Garry Otton
The 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow run from 23 July until 2 August, once again uniting many countries that shared something in common: Being formerly colonised by Britain. (Except Scotland, of course, which still is. Repeatedly electing political parties promising independence in their manifestos. And repeatedly being told they can’t.)
1938 British Empire Games Opening Ceremony. (State Library of New South Wales)
The Games were the brainchild of Victorian vicar John Astley Cooper who floated the idea of a “pan-Britannic festival of culture and sport” before the first British Empire Games were held in Hamilton, Ontario in 1930. Cooper told the Observer in March 1929. “Unless you have been and lived among black people, as I have, you can have no idea of what a wonderful moral and disciplinary effect cricket has on the black races entrusted to our charge.” But cricket wasn’t all the British were bringing to the party. They also carried crates of Bibles and a moral fervour about homosexuality. Ironically, the most popular Bible used by the missionaries was commissioned by a bisexual. (King James VI had a tunnel built at Apethorpe Palace in Northamptonshire to connect his chamber to his favourite, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham.) Although the word homosexuality was only used in Bibles from 1946, Christian and Islamic missionaries fulminated and punished the sinful abomination of same sex love whenever they encountered it.
John Astley Cooper. (Burlington Historical Society)
Glasgow is now hosting the Games after the Australian state of Victoria pulled out citing rising costs. It was announced in 2024 that Glasgow was considered as a “last possibility” to host the Games if no other host was forthcoming to safeguard the Games. In desperation, the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) turned to Glasgow as it had already hosted the Games in 2014. The Games were drastically scaled back. Including by the state broadcaster, the BBC, who lost the right to televise the live Games for the first time since 1954. In a world where sport means profit, they were outbid by TNT Sports who would show the live games on HBO Max. Hidden behind a subscription fee.
Victoria and Commonwealth Games Australia helped fund the event, allowing ministers to insist there would be no direct public underwriting of delivery. Cabinet Minister Neil Gray and Commonwealth Games Scotland (CGS) gave strict assurances that the event will not require any underwriting or financial contributions from the Scottish or UK taxpayer. Some Glasgow Club members still felt shortchanged.
Glasgow Club is Scotland’s largest network of health and fitness centres, operated by the charity Glasgow Life on behalf of Glasgow City Council. While continuing to take its direct debit at the beginning of the month, large swathes of members in some the most deprived parts of Glasgow were told to find alternative venues. It was a shocking blow to a city that researchers and epidemiologists describe being in a health emergency. The city suffers from disproportionately high levels of chronic ill health, lower life expectancy, and excess mortality compared to the rest of Scotland and the UK. Health services struggle to cope. Many members didn’t have the resources to travel to alternative venues and the fitness centres acted as a vital resource for members with long-term health conditions.
First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney, formally launches the 2026 Commonwealth Games, October 2024. (Scottish Government.)
Nonetheless, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow stuck a traffic cone on its mascot Finnie and prepared to welcome 74 competing nations and territories. 29 of them criminalising LGBT+ people, often to life imprisonment under colonial-era laws exported to these countries by Britain.
Mascot Finnie. 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. (Glasgow Life)
In some northern states under Sharia-based law, homosexuality carries the death sentence, as does “aggravated homosexuality” in predominantly Christian Uganda.
Despite the Commonwealth’s stated commitment to democracy, equality and human rights, for decades, the regular Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting has refused to allow the issue to even be discussed. Glasgow Life too, publicly indulges in some worthy claims about equality and diversity, yet offers space for a fundamentalist church like Easterhill Community Church to offer baptisms in Tollcross International Swimming Centre. The church shares a link on its website to Tearfund and the Christian Institute which runs political campaigns to prevent outlawing ‘conversion therapy’ to ‘cure’ homosexuality. It claims this is to preserve the preaching of orthodox Christian views on marriage and sexuality.
Baptisms in Glasgow’s Tollcross International Swimming Centre by the Easterhill Community Church. (easterhillcommunitychurch.org)
Despite the efforts of western colonisers and proselytising missionaries who saw it as their right to ‘civilise’ the ‘barbarians,’ same-sex attraction cut through pre-colonial African history like pink words through a stick of rock.
Anthropologists have recorded a host of examples. From Zimbabwean cave drawings several thousand years old depicting sex between men, to same-sex ‘mine marriages’ in South African gold mines in the 20th century.
A warrior woman from Ndongo kingdom of the Mbundu ruled as a king, dressed as a man, and surrounded herself by a harem of men dressed as women.
In Angola during the 17th century, Portuguese priests found men dressing and speaking like women marrying men, reporting the marriages were ‘honoured and even prized’. Similarly, in the Iteso communities in Kenya and Uganda, same-sex relationships were celebrated and accepted.
In Gabon and Cameroon, homosexual intercourse – known as bian nkû’ma – was said to promote wealth.
In Uganda men adopting the feminine gender were known as mukodo dako and were allowed to marry their male partners.
King Mwanga II, the monarch of the Baganda people in Uganda, was widely known for his sexual relations with his male subjects.
Members of the South African LGBT+ community at a gay Zulu wedding. (Spectraspeaks.com)
In May, organised by the Peter Tatchell Foundation and joined by Out and Proud Africa, a ‘Commonwealth Walk of Shame was organised.’ Sir Ian McKellen waved marchers off to protest outside eight Commonwealth High Commissions that criminalise LGBTs: Nigeria, Uganda, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad & Tobago, Ghana, Jamaica, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Peter Tatchell said: “For decades, Commonwealth leaders have failed to end the persecution of LGBT+ people. We urge the new Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey of Ghana, to begin her tenure by making clear that anti-LGBT+ victimisation is incompatible with Commonwealth values.”
Peter Tatchell with refugees fleeing persecution in Commonwealth countries, Out and Proud Africa LGBTI, Let Voice be Heard (Bangladesh), Gay Indian Network (GIN) and the African Equality Foundation. (Peter Tatchell Foundation)
Nobody will be holding their breath. Ghana has been criminalising LGBT+ people for many years. In May, Ghana’s parliament approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. It keeps the existing penalty of up to three years in prison for same-sex relationships, adds three to five years for funding or promoting anything LGBT+, and – wait for it – creates a legal “duty to report” – meaning someone who conceals knowledge of the existence of a gay person could face prison themselves!
In an address to parliament, the current bill’s sponsor, the Rev John Ntim Fordjour claimed the proposed law would protect Ghanaian family and cultural values.
Under pressure from religious leaders, the bill is waiting to be signed into law by the Ghanaian president, John Dramani Mahama.
In fear of losing their homes, jobs, or access to healthcare, LGBT+ people in Ghana are reviewing and deleting their social media posts.
But this isn’t just the product of some angry Ghanaian Christian zealot. According to openDemocracy, more than 20 U.S. Christian groups have been pouring over $54 million into anti-gay campaigns across Africa since 2007.
Evidence of U.S. money funding ultra conservative African evangelism comes in the form of direct federal grants, private foundation endowments, and Christian churchgoers supporting ministries across the continent.
American university campus missionary organizations fund massive youth revivals and university chapters across countries like Nigeria and Kenya, embedding U.S. evangelical doctrine directly into a younger demographic.
Wealthy U.S. Christian groups and foundations like the Acton Institute, the Templeton Foundation, the DeVos Foundation and the World Congress of Families (WCF) have poured millions into African nations to influence laws, policies, and public opinion against reproductive rights in favour of a more conservative, Christian, heteronormative agenda.
The clandestine Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family, is based in Washington D.C. and is the largest single documented spender of religious conservative funds in Africa. Tax filings show the group spent more than $20 million in sub-Saharan Africa, heavily targeting Uganda. The group built close ties with Ugandan politicians, most notably David Bahati, the architect behind Uganda’s aggressive ‘Kill the Gays’ legislation.
World Congress of Families. (Southern Poverty Law Center SPLC)
David Bahati. (Uganda Parliament)
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is an influential legal advocacy group that now operates globally. ADF pours money into training local African lawyers and politicians to construct legal frameworks that mirror U.S. religious-right policy, focusing primarily on fighting reproductive health access and LGBT+ rights.
Recent U.S. foreign aid agreements, such as a multi-billion-dollar health deal tied to maternal care, HIV prevention, and malaria control in Nigeria, prioritised partnerships with Christian faith-based healthcare providers over secular alternatives.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has channelled federal dollars to large Christian charities operating in Africa, such as World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, and Mercy Ships.
Africa Mercy ship. (Volunteer Global Health)
Scottish millionaire Dame Ann Gloag is a trustee of the global charity, Mercy Ships. In 1999 she spent £30 million refitting a Danish ferry into the floating hospital, the African Mercy. It was the acceptable face of Christianity. But behind the scenes reports surfaced of mandatory collective evangelical worship onboard amongst the unpaid volunteers and the prioritising of contracts with other Christian groups. Her Stagecoach bus millionaire brother, Brian Souter however used his trust to openly promote evangelical Christianity, actively financing organisations like Tearfund and other organisations that operate in Africa. In 2000 he spent millions on a campaign that almost brought down the fledgling Scottish government when his ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign promoted a privately funded referendum on the retention of a clause backed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, widely known as Section 28, which forbade local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality. Virtually every advertising hoarding was booked to post his homophobic posters across Scotland. The divisive campaign saw newspaper articles warning of ‘gay cliques’ and an ‘international conspiracy’ of homosexuals. Attempts were made to close useful gay organisations whilst doors and windows of venues were smashed. Intellectuals who leant support were denounced and diagrams even appeared at the time in newspapers illustrating how to spot homosexuals’ distinguishing features. Parliament buckled while a community witnessed verbal abuse, beatings, a suicide and several murders.
The Commonwealth Games displays an abdication of secularism, democracy, equality and human rights when it opens its doors to countries that no longer aspire to those ideals.
First British Empire Games, 1930. Official Programme.
Garry Otton is the author of ‘Religious Fascism: The Repeal of Section 28’ and founder of the Scottish Secular Society.
Further reading: –
‘God Has A New Africa’: Undercover in a U.S.-led anti-LGBT ‘hate movement.
Revealed: Dozens of European politicians linked to U.S. ‘incubator for extremism.
Ian McKellen leads protest against anti-LGBT+ laws in Commonwealth
Anti-LGBT Hate Group World Congress of Families to Convene in Verona
Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ+ bill to be scrutinised before approval, president says