The cost of ignorance, "corrective rape" used in South Africa to turn lesbians into heterosexuals. Instead turns happy women into terrified victims.

Courtesy of the Independent:  

Corrective rape is a hate crime wielded to convert lesbians to heterosexuality – an attempt to 'cure' them of being gay. The term was coined in South Africa in the early 2000s when charity workers first noticed an influx of such attacks. But despite recognition and international coverage, corrective rape in the region is escalating in severity, according to Clare Carter, the photographer behind these images. This is amid a backdrop of parts of the country "becoming more homophobic", as one recent victim asserts. 

Compared to many of South Africa's victims, Mvuleni was lucky: she survived. At least 31 women in the past 15 years did not. In 2007, to cite one incident, Sizakele Sigasa, a women's and gay rights activist, and her friend Salone Massooa, were outside a bar when a group of men started heckling and calling them tomboys. The women were gang raped, tortured, tied up with their underwear and shot in the head. Executed. No one was ever convicted. 

Mvuleni's case was also unusual as, unlike 24 out of 25 rapes that even reach trial in South Africa, two of her attackers were convicted and imprisoned for 25 years. The others remain at large. 

Ever since a 1998-2000 report by the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs ranked South Africa as highest for rapes per capita, it has repeatedly been described as the rape capital of the world: 500,000 rapes a year; one every 17 seconds; one in every two women will be raped in her lifetime. Twenty per cent of men say the victim "asked for it", according to a survey by the anti-violence NGO, CIET. A quarter of men in the Eastern Cape Provinces, when asked anonymously by the Medical Research Council, admitted to raping at least once – three quarters of whom said their victim was under 20, a tenth said under 10. A quarter of schoolboys in Soweto described "jackrolling" – the local term for gang rape – as "fun".

Yes nothing like trying to convert a gay person to heterosexual sex through violence and humiliation. 

Cannot imagine why that would not work.

Rape of course is NOT sex, it is violence and the idea that convert a homosexual into desiring sex with a heterosexual is predicated on the religious idea that it is an unnatural sin, and of course the arrogance of the men perpetrating the assault.

Rape is such a universal occurrence that it is found in virtually all animal species in one form or another, and yet you would expect the creatures considering the pinnacle of evolution to be able to exercise control over their more base instincts.

But such is not the case.

Nor can one truly expect religion to have a significant impact.

Especially not this sort of religious teaching.

Uganda is not part of South Africa, but the teachings of the American Evangelicals do not respect borders, and has spread far and wide throughout the country.

Rape cannot be blamed on the Evangelical movement, as it has been a feature of African life for many generations, but the targeted rape of lesbians may in fact have much to do with this fractured form of Christianity.