southern Africa. While Southern Africa is not representative of the entire continent, this region is a productive site within which to understand how queer subjects are imagined to be situated, what they are imagined to be doing and how they are imagined to be doing what they do. The context produces queer and LGBTI + (this acronym is sometimes preferred to 'queer' to refer collectively to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and in various other ways as gender and/or sex non‐conforming.) subjects who find and make religious homes within legally permissive and restrictive countries and do so through a variety of normative, queer and normatively queer ways, thus revealing religious and sexual contradictions and boundary crossing. This has opened up numerous ways of understanding how religion can be negotiated and transformed in this region. I conclude by examining the theoretical and epistemological possibilities that are revealed through the current imaginings of queer Christian subjects in Southern Africa, as well as the potential these understandings offer for different spaces and new discourses in future scholarship.
The dominant belief in Africa is that same-sex intimacy is a child of modern civilization and Western culture. Hence, we see a high level of homophobia and continuous policing of same-sex relationships in most African countries, including those that have decriminalized them. Over time, different scholarly discourses have emerged about homosexuality in Africa. Although some writers believe that same-sex intimacy is fundamentally un-African, others argue that same-sex intimacy is inherent in African culture. Arguably, the introduction of Western religion, such as Christianity, which forms part of the colonization agenda, favors the monogamous, heterosexual relationship (the basis of the “ideal family unit”) as the acceptable natural union while any relationship outside it is regarded as unnatural. Given deteriorating socioeconomic and political situations in Africa, political leaders often find it expedient to use religious-based homophobic narratives to distract their impoverished citizens and muster popular support. Put together, this has led to the criminalization of same-sex unions in most African countries. Modern discourses in Africa on gender equality and sexual freedoms reveal more liberal attitudes, but the same cannot be said about how same-sex desire is viewed. Toleration of same-sex intimacy is seen as a threat to the dominant African definition of marriage, family, and patriarchal gender and power relations.
Despite the prevalence of homophobia, the establishment of gay networks and movements that championed the liberation struggles of sexual minorities in South Africa from the apartheid to post-apartheid era have sharpened the sense of belonging of LGBTIA groups. While some countries (e.g., South Africa, Lesotho, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Mali, and Mozambique) have abandoned sodomy laws that criminalized same-sex relationships (often after much pressure was exerted), others (e.g., Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Mauritania) have upheld the laws with stiff punishment—prison terms up to 14–30 years or death sentences for the crime of being homosexual. The first half of 2019 raised some hopes about LGBTIA rights in Africa when Angola (January 2019) and Botswana (June 2019) decriminalized homosexuality. However, Kenya, which had previously shown a “glimmer of hope” in decriminalizing same-sex relationships, upheld laws that criminalize homosexuality in May 2019. Currently, more than 30 of the 54 recognized African countries still have laws (with harsh punishments or death) that outlaw consensual same-sex relationships. Both theoretical and empirical insights into the current state of Africa’s LGBTIA rights and scholarship are discussed.
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