Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye launched a virulent anti-gay tirade on Friday, saying same-sex couples should be publicly stoned.

He also lashed out at Western countries that press other nations to allow gay rights or risk losing aid.

Homosexuality in Burundi, a conservative Christian country in East Africa, has been criminalised since 2009 with prison terms of up to two years for consensual same-sex acts.

  • Jilanico@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Russia is full of atheists and they are also brutal to queer people. Excising religion from the world isn’t going to solve that.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        6 months ago

        FYI, if you’re reading this in dark mode, that graph will look visually misleading. The white is changed to a shade of grey, you have to actually go to Wikipedia or disable dark mode…

      • Jilanico@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Opposition to LGBTQ rights in modern Russia started under Stalin who was a supporter of the League of Militant Atheists and an avowed enemy to all religions. Soviet leaders after Stalin continued and in some cases intensified his anti-LGBTQ policies. Modern Russia simply inherited hostility for LGBTQ from pro-atheist USSR.

        It’s worth noting the Bolsheviks decriminalized homosexuality prior to Stalin taking power. Point is neither a religious nor atheist society will necessarily be better for LGBTQ rights. It depends on what flavor of religion or atheism is dominating society.

        • Quokka@quokk.au
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          6 months ago

          You can very clearly see a trend where the more pro-LGBT countries are the less religious.

          • Jilanico@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I haven’t seen any studies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. However, less religious is not the same as atheist or anti-religion.

            There are plenty of folks that identify as LGBTQ as well as their allies that believe in God and may even participate or quasi-participate in organized religion. They will present arguments like, “God made them this way so who am I to hate them?” or, “We are all God’s children,” or what have you.

            Anyways, an atheistic society doesn’t guarantee an LGBTQ-friendly society.

        • Jilanico@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          We can also see lack of LGBTQ protections in Mainland China which is overwhelmingly atheist.

      • Jilanico@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Just about every hospital near me was started by charitable religious folks. Religion has caused a lot of harm, but also tons of good. Let’s not toss the baby out with the bathwater.

        • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Do you think these extremely profitable hospitals would not exist if not for the benevolence of churches?! Lol 🤣

          The church branding is just branding. There has never, ever been benevolence involved in corporate healthcare. Never.

        • Cinner@lemmy.worldB
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          6 months ago

          It’s so insane to me how quickly Lemmy almost as a whole has been ideologically subverted, they can not even see wool as it is being pulled over their eyes.

          I am a nonbeliever, but I am a truthseeker. The majority of an entire world’s generation has already been subverted in one area or another, due to global media. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok or YouTube, Douyin or Telegram; an entire generation has grown up ingesting content specifically engineered to target them and program them to think a certain way.

          I suppose it’s not much different than traditional television and radio media from the 1920s onward, and paper before that.

          The tides are just turning so. much. faster.

          May those with the best tooling and best protected undersea cables win.