Three days after South Africa became the first African nation and the world's fifth country to pass a law legalizing gay marriages, millions of devoted Christians remained angry or in a state of shock, with some calling the move "an act of satanism," church leaders said.
On Tuesday, November 14, South African lawmakers voted 230 to 41 in favor of the Civil Union Bill, which gives homosexual couples the right to register their unions with the same state recognition as those of heterosexuals.
The law still requires President Thabo Mbeki’s signature and an approval of the second house of parliament before it can come into effect by the end of November, but analysts did not expect much legal wrangling over the legislation.
But Christian leaders, some of them working in prostitution-ridden areas, told BosNewsLife that although the law has been passed, the debate is not over yet as churches here and around the world are praying for South Africa’s future.
Until 2005 homosexuality activity was banned in traditionally conservative South Africa under the 'law against sodomy'. Sexual relationships between people of the same sex was often described as a "dreadful sin" by both Christians and non-Christians. In tribal African communities, it was a reason for expulsion.
However supporters of the new legislation, including South Africa's Minister of Home Affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, have said it addressed one of the inequalities left over from the 1948-1994 apartheid era.
"When we attained our democracy we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust, painful past by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African would be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed, culture and sex," she said this week while presenting the bill.
It was passed a few weeks before a deadline set by the country's Constitutional Court which ruled a year ago that the existing marriage law, enacted in 1961, did not conform to South Africa's 1996 constitution which guarantees equal rights for all.
A pastor gives his opinion about the new law during a debate in Soweto. Via VOA News Christian officials disagree. When the Constitutional Court passed the ruling in December 2005, Rhema Church Pastor Ray McCauley told the government, "The majority of South Africans do not agree with the decision. It is a sad day for South Africa when the very bedrock foundation of society, the family, is redefined by a court."
Most African countries, including Kenya where former president Daniel Arap Moi practiced his Christian faith, denounce homosexuality, and in some nations punish it with the death penalty. The leader of the African Christian Democratic Party, Pastor Kenneth Meshoe, South Africa’s e constitution should be amended to protect, what he called, the sanctity of traditional marriage.
"The Civil Union Bill justifies immorality and, by inference, calls sexual perversion a legitimate alternative lifestyle that should be openly accepted," he added. That seems music to the ears of 61-year-old Philemon Khumalo, an elder of a local evangelical church in the Yeoville area of Johannesburg.
"Even before we heard the Gospel, when I was a boy, the traditional African leaders demanded respect for African customs and morals," he told BosNewsLife, adding that, "manhood was something every boy, without exception, was proud of."
Under the apartheid regime he worked for decades as a domestic servant in another area of the city during the apartheid era. "Much of the filth leading to homosexuality was brought into our country by the liberal whites. Now the blacks are just as guilty of accepting and agreeing to their liberal ways," Khumalo complained.
He noted that South Africa’s national anthem is Nkosi Sikelele Afrika or 'God Bless Africa'. "How can we or those African parliamentarians who passed the law sing this anthem and look in the face of God and expect His grace and protection, if we defy His Word, the Bible?," he wondered.
"God is not logical, he is Biblical and there is no such rubbish as religious tolerance for religious liberals." Khumalo said that the Book of Genesis describes how homosexuals, wanting to sodomize Lot's guests, were punished with blindness.
South Africa’s leadership, he warned, “which brings such un-Godly rulings, is already spirituallyDocument on display during public debate on new law in September this year in Soweto. Via VOA News blind and does not see the direction in which our beautiful country is going morally - sliding into the gutter." He said South Africa has already one of the highest rates of AIDS in the world, with some reports suggesting that one out of four people in the country are infected with the HIV-virus that causes AIDS.
"With the latest rulings the situation will only get worse," he argued, referring to what he believes is an already dangerous and unhealthy sex-climate in the country.
In the past, "When our young men went to work in the goldmines of the big city Johannesburg, they were reading all kinds of sexual-related magazines and were closed up in the men's working quarters where women and wives were not allowed to visit them," he recalled. He believes it is one of the reasons why "many of the young men became homosexuals, but were never allowed to talk about it."
Khumalo, who himself worked at the gold mine before taking a job as domestic servant, said he was able to visit his own wife and family only twice a year, at Easter and Christmas. While he is pleased that times have changed, he and other church members noticed that the new found freedom increased pornographic activities and free sex.
The evangelical church in Yeoville has been praying around the clock against the law from an undisclosed location amid fears of anti-Christian violence carried out by militant gay rights activists and others opposing the anti-free-sex message from the congregation, members said. One lady, who identified herself only as Paullina, said youngsters have “no respect for moral ethics” and said her district Yeoville has become a center of drug dealing and prostitution.
"We even have gay bars," she said, after the owner visited the United Kingdom and Amsterdam. "Many gay South Africans call themselves a Christian, but have nothing to do with the faith as they don't live according to the Bible. They have no right to call themselves Christians, its not democracy its blasphemous," Paulina explained.
The conservative Dutch-reformed right wing party Freedom Front Plus (FFP) agrees. "That is why the creator made "Adam and Eve" and not "Adam and Steve" nor "Madam and Eve," said Corne Mulder, Chairman of FFP said marriage is God's institution for a man and a woman. That is why the creator made "Adam and Eve" and not "Adam and Steve" nor "Madam and Eve".
As an elder in his church, Khumalo stressed that no matter what the Constitutional Court, government or parliament may rule, African Christians will never accept marriages between homosexuals, but "only the blessing of the marriages between ladies and gentlemen in the eyes of God."
Evangelicals argue that while Jesus Christ still loves all sinners, including homosexuals, He hates sin, including homosexual behavior. Some evangelical groups have set up support groups for those who they claim are struggling with homosexuality, angering some gay rights activists who say homosexuality is neither a sin nor a choice.
Paulina said however that legalizing gay marriages, "could never have happened under the wise Madiba," the nickname for previous president Nelson Mandela. She accused current President Mbeki and his African National Congress party of "being weak" at times of trouble.
"If Mbeki acts according to God's law this South Africa still has a future, if he acts according to the Constitutional Court ruling it has none," she said.
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