Re: I was going to post about this

Agreed. Few African cultures seem to have been gay friendly ever, but the participation of British colonialism and modern Christian preaching certainly entrenched the trends further.

Though Dante has an important point that witchcraft is taken seriously when the whole population (or at least, the majority) believes in it. This is no different in Early Modern Europe and Europeanized America than in current Africa. Christianity has historically been unable to eradicate this belief from foreign cultures, probably because the Bible itself seems to validate the reality of evil witchcraft so it becomes easy to synchretize this element.

Of course, and another reason why this should be worrying - has the US really studied the field? Do they know this? I mean, everyone has already heard the stories of the many things the soldiers deployed, and even the officers were NOT told about Afghan and Iraqi cultures. Will they know what they will find in the field in Uganda or not? It's worrying because the precedents are bad, and cultural shocks are a very likely source of bloodshed in this kind of situations. You lose Afghans when you destroy their opium fields, will they be ready to lose Ugandans by giving sanctuary to a gay guy? (or will they be ready to lose Americans by failing to protect him?)

(Of course, they can send the gay boys to Afghanistan for their tribal allies. Now that would be a win-win!)