What can you say about a country that earlier this week had a grand total of $217 in its national bank? You can say that it's poor. You can say that its government is a kleptocracy. You can say that it must be in Africa. All those things are true of Comrade Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, last on the list of members of the Disunited Nations, and last on just about every other list you can think of.
Comrade Bob, however, doesn't care about how his country looks in the eyes of the rest of the world. He will go his own way, and the West and the rest be damned. And many of his subjects agree with him.
One thing "Bob's-your-uncle" is adamant about is the immorality of homosexuality. He goes way beyond the stance of the Roman Catholic Church, of which he is nominally a member. The Church calls homosexuality "objectively disordered" but asks that gays be treated with understanding and compassion, and given pastoral help not to change their sexual orientation but to live with it in conformity to God's commandments.
Where that becomes difficult is in matters like same-sex "marriage". The Church, along with every other religion in the world, has always maintained that marriage is a solemn and sanctified bond between a man and a woman. It has been so since Adam and Eve. Until lately, that is.
Now we have the wimmin's libbers and gay activists clamouring for "equal rights", by which they mean licence to do whatever they damn well please, no matter what God or mere mortals may think, and no matter what damage is done to the fabric of society. Christianity is now so weak, and the LGBT agenda -- see WWW passim -- is being pushed so hard and so successfully that same-sex "marriage" is now legal in large parts of the so-called Christian world. (A better term would be "post-Christian West".)
The rest of the world -- Asia, the Middle East and Africa -- is different, and intends to remain so. You don't see people agitating for same-sex "marriage" in China or Japan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Uganda or... wait for it... Zimbabwe.
In fact, Zimbabwe proposes to make same-sex "marriage" illegal! Its leaders -- not just Bob but leaders of the opposition -- have approved the draft of a new constitution, to be tabled in the Zimbabwean Parliament on February 8th.
According to an article in NewsDay, Section 4.78 of the draft, on marriage rights, prohibits forced marriages, marriages of people under the age of 18 and between people of the same sex.
One of the co-chairthingies of the drafting committee called the clause a clear statement that Zimbabwe does not condone homosexuality. Said Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana, "This is the first time we have this clause in our constitution.... There will be other legal instruments to enforce it, such as the Sexual Offences Act. It's clear sexual relationships between people of the same sex are prohibited."
Mugabe has long been a fierce critic of homosexuality. He has often criticised it as unAfrican and branded gays and lesbians as "worse than pigs and dogs". He has also said, as the Church says, that same-sex relationships are ungodly -- not according to God's law or natural law.
Douglas Mwonzora, the other co-chair, said homosexuality was a criminal offence in Zimbabwe, as it is in many other Asian and African countries. "The constitution cannot prescribe a crime, but the issue of homosexuality can be covered under the criminal law of sodomy," Mwonzora said. "Same-sex marriages are prohibited and homosexuality is a crime under the country's criminal laws."
What should Western "gay rights" campaigners and same-sex "marriage" advocates make of third-world opposition to their agenda? Are the countries where marriage is still just for men and women backward and uncivilized?
Once upon a time the Christian nations sent missionaries to places like Zimbabwe to preach the gospel which says that homosexual acts are evil. (See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans.) Should we now send missionaries to say that those who came a century ago were wrong, and that what was once regarded as evil is now to be not just tolerated but encouraged? Don't be surprised...
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