The source of recent anti-gay sentiment

It's common knowledge that Russia and parts of Africa have in recent times gone a bit bananas over gays. Russia is in the process of bringing in new laws regarding gay "propaganda", whilst Uganda is toying with a new law that would officially outlaw homosexuality. So why is this all happening in recent times?

Turns out there's a simple answer; conservatives and evangelical Christians in the west are forging ahead in said countries.

It sounds plausible: After all, haven’t these countries been victims of Western meddling and outright colonialism in the past? But look again. The condemnation of homosexuals is not part of the cultural traditions of Russia, Uganda or most of the countries that have taken an anti-gay turn in recent years. Russia has had fairly robust gay-rights laws on its books in recent decades. The new anti-gay cultural movements haven’t emerged from widespread public belief – rather, they’ve largely been imported by mainly U.S.-based Western conservative and Christian groups that have made it a mission to prevent same-sex equality in the developing world now that their efforts to do so in their own countries have failed.

Anger and fear of homosexuality are products of 19th-century Western thought – this is why the harshest penalties for homosexuality are found in Commonwealth nations. The adoption of these ideas by Muslim figures in Iran, Egypt and Pakistan is a 20th-century product of cross-cultural influence.

In both Uganda and Russia, influential evangelical organizations have played the main role in spreading anti-gay ideas among politicians, churches and media figures. In Uganda, it was one American pastor, Scott Lively, who almost single-handedly created the anti-homosexuality movement in 2009. more

This is all starting to sound like a broken record man. But it's true. Every time you get to the source of where all the hatred is coming from, it always seems to go back to the churches. Or mosques I guess.