You were thinking about AIDS right? When you saw the title?
The truth is? HIV and AIDS ravage the MSM community. Many progressives don’t like the statistics but medically speaking? 5% of the population should not be around 50% of the cases. Now the argument is quite simple. Each gay man is a bigger part of the population due to their small numbers. Secondly? Gay men never had much reason for condoms before HIV so the disease had time to spread. And early hook up culture among MSM was quite promiscuous so the disease spread quickly during it’s latency period. So much so that being gay is still a big risk for HIV infection.
And HIV killed the female condom and other barrier methods of contraception. The male condom is less prone to failing and things like the cervical cap didn’t stop the spread of the disease.
But there is another disease with a rising association (falsely) with homosexuality.
Ebola. And this rumour is heavily driven by the religious right in Africa. Christian Churches in Liberia (often under American funding and with encouragement) have decided to link Ebola to the GLBT making life incredibly dangerous for many of the gay men in Liberia. Religious leaders are using the fear of the disease and distrust in doctors to whip people up into a frenzy against the GLBT. There are many instances of harassment. Many gay men were physically assaulted and their property destroyed.
There are even talk of killing all the gays, and there are a fair few voices calling for the execution of homosexuals. Ostensibly for murder since their immoral actions forced Jehovah to send a plague upon Liberia.
Ebola has infected almost 10,000 people in West Africa since March, killing around half its victims. Liberia is the worst hit country where poverty, corruption and civil war have left a weak health system unable to cope with the exponential spread of the disease. In addition the lack of education and medical technology have meant that people are fearful of doctors thus making it easier to spread the disease. People who fall sick are more likely to stay with their family and this often means the “bubonic plague effect” occurs. Each family member gets sick and dies in turn because no one is willing to undergo quarantine.
And into this fear the religious leaders have tried to find a solution. By encouraging people to blame GLBT. The Liberian Council of Churches said in a statement that “god was angry with Liberians over corruption and immoral acts such as homosexuality, and that Ebola was a punishment.”
Let’s just say that god’s got a problem with friendly fire.
And then the Catholic Church weighed in. In May, Archbishop Lewis Zeigler of the Catholic Church of Liberia said that “one of the major transgressions against God for which He may be punishing Liberia is the act of homosexuality”.
Amnesty International has charted threats and violence against the GLBT community since then as well as photographic proof confirming the attacks. Needless to say the Catholic Church is awfully silent about the issue. As is the Liberian Counciil of Churches.
And even the local press are involved in this. Ponpon is a gay man in Liberia and he is forced to hide after local newspapers ran his picture and phone number on the front pages. Since then he is subject to threats and harassment.
“In the day, we move around wearing sunglasses and disguises. The problem with moving at night is that it is not safe in Monrovia in the dark, and also, if you violate the Ebola curfew, it is punishable by imprisonment,” he said. The curfew has affected the LGBT community in another way. When activists contact the police for protection, they reply that because of the Ebola emergency and the curfew put in place to combat the disease, they cannot help,
Violence against the GLBT was already commone before the Ebola outbreak. Africa ranks as one of the worst places to be gay. National laws in West Africa are in line with public sentiment. In Liberia, ‘voluntary sodomy’ is a first-degree misdemeanor with a penalty of up to one year in jail, according to the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).