Interventions and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill

I've been thinking about the bystander issue in relation to GLBT issues lately largely because of this bill, which was proposed in Uganda.

The bill (which seems to be known in various internet debates by both supporters and opponents as Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill), at least in current drafts, essentially defines homosexuality as a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even execution. Also criminalized in the bill are offenses like "aiding and abetting homosexuality" or "conspiracy to engage in homosexuality," each punishable by a sentence of seven years in prison.

The proposed bill, not surprisingly, has drawn sharp criticism from those in the GLBT rights community. Indeed, even conservative Christian groups are raising protests against the bill (see this Facebook page, for example, or this statement from Rick Warren). The Obama administration has condemned the bill, as have other countries and human rights organizations.

Uganda, never a go-to locale for GLBT rights, has largely rejected what it sees as outside attempts to meddle in its affairs. Supporters of the bill have started their own Facebook group, even as a number of Ugandans--including many Christian groups and speakers--have spoken out against the bill.

Complicating this issue, of course, is the fact that a number of ex-gay ministers had recently visited Uganda to hold a mini-conference regarding ministry to and help for homosexual people (i.e., get them to stop living as homosexual people, convince them to see their sexuality as a corruption or disorder, etc.). I need to do more research on this, but least some of the ministers supporting the bill in Uganda appear to be drawing on arguments used by these ex-gay speakers. Several in the "ex-ex-gay" movement who watchdog and criticize ex-gay organizations, have laid the blame for Uganda's current bill at the feet of ex-gay ministries. The ex-gay ministries themselves, of course, take offense at this allegation, firing back with posts and protests of their own.

For a taste of the depth of the debate from a number of sides, I recommend this posting on a blog by Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian psychology professor who has been very active in organizing US-based opposition to the bill (he founded the anti-bill Facebook page I linked above). This post, which relates a statement by Ugandan ministers and groups opposed to the bill, fascinates me largely for its ongoing (as of this writing) comments section. There you can read posts from a surprisingly wide spectrum of viewpoints, from ex-gays to gay-affirmative Christians and everything in between.

Particularly striking are comments from a poster who identifies himself (I believe it's a himself) as a Ugandan national very much in favor of the bill. In addition to lambasting the other posters for meddling in Uganda's own affairs, the poster expresses flat disbelief that anyone who calls herself a Christian could possibly be against the legislation.

The comments from that poster and from others provoke a startling realization about just how radically apart we who exist in the global body of Christ can be. I write often of fundamental disagreements between believers, but here is a fundamental disagreement of an order rarely seen in present-day US contexts. Indeed, the example of the bill's supporters (which would no doubt include many non-Ugandan Christians such as Fred Phelps) contrasts starkly with most of the pro-family/anti-gay/ex-gay movements here. Compared to people who see homosexuality as worse than murder and homosexuals as richly deserving of death, ex-gay ministries look positively liberal.

Mucking up all of these debates, of course, is the postcolonial context of massive, long-term Western and European interventions into African cultures. Indeed, "interventions" of various sorts (economic, military, governmental, cultural, religious), many of which cloak themselves with the best of intentions, have long defined the West's approach to African affairs, casting "the West" and "Africa" as characters in an old fashioned melodrama. In more recent narratives, the West becomes "intervener"--blessed or tasked with the power (ability, maturity, moral superiority) necessary to save the poor, benighted, self-defeating African nations (who cannot or will not help themselves). Centuries of such unequal roleplay contaminate present-day relations, making the question I've asked in the last few days--how and when to intervene--almost impossible to answer.

That vexed and vexing relationship, however, promises to grow only more pressing throughout this century as the locus of energy for Christianity shifts to the global south. Issues like the current Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill--itself redolent with conflicting histories of Christian interventions and counter-interventions--presage similar conflicts yet to come.

This is already apparent in the United Methodist Church.

More tomorrow,

JF

Cops in the Head

Back to Boal.

I brought up Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" (TO) techniques as a way of exploring the pros and cons of moderation. "Classical" TO encourages participants (spect-actors) to stage their moments of powerlessness or oppression in terms of clear oppressor-oppressed relationships. While doing so can have a wonderfully clarifying effect, letting the person and other spect-actors explore other potential avenues of action, it can also force complicated situations into a falsely melodramatic mode.

As Boal began touring his TO workshops in the "first world," he found the need to modify some of his core techniques. Specifically, in his "Rainbow of Desire" phase, he introduced activities aimed at letting spect-actors imagine and stage situations in which they felt like helpless bystanders. Suppose, for instance, I see a situation that seems like a clear case of oppression: a woman hitting a child, a police officer harrassing a homeless person, a group of people laughing at a racist or sexist joke. What should happen?

Boal's technique for exploring this situation resembles the forum theatre exercise. The person telling the story of an oppression they saw re-tells the story. Spect-actors re-create the scene, including the person who felt like a helpless bystander. Then the joker (the facilitator for the workshop) interviews the storyteller, asking her to name some of the reasons why she felt helpless to intervene. What kept her from acting?

For Boal, these reasons are "cops in the head" that short-circuit activist intervention before it happens. They are the voices that might say, perhaps, "You'll just make things worse" or "You should mind your own business." As the person names reasons for her inaction in that situation, the joker asks a spect-actor to come up and "be" that cop-in-the-head voice. The interview continues until the person feels she's listed all of the relevant voices that together persuaded her not to act or intervene. A line of spect-actors, each playing a different voice, stand before her.

The joker then leads the person through a miniature scene with each one of the voices. The Voice articulates the cop-in-the-head rationale, and the person argues back. The conversation continues, and any time the spect-actors feel the need to do so, they can stop the conversation, tap out a participant, and try out a new argument. This mini-forum scene repeats for each of the Voices. After the final dialogue, the joker asks the person and the spect-actors which of the cops-in-the-head the person seems to have dealt wtih sufficiently and which ones seem still seem unbanished. It's like an exorcism with multiple demons, not all of whom leave completely.

Typically, though, the exercise clarifies one or two persistent worries, one or two cops-in-the-head that remain. The person then re-plays the original scene, trying out the intervention she wishes she had attempted in the first place. As she replays her scene, though, the Voices she has not completely vanished move with her, just behind her. At certain points, they lightly lay a hand on the person's back to remind her that the voice--the worry--is still there.

I've gone through this experience before in a Boalian workshop. It was a long, intense process to name and hash out my frustrations with the "cops in the head" that kept me from acting (someday I'll perhaps go into just what that situation was).

What I got from that exercise, though, was a greater appreciation for the difference between a helpless refusal to take sides and a nuanced moderation that--although painfully aware of some complexities--nevertheless acts.

Yet, as much as I admire the Boalian techniques, they have some limitations. The position of third-party bystander to a scene of apparent oppression is never fun, but it does not follow that some kind of intervention is necessarily best.

More tomorrow,

JF