Join Sister Veronica as she talks about the need for a safe space for pro-life activists outside of the United States, Canada, and Europe to speak out against abortion, abortion, and abortion-related practices. In this episode, Sister Veronica talks about why she believes that a safe place for prolife activists should be in Africa.
00:04:06.740But according to researchers, the largest random sex survey ever conducted reported that only 1.4% of adults engaged in homosexual behavior.
00:05:04.300And it's reflected in the United States as well.
00:05:07.860In the United States, they just did a study earlier this year.
00:05:11.420One in four high school students identify as one of the alphabet letters, LGBT, etc., etc.
00:05:18.740We are in an absolute crisis that is growing by the day, and the policies of the government have turned against the church, have turned against those who are at all faithful.
00:05:35.500So you have, in the United States, the government, the FBI, the arm of government for policing, has turned on innocent Catholics.
00:05:47.700There are Catholic families who are being sought after by the FBI, hunted down.
00:05:55.980Their homes are being come to with FBI agents' guns drawn to confront them and their families.
00:06:05.780And it's not just one, it's several families.
00:06:14.340Just the kind that go outside the abortuaries and pray.
00:06:19.100And yet they're targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations in the United States under an administration by a guy who calls himself a Catholic.
00:06:29.520So that's the state of the war on life and family inside Canada, inside Europe, and the United States.
00:06:40.080And we've come here to show you how we lost this war in our countries, so that the faith can have one place where it still stays.
00:06:52.140So that the life and family teachings of Jesus Christ can be maintained in one land, because there is no other.
00:07:00.300I will tell you our perspective on these issues.
00:07:07.120I want to go over what we're going to be talking about this evening.
00:07:10.220I've already talked about the startling increase in LGBT in America and Europe, especially in children.
00:07:18.240You know what's happening with children?
00:07:21.320Children from very young ages are being given irreversible treatments that will harm them forever,
00:07:29.100because their parents deem them trans from the time they're two years old.
00:07:32.920And there's actual doctors and hospitals that are very well-to-do that suggest they will go and give these treatments.
00:07:40.900They're irreversible treatments, but they say, oh, it's no problem.
00:10:58.360And listen very carefully, because these words from this homosexual activist tell clearly the damage that homosexuality does to them.
00:11:09.080He said, we have one of the poorest health statuses in this country.
00:11:13.620And he's talking about the homosexual community.
00:11:15.440Health issues affecting queer Canadians, that's homosexual Canadians, include lower life expectancy than the average Canadian, suicide, higher rates of substance abuse, depression, inadequate access to care, and HIV AIDS.
00:11:29.540He said, there are all kinds of health issues that are endemic to our community, only for that LGBT community.
00:11:39.460And he says, we have higher rates of anal cancer in the gay male community.
00:11:43.840Lesbians have higher rates of breast cancer.
00:11:46.560And these were his concluding words, asking for money from the government.
00:12:09.220But those who are working on the front lines see them.
00:12:12.960And I'm tired of watching my community die.
00:12:16.240Even if you don't believe the studies, the doctors, and the testimonies, you must believe the testimony of this LGBT activist who laid out clearly the harm that this lifestyle causes.
00:12:33.560And therefore, those who fight for family, those who fight for life, love our brothers and sisters who are tempted into homosexuality much more than those who say, oh, go ahead, go ahead, wonderful, hooray, hooray.
00:12:51.380Any parent who allows their children to do something that's going to kill them or harm them is not loving that child.
00:13:00.120We must love our brothers and sisters who are tempted to the sin of homosexuality that's endangering their bodies, their minds, and their souls.
00:13:08.420And we must be willing to sacrifice in order to love them enough to tell them that this is harmful.
00:13:15.600With that, I am going to pass over to the reason why life cites in Africa in the first place.
00:13:25.680You see, we had a very great pro-life activist in Canada whose name was Dr. John Shea and who I sat around a table like this with for many years.
00:13:57.780And he combined those two loves of Africa and LifeCite and approached us and said, I think we can do work in Africa with LifeCite.
00:14:05.780And so we've had a very happy relationship now for a while.
00:14:10.640And Greg Shea, a good friend of mine, and someone who I am honored to work with, will give us our introductions.
00:14:18.840Thank you very much, John Henry, and it's a real pleasure and honor to be here amongst such inspiring witnesses to Jesus Christ on his mission, which is to stand for dignity, for human dignity, and to love and to serve and to be channels and instruments of peace in this world.
00:14:40.180And all of you gathered here from different parts and different backgrounds, they're all part of a fabric, a fabric of life and love of life and love of God.
00:15:08.620In Africa, that's not a big deal, maybe.
00:15:13.240And he co-founded the LifeCite News 26 years ago, and it was based on a movement that my father had been involved in, as you mentioned, and many others.
00:15:22.220It goes back actually 50 years, I think, right?
00:15:28.240So that's five decades of experience that we hopefully can share with you.
00:15:32.540And I also learned that not only did he attend the most famous choir school in Canada, St. Michael's Choir School, but he actually remembers it.
00:15:43.060Because when we're at Mass, he sings so beautifully.
00:15:46.820And I'm sure that everyone's benefiting from that, too.
00:15:50.800I think, though, that I would hand over to Tobias, who could then set the context for this, and then we can start with our speakers.
00:16:00.200We have a series of panelists here who, again, are drawn from different but complementary parts of the community.
00:16:07.800And so I'd ask Tobias, I think that's the plan, right, that you would have a chance to set the context for the TV viewers here.
00:23:09.440I started as a young person in 1990, 1996, 7 there, when we set up True Love Weights.
00:23:19.860And our idea was to try and set up True Love Weights clubs across schools.
00:23:25.560So, my colleague, David, he's now passed, David O'Darrow, very passionate young man, introduced me to these ideas.
00:23:36.480And at that time, I thought it was very obvious to everyone that it would be good to remain chaste before marriage.
00:23:45.340But after a few years, I realized that there is a bit of a battle of people who don't agree to the obvious, yeah?
00:23:56.760So, and I think that journey eventually took me to a number of things.
00:24:01.100One of them is to try and work at a policy level, to try and understand what goes on from a policy perspective,
00:24:07.560the policy system that is sometimes coordinated, funded by other NGOs, coordinated through the UN system.
00:24:15.320Eventually, this comes through as laws in our country.
00:24:18.860So, and at that time, I met a Canadian, Anna Halfine, the founder of World Youth Alliance, in the year, in the 2000s.
00:24:27.200And she helps me to understand what goes on, yeah, the system and, you know, how to coordinate things.
00:24:32.120And out of that, we've been working with the World Youth Alliance at some point of sitting the World Youth Alliance board
00:24:39.120to try and see how we can work with the youth to get them to really talk about their real issues in their country,
00:24:50.140the real problems, as opposed to what is being proposed to them as the problems and as the solutions.
00:24:55.860So, I'm very happy that, you know, our connection and our work with World Youth Alliance has gone through all the five continents now.
00:25:04.120And there's a very big World Youth Alliance group here.
00:25:08.480Then I moved, I got married in 2001 and got into family.
00:25:12.260Then again, I thought that people in family have all the tools and all the ideas on what they need to do.
00:25:18.420So, and then realized that even if we have a very rich African culture on very key things about family and the strength to, you know,
00:25:27.940eventually be family people, the need for taking care of children, there were still challenges around getting, you know, new knowledge on what to do.
00:27:25.000So we kind of have a government node to implement many of the aspirations of the family that, again, are articulated very clearly in our constitution.
00:29:06.480We were originally thinking of doing a Q&A after each speaker, but I think in the interest of time, maybe I could ask the same question to each speaker.
00:29:13.440Knowing that we're here to compare notes and think about how to best defend and promote life and family in the Kenyan and African countries, what do you see as the greatest challenge?
00:29:27.740And perhaps, in addition, opportunity, from your own experience, to achieve that goal?
00:29:38.180What is a great, I think there is a kind of a wave.
00:29:44.080And I don't know whether the wave is being promoted or propagated by technology.
00:29:49.980There's a kind of a wave that is attacking the obvious.
00:29:53.360And unfortunately, the young people, I don't know what has changed with the young people, that they are ready to test anything else that is looking different.
00:30:03.980So I know I have spoken to many of the parents and I tell them that, look, we have to be aware that one of our greatest threats in, you know, parenting and marriage is this new animal called technology.
00:30:17.860And you see, when you look at it, some of us who are in technology, you know, it's that's very, you know, it's not very harmful.
00:30:26.500They look very harmful, but without putting one's energy into thinking about its repercussion, one can find that actually any other extra time that they have there on some WhatsApp, it could be as, you know, as it's not harmful to be in WhatsApp.
00:30:44.440But the habits that one can form out of being almost slaved to technology are beginning to be a big threat.
00:30:54.180So I think that is the biggest threat to be aware that unlike the days we began in 2000, where sources of information were very clear, sources of information now are from all over and they, you know, they can spread like wildfire.
00:31:09.080In Kenya, in Kenya, we have a big, a big social media following and all thoughts and ideas and the, you know, the public opinion.
00:31:21.560Unfortunately, these days can come out of the social media.
00:31:27.660So, so we, we kind of have to be aware of that.
00:31:33.000And then what are the opportunities and the opportunities, thank God, where we are at, we have a big civil society.
00:31:41.040We have a good network of people who have been thinking the same, but not necessarily on the same face.
00:31:46.720I know, as I've said in the working committee, in the family, we've sat, I've sat with the Hindus, the Muslim, everyone.
00:31:53.940And within the church and within the development of a parenting manual that we did, I have sat with other people who have different products and ideas on what they have been doing in their churches.
00:32:04.980We kind of have a big network of people who are thinking together.
00:32:12.120So the issue is to see how we can now implement some of these things that we have come, some of these tools we've come up with, the policy and these networks.
00:32:48.940Sister Dr. Veronica Rock, who is senior lecturer at Catholic University of East Africa, Center for Social Justice and Ethics.
00:32:57.980Sister is a moral theologian and an ethicist and a counselor, as well as a corresponding member of PAB in the Vatican Union, the Pontifical Academy for Life.
00:33:12.440Does that mean you're in that position for life?
00:33:32.020I want to thank you, especially in the life side and all the panelists who are here for this opportunity to give my sight as a religious woman.
00:33:46.420Like the course for the Samaritan woman when she met Jesus and she went back to our community.
00:33:58.960And after some time, the people said, we don't believe because of what you told us, but we have experience by ourselves.
00:34:10.220So in Africa, we want to thank the missionaries who came and brought the faith, introduced Jesus to us.
00:34:20.420And after some time, and after some time, it was not easy for the African people to embrace either those who want to join priesthood, or if you wanted to be a sister, a brother.
00:34:38.360The reason was Africans believe that every person is, they have to marry and get children.
00:34:49.400So the idea of not marrying was kind of foreign and unless for religious purposes, there was that idea.
00:35:03.140But now the church in Africa has impressed Christianity, they have embraced the Catholic faith.
00:35:13.500And you find now many families, many churches, we have priests, sisters, brothers, and there is vocations, you could say there's boom of vocations in Africa.
00:35:32.420So that is the situation where we are.
00:35:34.560And it gives us now, as indigenous people from Africa, as Pope Paul said, that Africa, to reach a time that Africans will evangelize themselves.
00:35:50.260And this is the position where we are.
00:35:53.080We are now getting back to our people to share the mission of Jesus Christ.
00:35:58.260And our role as religious persons is, apart from prayer, which we pray for the family, the society, the nation, and everything that is in the world, that is our life as religious persons.
00:37:17.620So the dignity of the human person, the dignity of marriage and family, the place of marriage and family in society is something that is a place that is respected.
00:37:42.860So when we bring the gospel of Jesus Christ and teach them about the family, at what Jesus says, what the church teaches about marriage and family, our people understand.
00:38:00.200And really, they find it easy to appreciate and accept the gospel.
00:38:08.620So our role as religious men and women and also priests is to teach.
00:38:14.640And we find our people, when we meet them, when we teach them during, when we teach catechisms, maybe in the parishes, we work in pastoral, also in education, institutions of learning in our schools.
00:38:32.980You find sisters, we take part, and a number of schools in Kenya are run by the religious and especially the sisters.
00:38:45.540And it gives us an opportunity to teach what the church says about family.
00:38:53.160And at the same time, being Africans, we are able to understand and know what does the church teach, what does the African people hold and value.
00:39:08.480And there are some of the things which may not agree.
00:39:12.420And we are able to tell the people in a way that they come to understand.
00:39:18.080But from the African perspective, some of the values or challenges, we can call challenges, which does not agree with the gospel, it was for them, for life.
00:39:32.580It was like we practice, many people practice polygamy.
00:39:37.640It was not just the issue of having many wives, but because they wanted life.
00:39:45.720In fact, you are respected and you are held in a certain standard when you have children, many children, and maybe even many wives, and you can control that family.
00:40:02.480So the issue of having one, two children, African people will ask you, what's happening?
00:40:09.480You are supposed to have as many, my mother had eight.
00:40:30.480In fact, for African people, one is not counted rich because you have material.
00:40:39.480But if you have children, married and children, that's enough, you are rich.
00:40:44.800For my people, if you add cows, okay, then you are very rich.
00:40:49.960So, the issue of really family and children was paramount and took a center stage.
00:41:00.120So, when we meet our people, maybe in health institutions, and we talk to them about their health, about how to bring up the families, then they appreciate.
00:41:12.980But lecturing in the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and working at the Center for Social Justice and Ethics, where I teach Christian ethics, and the whole institution, all students take Christian ethics.
00:41:29.120So, I meet all students taking law, economics, everything that they have.
00:43:48.340It was, if a woman does not have children, she gets another woman, like surrogate, so that this young one, and they get the one, if she happens to have had a child,
00:44:03.720then she can give birth for this lady who did not have children.
00:44:09.240So, a woman marrying a woman in Africa is not lesbian.
00:44:14.260It is for children, so that the family, there is arrangement, they do proper arrangement.
00:44:21.220According to the African culture, there is a way they do so that this woman will not die without a child,
00:44:29.340but this other one will bring up children for her.
00:44:32.880So, there are challenges which we meet as religious people, which we meet and encounter in our families.
00:44:44.480And some of our families, they seem to have no problem, especially those who also go to social media and exposed.
00:44:55.740It's kind of, you are civilized, you have gone to America, you have gone, as you say, Canada.
00:45:00.800When you come back, you are like, I know things now.
00:45:05.740And they tend to introduce these to the families.
00:45:10.220But all of them, it is issues that we all need to stand and talk about.
00:49:00.360And when that you explore, then you discover, then there is issues of post-traumatic stress disorders.
00:49:07.560And the right thing for me to do as a medical doctor is then to refer that person to a counseling psychologist.
00:49:17.380It would be criminal for me and totally unethical to affirm that position and even suggest drugs or surgeries that would then affirm the delusion.
00:49:29.600And that is what we find that is lacking from the West.
00:49:32.920There isn't enough courage to stand for the truth.
00:49:35.880And I think it is time we, as professionals, said it is enough and we stop playing games.
00:49:44.800The other one is the question of abortion.
00:49:47.740And we spend a lot of time discussing abortion.
00:50:00.160Because the term abortion on its own just means deliberately bring to an end prematurely.
00:50:07.140It is just an English word describing that you can end a process prematurely.
00:50:12.060So you can end a pregnancy prematurely.
00:50:14.640But does that mean you kill the baby deliberately?
00:50:17.460So in medical practice, when you terminate a pregnancy before the baby can survive outside of its mother's womb, that is called induced abortion.
00:50:30.440And induced abortion has always been unethical and criminal.
00:50:34.600So you remove the term induced, and now we are discussing abortion.
00:50:38.260And I think it is time we just clearly state that what is the intention of the service provider?
00:50:48.140If your intention is to deliberately kill the unborn child, then, of course, whatever you are doing is unethical.
00:50:56.260Now, there is a very interesting thing that is happening, that you can legalize an immorality, and then, in that bill, offer a solution for doctors.
00:51:08.240And it is called conscientious objection.
00:51:13.220Now, if you put conscientious objection in a bill, what you are first agreeing is that what you are asking people to do is immoral.
00:51:21.220There must be something wrong if the conscience will not agree with it.
00:51:26.080And if you allow me conscientious objection, then you are legalizing that which is immoral.
00:51:32.120And that, in itself, makes the discussion very awkward.
00:53:11.700The pastor says, you have embarrassed me.
00:53:13.520You now cannot come to the youth functions.
00:53:19.420And everybody in the community have told her they don't want her baby.
00:53:23.500And then when she turns around and terminates a pregnancy, we all point fingers and condemn her.
00:53:31.840So let us go back a little and say, when we teach our children about sexuality, what should we teach them?
00:53:39.300And I think one area that is lacking, that is in the theology of the body, is the spirituality of the sexual act.
00:53:48.520That if, as Christians, we don't believe in reincarnation, that every child who is conceived is a new soul that has been created by God that didn't exist before,
00:54:03.220then the act of coitus, the act of sexual relation, is basically an action of a man who is calling on God to make him a father.
00:54:18.520So the man is a high priest in this sacrifice.
00:54:21.980And his life-giving seed is the sacrifice that he gives.
00:54:26.400And the altar is the woman he has nominated.
00:54:32.520And when we teach this spirituality of the sexual act, I think it will start helping the boy child to reflect a little differently.
00:54:42.500And the example I give them is of a maize farmer who went to a very fertile piece of land during the rainy season and scattered some maize,
00:54:52.280then came back after a month and found the maize had grown.
00:54:55.860And he immediately started casting the ground and saying, how could you grow maize?
00:55:15.960And so we need to address the act of sex from a spiritual perspective to demonstrate why then it needs to be within the family.
00:55:29.060And then we say that if you are not ready to be a father or a mother, then you have a moral responsibility to avoid sexual intercourse.
00:55:36.280And that would help us deal with that.
00:55:39.040Then support the mother who is in crisis pregnancy so that she understands, despite where she may have fallen, that the baby is still welcome.
00:55:50.560And we shall do everything we can to be able to help her.
00:55:54.140So if you look at the opportunity, then the opportunity is about going back to support the family structure.
00:56:02.660That marriage is not just a union between the man and the woman.
00:56:43.220And what they've done is go to court to try and stop its implementation.
00:56:47.700So we're hoping this government will help us to implement this together with the family policy so that we may be able to protect the sexuality of our people.
00:56:59.660Now, I turn to the other side of the table, where we have Alice from Chiedi.
00:57:11.720I'd ask the same question, maybe a bit of an introduction of your experience and your work in the area,
00:57:17.240and then addressing the idea of the greatest challenge that you see, and then the hopeful opportunity that is also there.
00:57:27.220Alice is the head of the Secretariat Catholic Members of Parliament Spiritual Support Initiative.
00:57:33.900And she's the coordinator, and she's the coordinator as well, at the International Catholic Legislators Network, ICLN, of the Africa chapter of that group.
00:57:44.180And also, Alice is active in the Catholic Women's Association of the Archdiocese of Nairobi.
00:57:50.940So, I'll pass this over to you, Alice.
00:58:00.220Thank you, LifeSite News, and also the other panelists and our guests here.
00:58:06.020For me, working with Catholic politicians for the last 12 years has made me realize just the kind of potential we have
00:58:17.480if we have our own Christians and Catholics, especially in places of power and where they can influence policy.
00:58:25.300We have had many, many challenges, but I want to say that we have had wins because of having our own Catholics in these places of power.
00:58:35.860And, of course, with the support that we have gotten, especially from the Christian professionals,
00:58:44.220It's very difficult for politicians to work on their own because, particularly currently, the manipulation and the arm-twisting from the globalists,
00:58:55.360from the radical feminist groups, and our fallback has been, particularly, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops and the people of faith.
00:59:04.920And in Africa, especially in Kenya, I would confidently say that we can still, and we are still relying on the voice of the bishops.
00:59:12.040Because we look up to them, and when nobody is listening to us, the bishops speak from the pulpit, and the world and the country listen.
00:59:22.500We have an incident and a big win that we had in 2019.
00:59:27.080We had the Health Reproductive Bill 2019, and by God's grace, we call it so, we won it because the bishops spoke from the pulpit, from the cathedral.
00:59:37.680Nobody was going to church, but all the Catholics were watching, and other Christians, and other people of faith, were watching what was happening at the Holy Family Basilica.
00:59:46.680We were talking, what the politicians were talking, it was a heavy issue, and they had to withdraw it because of collaboration, our collaboration with the bishops.
01:00:07.580However, we need to foster a stronger unity amongst all people of faith.
01:00:14.860We cannot win this battle as Catholics alone, or just Christians alone.
01:00:19.140We have won battles in the past because the Muslims are with us, the Hindus are with us, the Protestants, the Evangelicals.
01:00:27.120And for the Catholic legislators, first the Africans, on the issues we are speaking about, abortion, LGBTQI, in Africa, they were unheard of.
01:00:39.340And our politicians are first Africans, then they became Christians, they have a constitution to defend.
01:00:46.640And if they are equipped well with information, they will defend it, and we shall win this war.
01:00:51.800And if we go back to the voice of war bishops, they are vocal, they are strong, and the Catholic bishops, I would say, are the single most respected voice of religious leaders in this country.
01:01:10.340Are we supporting them enough to be able to speak without contradicting themselves?
01:01:15.060We do not have reliable media that would cover what the bishops say as they would cover any other scandal, especially if it touches on the church.
01:01:26.080We need our own media, whether it's social media, where we can reach the majority of Christians, and even the non-Christians and the non-Catholics.
01:01:36.380Because for the respect that we have of our bishops, they become our fallback.
01:01:41.840For instance, right now we have a family protection bill.
01:01:44.120We are still going back to our bishops to tell them to push on the pulpit so that they can be blocked, can be unlocked, and we can go to the floor of our parliament so that we pass it in the morning.
01:01:57.920Or the politicians can pass it in the morning.
01:02:01.580We need to capitalize on this authority that is really, really respected by all peoples of faith, and even the non-believers, respect to the Catholic bishops.
01:03:14.480The third is technology, because that is what is feeding our children.
01:03:20.960And we also need a lot of support for our politicians.
01:03:24.120And when we go for election, we keep saying, do we know the values and the virtues of the political leaders that we put in place?
01:03:34.040Because if they do not have values and virtues, they will go to the side of the globalists.
01:03:40.060If they have no Christian values, if they do not have African cultural values, we do not expect them to protect the value of the values that we are propagating.
01:03:49.980Our Catholic and peace, spiritual support initiative was initiated.
01:03:55.380The first idea came into our minds in 2008.
01:04:01.340And we found a reason to come together as Christian leaders.
01:04:06.820The first, there was a pro-abortion bill in the April of 2008.
01:04:11.140We didn't go far, because we were all denominations, Christian denominations together,
01:04:16.400until those that later became the founders of our Catholic and peace and spiritual support initiative realized that we could do better if we started with the Catholic initiative.
01:05:17.640But we need even to employ and engage our youth, to be on the social media, because the youth of this country do not even watch news.
01:05:26.800By the time news are being aired, they know what every media house will air, because they have been on the social media throughout the day.
01:05:35.880And so why don't we go to their playground and communicate there, because they are the targets of the globalists, the radical feminists, and those who want to destroy our families, and those who are propagating the culture of them.
01:05:52.440Very clear, very clear challenges and opportunities and great experience, and I will now turn to you as an advocate in the room.
01:06:04.580Charles Kanjama is an advocate at the High Court of Kenya, and he's a partner, a founding partner, of UMA and Kanjama Advocates.
01:06:13.160He's practiced in many areas of law, the list has about 10 or 12 areas here, and also is a frequent contributor, writing extensively on many aspects of civil procedure, environmental law, imperative constitutional law, international institutions and property, including intellectual property, legal ethics and jurisprudence, author of Digest on matrimonial property law, constitutional law, and tax law.
01:06:41.960Charles Kanjama, and is a regular columnist in the standard history.
01:06:45.880Are there any areas of law that you're not calling?
01:06:50.980Also as a member of the Strathmore Education Trust, Charles is a council member of the Law Society of Kenya, and a convener of its Constitution, Implementation, and Law Reform Committee.
01:07:05.080So, we are very pleased to have you in our midst.
01:07:13.500I was a convener of the Constitutional Implementation Committee some years back when I was in the Law Society.
01:07:20.220Subsequently, I became the chair of the Nairobi branch of the Law Society, and around that time, we founded Kenya Christian Professionals Forum.
01:07:31.640So, Kenya Christian Professionals Forum is an ecumenical organization.
01:07:51.600And we come from diverse professional groups.
01:07:55.240And what brought us together was in 2010, when Kenya was in the process of coming up with a new constitution, in a constitutional process of formulation of a new constitution.
01:08:09.860And the professionals felt that the church leaders would benefit from technical assistance from professionals, would assist in advising them on areas that are within our professional competence, were involved in training of trainers, those who would go to the ground to talk to the people on the grassroots.
01:08:32.480So, for the last 13 years, since 2010, we have come together.
01:08:37.720We focus on areas of life, of family, and of faith.
01:08:43.500We also focus on good governance and values-based education.
01:08:47.780One of the things that we noted is that advocacy requires you to keep engaging and not giving up.
01:08:56.060And to recognize that advocacy doesn't mean that you have the most amount of money available.
01:09:03.480There's a lot of money that is coming from the West.
01:09:06.180There's a lot of strong lobby groups that are trying to convert the African culture into a mirror image of Western society.
01:09:19.880Early this year, we had a meeting in Entebbe, Uganda.
01:09:24.420And in that meeting, there were MPs from several countries in Africa.
01:09:30.520And we were discussing how can Africa protect its culture and its family values.
01:09:36.400And at the end of that meeting, we were happy to have a session with the president of Uganda.
01:09:43.300And when we spoke to him about what we had been doing, he narrated for us that, according to him, Africa has undergone three cycles of being dominated by the West.
01:09:58.580And he says the first was colonialism.
01:10:02.340That domination involved taking land and freedom of the people of Africa.
01:10:08.940And of course, apart from taking land and freedom, the Africans also got something in return, which we don't mind.
01:10:16.200We were happy we got certain things, including Christian religion came at the time.
01:10:20.640But we fought to get rid of the yoke of colonialism successfully.
01:10:27.240And then he said that the second wave was the wave of neocolonialism, which involved certain international, you could call them unjust structures of trade and relationships.
01:10:38.360That while the African countries were free in theory, in practice, they were still very dominated by Western trade and Western structures that had been put in place before.
01:10:57.920The African countries tried to resist that and say we want to be part of the non-aligned movement.
01:11:03.180But nonetheless, we found ourselves quite dominated in that situation.
01:11:09.400And even some of our instabilities internal were occasionally fomented or supported by Western powers, like the assassination of Patis Lumumba in Congo.
01:11:22.380These are things that have been studied.
01:11:24.120And then Museveni said that we have now the third wave of domination.
01:11:28.140And this domination is an attempt at cultural domination.
01:11:31.920And it seems that those in some of the Western countries cannot sleep in peace until our African and moral cultural values are dismantled to the extent that they are different from theirs.
01:11:49.160The other day, I met a diplomat from the United States who was telling me that for America, the question of homosexual rights, because that's what they call them, is very important to them.
01:12:02.560And I reminded him that they become important when they, depending on whether it's the Democrats or the Republicans in power.
01:12:09.180And he told me, no, you know, the American situation has really changed right now.
01:12:15.100And I told him that the difference in my view is that when the Democrats in power, they put so much effort in persuading the rest of the world to embrace their values.
01:12:27.520The big part of Western Europe is already quite liberal, like the Scandinavian countries.
01:12:34.660And it becomes difficult for us here to just operate the way we want to operate because of the pressure that is being put on us.
01:12:44.160It is now being brought even with a trade, international trade treaties and instruments.
01:12:51.500Like recently, the nations of Africa have been negotiating and have finished negotiating a treaty with the European Union.
01:13:04.920This agreement, the European Union countries, they want to put their human rights language, which is basically supporting what they consider their values.
01:13:19.680Because it's an anti-value, it's against life, the issue of abortion.
01:13:24.120It is against the fundamental right to life.
01:13:27.040There are values of, I don't know, supporting, they call them sexual minorities, but they're anti-values because they're against the family, which is a basic unit of society.
01:13:36.160So they put that language there, saying that even if you want to trade, you want to have access to trade opportunities, you must accept these rights that we accept in our countries.
01:13:47.940The European Court of Human Rights might have an opportunity to interpret whether an African country is violating the values of the European Union under this treaty.
01:13:57.840So we find when the Americans and the Europeans come together to push that agenda and ideology of theirs here, we are suffocating.
01:14:10.740And our presidents in Africa have repeated time and again, we respect other countries.
01:14:17.620We know you have different principles in the way you govern yourself.
01:14:21.880We accept several principles like rule of law, justice, equality.
01:14:26.100But we also have our values and you need to respect our values.
01:14:29.120So that has been a key challenge here in Africa, that the Western nations are not ready to let us continue with our cultural and moral values.
01:14:42.460So for me, I think the biggest challenge or threat to our cultural and moral values in matters of life, in matters of family, even our respect for the faith.
01:14:53.560I think the biggest threat is the threat of ideas.
01:15:01.600And I think the philosophical one is critical.
01:15:04.720In the West, the philosophical battle was lost during the time of the Wolfenden Report in the United Kingdom in 1957, the Devlin Hut debate that we studied in law schools of 1960 to 62.
01:15:21.820In America, they lost the battle when they came up with the Supreme Court decisions overturning their rules against homosexual conduct, like Lawrence v. Texas in 1984.
01:15:38.960But what we have found out, those of us who are at the front lines, is that the arguments that were used in the 1950s and 60s in the United Kingdom, in Europe, in the 1970s and 80s in America, based on modern sociology, modern biology, medicine, those arguments that they used to foist these ideas that are anti-values on their people,
01:16:11.240The idea of John Stuart Mill, that what two people do in a bedroom by themselves doesn't affect anyone.
01:16:18.020As the statistics have been shown on the screen by John Henry, that 1% has become 20%.
01:16:25.520It shows you what two people do in a bedroom by themselves, if the state doesn't get involved in the matter occasionally, can affect the whole country.
01:16:35.600In Kenya, in Africa, we have this saying about this analogy of an elephant, that it was raining quite heavily.
01:16:45.400There was a storm, and the elephant approached a man who was in a hut, and it knocked with its trunk on the door of the hut.
01:16:53.720And the man peeped from the window, and the elephant pleaded with the man that he just wanted to shelter its trunk from the rainstorm.
01:17:03.100And of course, the man, after thinking about it, he allowed the trunk of the elephant a bit of access.
01:17:09.360He opened the door a bit, it got a bit of access.
01:17:11.680And after a bit of time, the elephant said it also wanted to shelter its ears, because its ears were also suffering the beating of the thunderstorms and so on.
01:17:21.560And sooner than later, the head of the elephant was inside the hut.
01:17:25.540And the elephant also needed to shelter its legs.
01:17:28.680It needed to shelter its tail, and before the man knew it, the elephant was in the hut.
01:17:46.140But the hut could not both contain the elephant and the man who was sheltering in.
01:17:52.180So the man found himself thrown off his own hut through the window, and the elephant had taken possession of the hut.
01:17:59.220And I think what we have seen is that these philosophies come in a very attractive way.
01:18:06.420It won't hurt if you just allow me to shelter my trunk in there.
01:18:09.780And that is why in the battle, the pro-life battle, the question is, but a baby, not even a baby, they use the word zygote or fetus or embryo, with just a few cells.
01:18:27.300Are you going to say that you cannot terminate that one?
01:18:31.300Why don't you maybe put a barrier when you reach the second or third trimester, but you can allow before it gets a heartbeat.
01:18:38.720And the moment the trunk gets in, it's inevitable that you allow the whole elephant inside the hut.
01:18:47.880And so there is no apparent barrier to wage the pro-life battle the moment you concede that any unborn person in the womb does not have the right to life from conception.
01:19:03.480The moment you move the point from conception to any other place in the nine months, you've lost the battle, because you've lost it at the philosophical level.
01:19:17.000The rest is just practical implementation.
01:19:20.520And it seems the same thing in the area of family.
01:19:23.680The moment we depart from the reasoning of this famous English case called Sho v. DPP, it was a 1962 decision of the House of Lords, that the state or society has a right to protect public morals from corruption.
01:19:42.780The moment you concede that, no, in fact, you should allow a bit of LGBT here and there, it is inevitable.
01:19:51.540It's, you could call it the slippery slope argument, but we've seen the slippery slope.
01:19:56.080We've seen the people going down the slippery slope until they get into the water.
01:20:00.360So, here in Africa, that threat of the West is, first of all, a battle of ideas.
01:20:12.600We had mechanisms within African culture to alienate or put on the sideline those who engaged in behavior that was harmful to the public good.
01:20:24.420But we're in an information age, like one of my panelists has said, in which it's not enough to just rely on feelings.
01:20:32.700We need to have scientific and evidence-based arguments for why these things are not going to work, why they are wrong.
01:20:41.000Finally, let me conclude by saying as a Kenya Christian Professionals Forum, we've started publishing a state of life, family and faith report.
01:20:49.000We did a second edition this year because we said that we need to study what are the threats to life.
01:20:56.720Abortion is one, but there are others.
01:21:11.700And we are convinced that if we battle at the level of philosophical ideas to ensure that we have the right values and then also at the level of practice to ensure that people are implementing the right ideas.
01:21:26.040Because there's a lot of grassroots interference by people bringing in money to turn them into other lifestyles.
01:21:33.460Then we may be headed in the right direction.
01:21:36.500We may serve as a bulwark against those negative influences that are coming from the West and then help the West to recover its soul.
01:21:46.540Because that soul came to us, a part of it through Christianity, through the West.
01:23:06.320I'm currently pursuing my master's degree.
01:23:09.000I'm almost finishing my thesis was on the state of health in Africa with that particular study in Kenya, the case study of Kenya.
01:23:18.960So it has been quite an interesting study for me.
01:23:20.880I just published it, and the results are quite interesting because I realize there's a lot of money that comes to the health sector in Africa, in Kenya,
01:23:30.360and it all gets lost in other areas, and the focus has been different.
01:23:36.840So maybe I can share my personal story.
01:23:39.380I joined the pro-life activism when I was a teenager, and this is after, let me say, after high school.
01:23:48.700My aunt shared with me that I was a crisis pregnancy myself.
01:23:52.460My mom had joined Christian vocation, and she got pregnant when she was four years down the line, and so it was really quite difficult for her.
01:24:05.880And I will share the details for later, but then it was quite difficult for my mom.
01:24:11.480So I learned this when I was just a teenager, when I was joining the University of Nairobi, and this story was quite personal for me.
01:24:22.780And once I joined the University of Nairobi, I realized there were several clubs, there were several societies, and there was a pro-life movement in the University of Nairobi, and I joined that one.
01:24:34.200But then the battles were just small, just some NGOs sneaking leaflets under the rooms telling us to start using contraception.
01:31:06.540On behalf of LiveSite News and our very many supporters, I want to thank Strathmore and you, Raymond, for allowing us to host here the first Africa Life Forum.
01:31:22.920I think it's beautiful to be able to see the fighters, the fighters in this room, fighters for humanity, because in a very real way, you're the last man standing.
01:31:36.340And it's a great weight on your shoulders, but it's the weight of the cross of Christ.
01:31:44.300And we are here to do everything we can to support you in being that holder of Christ's truth for the whole wide world right now.
01:31:56.540And I hope and pray that, Charles, you are right, that the rest of the world will find their soul here in the African soil so that we might go back to our own lands and once again teach the truth of Christ.
01:32:12.500This is the only way, not only to eternal salvation, which we all know it is, but it's also the only way to human flourishing.
01:32:20.100It's the only way to get to a place where life is valued and the family is what it really is, the building block of all society.
01:32:30.300So I want to thank you all for participating.
01:32:54.000To see more like it, be sure to hit the subscribe button below to get all the latest content from LiveSite News.
01:32:59.560Check the links in the description to read more and connect with us on social media so that you can stay up to date with all the latest life, family, faith, and freedom news.
01:33:07.860Thanks for watching and may God bless you.