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Burkina Faso bans homosexuality as a crime punishable with prison, fines
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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It's actually possible to have a revolutionary movement without banning homosexuality, and not banning homosexuality would not dilute the class struggle or align the movement with colonialist powers.
It is possible, but not under the social, political, and economic conditions in Burkina Faso, otherwise they would not have pursued this policy.
It's important to apply a dialectical view of geopolitics, free from idealisms.
Again, they are not refraining from legalising homosexuality, they are making an active choice to engage in homophobia. They could always not do that. It is not idealism or undialectical to point that out. We don't have to condemn Burkina Faso, but you are merely stating that they have to do this when not only is there no real theoretical basis for that, you have provided no information on the material conditions of Burkina Faso that would necessitate banning homosexuality as a revolutionary act. You're basically just saying that social progressivism in the form of acceptance of homosexuality is a tool of the colonial powers and that also Burkina Faso isn't advanced enough to not do homophobia which seems (given that you have provided little evidence of how this would work) condescending towards the population and tendentious towards justifying homophobia.
I know, and I'm not celebrating that, but it is very likely that the social and political conditions today are very homophobic and basically required said legislation. Are there any polls that show the move as unpopular there?
And just as Cuba and Castro started with a homophobic path and then backtracked, we need to trust that the oppressed people's of the nation will also rise up and demand a backtrack of homophobic and regressive laws.
I don't know. And I'm saying that just assuming that it is necessary to do this without any information like that isn't exactly well reasoned.
And it would not have been wrong at the time to call that a mistake, and to refer to it as a mistake with hindsight. Both of those have been done by Cubans themselves, and the second thing by Castro himself. And just as we didn't and don't have to condemn Cuba for this early homophobia, we don't have to condemn Burkina Faso. But we can acknowledge that this is a regressive law that will hurt people and it is disappointing to see.
they could've chosen to say nothing instead of formalizing it. I doubt either of us actually knows whether the revolution there lives or dies by throwing gays under the bus.
They made gays illegal because it's necessary, and we know it's necessary because they've made gays illegal?
I don't think it's right to assume that discrimination must have an underlying revolutionary foundation. Being a socialist doesn't necessarily make you immune to bigotry or bad judgement.
I think the issue is whether we are putting up socialist standards to a revolutionary government that maybe is not socialist in nature. And even then it's civil society can be very complex, see China.
But unfortunately I think that yes, some political calculation was made to say that in fact, they should ban being gay.