Canadian did ‘untold damage to LGBT Tanzanians’
Canadian Anglican helped today’s Tanzania gay purge
Canadian university professor and Anglican priest, Rev. Dr. Gary Badcock, travelled to Tanzania in 2014 on official business and used the opportunity to whip up deadly homophobia.
Badcock was representing his Canadian taxpayer-funded institution, Huron College, which is part of Western University, at the 100th anniversary of Tanzania’s St. Philip Theological College. St. Philip was founded by a Huron alumnus and during his keynote speech Badcock is reported to have said that homosexuality was a “first world” problem and that Tanzanians should be worried because homosexuals will come and steal their children.
Badcock’s hatemongering was reported to his university and he was subsequently censured. In response he was unrepentant said that he was just being “biblically correct.” Such fundamentalist thinking typifies the conservative Anglican Network to which Badcock belongs.
Badcock is tenured faculty and so he continues to enjoy his well-paid position as professor of theology. However, he has contributed to untold damage to the lives of LGBT people in Tanzania.
Subsequent to Badcock’s hysterical ramblings, Tanzania started an anti-gay campaign, which included shuttering HIV clinics on the pretext that they encourage homosexuality.
And starting today Dar es Salaam’s administrative chief, Paul Makonda, will inaugurate a special committee to identify and punish gay people.
He has urged the public to report homosexuals to the police and advised that social media posts would be scoured to identify gays. Since that harrowing announcement less than a week ago, media reports indicate that police have received over 10,000 messages from the public and the US embassy in Tanzania has urged its citizens visiting the country to effectively self-censor any social-media posts that may suggest them being gay.
After an international outcry, including from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the government of Tanzania has sought to distance itself from the statement of Mr. Makonda, who claims that he is more concerned about upsetting God than the international community. So, clearly, like Badcock, Mr. Makonda does not care for international human rights norms.
Badcock’s disastrous impact on the lives of Tanazanian homosexuals and the national HIV response can be equated to that of notorious American homophobe, Scott Lively, who whipped up homophobia in Uganda, resulting in the “Kill the Gays” bill.
In the meantime Canadian taxpayers continue to support an unrepentant homophobe whose words have contributed to a humanitarian crisis for Tanzanian LGBT people, as well as foreigners visiting the country.
In the words of Canada’s former Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney:
“The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers, it began with words.”
The words of this privileged Canadian, Badcock, have endangered the lives of innocent people.
Today the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and our allies will host the Canadian launch of the “Intimate Conviction” volume in Toronto. This volume of edited presentations is from the ground-breaking conference of the same name that took place in Kingston, Jamaica in 2017, and which discussed the role of the church, past, present and future, in the criminalization of consensual same-sex intimacy.
This gathering featured presentations by multilateral agencies, Christian leaders, and academics from across the Commonwealth, including the Commonwealth Secretariat, the University of Glasgow, the Archbishop of the West Indies, and the Bishop of Buckingham.
It is hoped that this volume will help to undo some of the harms caused by Badcock et. al. by showing that many churches today support the human rights of LGBT people.
Related articles:
- Tanzania plans anti-gay police state, not without opposition (
- Tanzania governor wants to rid Dar es Salaam of every gay person (November 2018, Pink News)
- Thousands ‘living in fear’ after Tanzania calls on public to report gay people (October 2018, The Guardian)
- Tanzania: Anti-gay crackdown in Dar es Salaam (October 2018, BBC)
- Canadian boost for Tanzania’s homophobia (1) and November 2014, 76crimes.com)
- Canadian boost for Tanzania’s homophobia (2)
Are we sure this isn’t fake news?! His surname is just too good to be true in the context.
I understand your skepticism, but it’s not fake news. Rev. Badcock has been preaching hate publicly for years.
— Colin Stewart, editor of this blog