On Gay Unions; Why I Support
Yesterday the US Supreme court made a ruling on homosexuality. Homosexuals can now marry and live their lives like the rest of us; in the US. Of course the situation back here at home―Kenya― is not that farfetched; not after a Kenyan High Court ruling in early May allowing LGBTs to form a society.
The high court ruling was met with extensive uproar from most Kenyans as expected. Guys hated that ruling more than they hate it when systems are crippled by corrupt individuals or adultery or murder; but is our anger towards LGBTs being practical enough?
After the Kenyan Hight court ruling, not only were our TV sets been full of expert after expert weighing in on the matter, but the social media was on overdrive. People masquerading as epidemic experts to moral experts to religious experts all weighed in on the matter on extreme sides of the divide.
Many of the so called ‘experts’ opposing the high court ruling extensively quoted either religious books or the African culture as the control of their arguments. Quote after quote was dangled on how the gays impact negatively to the society. Absurd myths and unconfirmed research findings etcetera on these negative impacts were floating around both on the mainstream and new media forums.
Government as represented by its officials, which should essentially be protecting its people forgot that temporarily, abandoned that, and instead focused on driving the homophobia agenda home.
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Many years ago when my grandmother Vuguza was a young girl, it was unheard of for a young woman to bear a child out of wedlock. My grandmother is now in her nineties. She was born in Bukhulunya village in Vihiga County, the only world she knew until she met my grandfather at 16, who would later uproot her from there and plant her in Bushiangala ―Kakamega county, then Mombasa then Narok.
But this is not about my grandmother’s love story or any her story for that matter.
This is about what she saw, growing up.
Granny knew of this young woman. (Let’s call her Lillian― the British were around already.) Lillian was in my granny’s age group and her childhood friend. Lilian was beautiful; her hair was always in neat plaits or braids, a rounded figure, long legs, and a smooth chocolate baby face. She was Miss Bukhulunya if there was anything like that at all.
Everyone wanted to marry her. Everyone expressed interest in putting a cow on her head. But she’d have none of it. Instead she wanted to accept a cow on her head only when she was in love; and sooner, she indeed was in love.
Then she got pregnant.
Then the man declined to put a cow on her head. Then weeks went by; then soon her belly was protruding for the whole village to see!
What a sight this was; she was expecting a child without a cow on her head.
Lilian was ashamed and with such, she hid in her parents hut never to be seen outside again. While her peers enjoyed their youth at funeral parties at night, Lillian danced in bed from the pains of pregnancy.
Hers was a difficult pregnancy right from the beginning. While her peers planned for cows to be put on their head and choosing the best cassava and millet and maize to be cooked at their weddings, she ate nothing from worry. Her fate was uncertain. Her future was dim; then dark. But the shame was not only on her. Her parents too shared the baggage two folds. Whenever they went to weddings or beer drinking or funerals ceremonies, everyone would spit on the ground then face the other way. It was not only demeaning but an embarrassment of the highest order, and in as much that they cared for her, there was nothing they could do for Lilian.
A village baraza was quickly convened to address Lillian’s matter. The attendees were the village elders (comprising of twenty ‘witty and wise’ men including my great grandfather, the village cultural priest, Lillian and her parents.
Lillian was asked who the father of her baby was. She said it was Kaduki, one of the handsomest young men in the village. Kaduki was summoned. He showed up. But he turned tables on her. He claimed to have never touched Lillian. That Lilian was cheap and immoral. That she was unmarriageable. He denied responsibility and indicted Lillian of wanting to trap him, even further stating that he had already put a cow on the head of Mbaiza, another village beauty. It was his word against Lillian’s, and a man’s word was the law in those days. With a successful explanation, he was cleared of any wrong doing and dismissed.
All this while Lillian was crying and facing the ground. The punishment was possibilities were these; she would either be excommunicated from the village or married off to a very old man or be hanged altogether. She was in trouble and she knew it. It needed not a pregnancy to be eligible for such punishment; rather even mere suspicion of sex before a cow was put on your head attracted the same consequences. Adultery was worse.
But all the village elders had recently taken on a younger wife, so there was no one willing to take Lillian. And even if there was, she had done the most dishonorable thing by indicting Kaduki wrongly; that made her crimes two; lying and getting pregnant outside wedlock. Excommunication or marriage to a ninety year old polygamist was the lesser punishment. Had Kaduki admitted to the crime, it would have had lesser consequences. It was worse off because she was also the ‘reigning beauty queen’ of the village and therefore a moral conduct was supposed to be above reproach. Her fall would be greater.
By the time the sun went to sleep behind the Maragoli hills, a decision had already been made. Lillian had to be hanged to ensure that her evil spirit of dishonesty and immorality dies forever.
She was killed by hanging.
My granny never saw her friend again. This was in 1943.
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When my grandmother told me Lillian’s story in 2007, I remember being in an utter daze, then I was quickly engulfed by fear goose bumps. I told her that there was no way that would have happened in the 20th century, but in her typical wisdom she did not insist on proving anything to me.
Of course I believed her.
First forward to 1985, Granny Vuguza was now a middle aged woman with grown children; three among them, girls. My late aunt Dinah and my mother were now grown women, but my late aunt Beatrice was had not even knocked a decade.
I didn’t know my aunt Dinah very well because she passed away when I was still a child. But I remember her hair resembling that of Tinah Tanah; the big afro on her head. My grandmother’s album has pictures of her clad in tight blue jeans with a tumbo-cat. In other pictures, she’s posing with my mom at the Narok town square in a mini skirt, leotards and a nice top and super high wedge shoes.
She was modern by all standards.
My earliest memories of aunt Dinah was this free spirited woman who would come to our house and you’d think a laugher gas had been secretly leaked into the room. She got her first baby, my cousin Tutu, who would be her only child eventually, at 30 while she was still single.
Up until her passage in ’95, in a gristly road accident, she neither had any more children nor marry. My grandparents did not have people spitting at their sight whenever they attended weddings or funerals because their daughter had a child outside marriage. Not even my grandparents Catholic Church condemned them for their daughter’s divorce or the single life she was now leading. Nobody changed direction on the street upon the sight of my grandmother and certainly nobody locked my aunt up in her bedroom to avoid shaming the family with her single motherhood life. She was eventually never excommunicated or killed or married off to a 90 year old polygamist.
My point is this, what would have been applied in the ‘40s or before was no longer applicable in the '80s and ‘90s. Culture is constantly changing to accommodate the human race and not the other way round.
The challenge with the debate on gay rights is this; it is short sighted. We are not using history to inform our current debate.
One Sunday after the high court ruling in Nairobi on LGBTs, I watched in tears as a certain lawyer sat in the KTN studios saying that gay people used to be rolled down in basin into the river according to the Kikuyu tradition. He was recommending the same punishment for the 21st century gay community. Setting the brutal manner of his proposed punishment aside, here’s what I gathered; that homosexuals are as old as humankind itself. Oblivious to him is that the gay community inside Kikuyuland has existed as long as the larger Kikuyu straight group. That homosexuals are not alien is the point. These are people who have always been there, and that means they will always be in existence as long as the human race exists. They are there in all communities regardless of tribe, race, continent or religion. Period.
This therefore makes the debate about homosexualism being a Western idea or American idea or Whiteman’s way, absolutely shallow, baseless and shortsighted. Time and again many of the Africans use that argument to shield themselves from acceptance. We use that argument to shun any foreign input on the matter. The argument has always been that the west is corrupting Africa. It’s draining down with the moral fabric of Africa, but now we know that nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe it’s time to look at ourselves in the mirror and see who we truly are as a people.
Just like my grandparents changed, so can we in terms of how we treat our fellow humans, regardless of their sexual orientation. Instead of condemning these people with your claim of heterosexual majority, you should thank God that you’re not in that minority. And that this person you’re prejudicing against didn’t choose to be in that minority.
I don’t think that being gay corrupts the society in any way. This is another popular argument that’s always flouted around. If that were the case, then we must also be willing to content that even straight people corrupt society. Sex in itself has been viewed in the negative limelight since the existence of mankind. History proves that sainthood is only attained through total sexual abstinence. There are tons examples in history proving that.
There’s this absurd argument that homosexuality will lead to the effective wiping out of the entire human race due to the absence of procreation. How ridiculous right? I mean people choose to couple every day and night depending on how sexually they’re oriented, how would it ever arrive to the place where all straight people will turn gay? People are born gay, not made.
On procreation bit, don’t we have heterosexual unions are meant to procreate, what happens to infertile and sterile couples? What happens to couples over 50 who can’t bear children but want to be together? Should we ban them from coupling? We also have heterosexuals that are struggling with infertility. We also have fertile and potent couples, who out of choice have elected not to have children, is that a crime?
My aunt Dinah made the decision to get a baby outside wedlock, and to live her life alone, does it mean that all her peers did the same? Does it effectively mean that’s there’s no marriage in 2015 as we speak because of her 1980s decision?
C’mon people!
The other popular myth is that homosexuality is not about molesting children, rape or incest or bestiality. Homosexuality is about mutual consenting adults agreeing to be together. In the above examples above, can someone show me where consent is acquired? Unless I’m missing out on something. This is about two mature adults of the same sex who have chosen to love one another. Why should everyone be afraid when someone loves another human? Don’t we need more love in this badly enough chaotic world?
Nothing annoys me more than those ‘holier than though’ characters who will quote the Bible or Quran at the slightest instance whenever this kind of subject pops up. Fair enough. You believe in a god, but you must also respect the fact that someone somewhere does not believe in a god.
Why do we use religious texts only when it suits us?
I will not speak for the Quran or Hindu scriptures because I’ve never read them. But the Bible? Cover to cover. The bible condemns many things which many Christians consistently choose to ignore. Our society is immoral as it can be. Men and women are adulterous; cheating on their wives and husbands we’ve even passed laws to guarantee that, haven’t we? Thou shall not commit adultery is the eighth commandment, yet we don’t respect it. Is something immoral or sinful just because it’s different from the kind of sin you practice? Is someone else more of a sinner just because his or her sin is different from yours?
Get real!
Let me ask you, lying is a sin, yet everybody will tell a lie every now and then. Even worse is that we lie to our very own selves. We pretend to walk as a group only when it suits us, otherwise we retreat to our cocoons and hate and prejudice against our neighbors and colleagues and friends.
Kenya is in the bottom thirty in the entire world in terms of our fight towards corruption. This is out of 190 countries. What’s that? Is it not stealing? Or are you going to tell me that you’re only a thief if you’re caught? Thou shall not steal is a commandment, so is loving one’s God and worshipping Him alone. But I know we’d all choose money over God, because we are a wealth worshipping country. That’s why we always laugh at broke civil and public servants. We mock them when they are broke; we say, why didn’t you even steal from the public coffers and enrich yourself? You fool!
We worship those who have the money, regardless of the means used to acquire the money. We give fall victim fake preachers whenever they extort us with the promise of fat bank accounts. We are stupid enough not to notice that these con artists are playing with our psychology, taking advantage of our greed for wealth and desire for instant gratification. They know we can do anything for the promise of money. The point is, we only use the name of God and our religion when it serves us well. Let he that is without sin….friends, let he that is without sin…..
I'll lose the space and time to tell us of the bad shit we do, yet we condone it. Priests and pastors marry pregnant women every Saturday; why not send them away for having committed adultery that's forbidden in the bible? Ha?
The great prince of love, Jesus to who is the rock of the Christian faith taught nothing but love for another human. That was the second greatest commandment. Jesus never taught people to prejudice against others. He wined and dined with prostitutes, and tax collectors and Samaritans and adulterous women and other low lives. Christianity, if anything should be the faith to preach more love and not prejudice and hate. Jesus lived by example. The examples are numerous, from the parable of the Good Samaritan to the adulterous woman. Some of you will argue that Jesus forgave and protected them adulterous woman. Fair enough. Then you can do your share, you can shield people from being prejudiced, can’t you? You’re not Jesus; you can’t forgive sins, so why bother trying to judge? Why not start by sorting out your mess first? If Jesus himself taught us not to judge others, who the hell are you? God the Almighty?
The bible forbids women from talking in church podia, from going to church ‘at that time of the month’, exposing their hair. But the modern day Christian woman has found ways to go against these absurd rules and still profess the faith I’m I right?
The story of Lillian and that of my aunt Dinah are just but a drop in the ocean of how we as a society have been dealing with cultural changes; especially on the subject MARRIAGE . How we’ve overcome draconian practices can only be marveled at, it is the same way future generations will look back in shock at us if we don’t put an end to this homophobia. Let’s not be a laughing stock in some future history class my good people!
There was a time in history when women did not go to school or work, now we look back at how ridiculous that was. We wonder how women never wore pants before the seventies the world over. In the ‘60s, no one would have ever foreseen women holding key positions of power like we do in 2015. And there’s even greater hope with enlightenment of the society.
What has happened? We have changed. Isn’t that remarkable?
About government officials hating on gays, the less I talk about that, the better. Both the majority groups and the minority groups in a society must be protected by government. Government is for us all. Government shouldn’t be spreading fear and beating drums of war, notwithstanding the abundance of bigger fish to fry.
How about at least a dozen cancer machines at KNH for a start? Sounds good? It is a win-win for everybody. Government will have a healthy voters block and Kenyans will lead be healthy, right?
These are big problems if you ask me. People tasked with the responsibility of running affairs for us have failed us, miserably. We are in trouble as a nation― and that trouble is not caused by the gay community.
Some of these myths are baffling, some just pure propagandistic.
Any debate that touches on morality in any society will always elicit deep emotional contests, with no one willing to relent on their stands. It is a phenomenon world over. Even America the most liberal and free country in the world is still battling with this issue. Just because the US Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage doesn’t make the entire populace compliant in thought. Many are against that ruling. But I can tell you this for free; the courts are morally ahead of the general populace. Even when interracial marriage was allowed back in the 60s in the US, 80% of the population was against it according to a survey conducted then, but now? It is unfathomable to dare say to a black and white person: don't marry. It’s ridiculous beyond measure.
Many of you will be surprised and ask “even you Kate are for this?” of course I’m for gay rights. I’m definitely that kind of person; I not only believe in human rights, but animal rights and a right to peaceful coexistence. With all due respect to my Christian religion and my African roots, I’ll stand with the gay community. I’ll defend their right to exist. I’ll defend their right to live and be treated with respect and dignity. I’ll defend their right to form an association and when it gets here, and it eventually will, I’ll support gay marriage.
You know why, becasue no one chooses their sexual orientation, the same way we don’t choose gender or tribe or race.
Catherine Amayi is a Scientist and an author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Follow on Twitter: @catherine_amayi
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Email: ccamayi@yahoo.com