Same-Sex Couple Stir Fears of a ‘Gay Agenda’

BLANTYRE, Malawi — Tiwonge Chimbalanga looked like a man but said he was a woman. He helped with the cooking and dressed in feminine wraparound skirts. Steven Monjeza was a quiet, sullen man often intoxicated on sorghum beer. He said he had never been happy until he finally met the right companion.

The two celebrated their engagement — their chinkhoswe, in the Chichewa language — with a party at a lodge here in Malawi’s commercial capital. It began cheerfully enough. But later, gawkers pushed their way inside, some shouting taunts, others just staring through despising eyes. Then the electricity failed. The band stopped playing, and the bride collapsed in tears.

Someone had tipped off a newspaper, The Nation, for this betrothal was extraordinary in a conservative African nation. The resulting front-page story began with the phrase “gay lovebirds,” adding that the chinkhoswe was “the first recorded public activity for homosexuals in the country.” Readers were reminded that homosexuality carried a sentence of 5 to 14 years in prison.

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The clergy, especially, has accused foreigners of infecting Malawi with sexual Satanism. The Rev. Zacc Kawalala, the leader of the Word Alive Ministry and a member of the national human rights commission, said: “The West has its gay agenda. It wants to look at Africa and say, ‘If you don’t accept homosexuality, you are primitive.’ But we’re not as wicked as the West.”

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to Malawi.

It strikes me as very arrogant to go to another country for the purpose of foisting your religion on them, even if you do (sometimes) feed people and build things.