Malawi couple keep low profile after pardon
(Blantyre, Malawi) A couple from Malawi have kept out of the public eye after being pardoned and freed from prison, in what a relative said Sunday was a deliberate decision prompted by the conservative view of homosexuality in the southern African country.
Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were released late Saturday, hours after President Bingu wa Mutharika pardoned them without condition. But in giving his pardon, which he said was on “humanitarian grounds only,” Mutharika warned that homosexuality remains illegal in the conservative southern African country.
Activists said late Saturday that they were searching for a safe house for the couple, fearing they could be attacked upon release.
The couple’s lawyer, Mauya Msuku, said he had not seen either of them since their release.
Maxwell Manda also said he had not seen Chimbalanga, who identifies as female and is related to Manda, on Sunday. He told The Associated Press days earlier that Chimbalanga wanted to leave Malawi upon her release.
“We heard that they were released but we don’t know where they are,” he told The AP on Sunday. “They are neither at their home in (a Blantyre suburb) or their villages. But I know they are keeping a low profile deliberately because of the sensitivity of their case.”
The two were not at their Blantyre home when an Associated Press reporter visited Sunday morning.
Malawi had faced international condemnation for the conviction and harsh sentence given to the couple, who were arrested in December, a day after celebrating their engagement.
Malawi is among 37 African countries with anti-gay laws, and strong attitudes against homosexuality.
A judge convicted and sentenced Chimbalanga and Monjeza earlier this month on charges of unnatural acts and gross indecency under colonial-era laws. Crowds of Malawians had heckled the two during court hearings, with some saying that 14 years at hard labor – the harshest possible sentence – was not long enough.
Their release was welcomed by the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, international rights groups and the White House.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs praised the move, urging an end to “the persecution and criminalization” of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Malawi couple keep low profile after pardon
(Blantyre, Malawi) A couple from Malawi have kept out of the public eye after being pardoned and freed from prison, in what a relative said Sunday was a deliberate decision prompted by the conservative view of homosexuality in the southern African country.
Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were released late Saturday, hours after President Bingu wa Mutharika pardoned them without condition. But in giving his pardon, which he said was on “humanitarian grounds only,” Mutharika warned that homosexuality remains illegal in the conservative southern African country.
Activists said late Saturday that they were searching for a safe house for the couple, fearing they could be attacked upon release.
The couple’s lawyer, Mauya Msuku, said he had not seen either of them since their release.
Maxwell Manda also said he had not seen Chimbalanga, who identifies as female and is related to Manda, on Sunday. He told The Associated Press days earlier that Chimbalanga wanted to leave Malawi upon her release.
“We heard that they were released but we don’t know where they are,” he told The AP on Sunday. “They are neither at their home in (a Blantyre suburb) or their villages. But I know they are keeping a low profile deliberately because of the sensitivity of their case.”
The two were not at their Blantyre home when an Associated Press reporter visited Sunday morning.
Malawi had faced international condemnation for the conviction and harsh sentence given to the couple, who were arrested in December, a day after celebrating their engagement.
Malawi is among 37 African countries with anti-gay laws, and strong attitudes against homosexuality.
A judge convicted and sentenced Chimbalanga and Monjeza earlier this month on charges of unnatural acts and gross indecency under colonial-era laws. Crowds of Malawians had heckled the two during court hearings, with some saying that 14 years at hard labor – the harshest possible sentence – was not long enough.
Their release was welcomed by the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, international rights groups and the White House.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs praised the move, urging an end to “the persecution and criminalization” of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Corvino: The danger of the gay closet
When I was a high school sophomore, one of my classmates had the misfortune of popping an erection in the communal shower after gym class. I doubt “Paul” was gay. Most likely, it was a typical teenage case of Mr. Happy having a mind of its own. But fellow students at our all-boys Catholic school teased him mercilessly, calling him a fag, and I joined in.
That’s right: I joined in.
Please understand: at the time I was NOT GAY. Sure, I had “gay feelings,” which I kept mostly to myself. I also lacked any straight feelings, and I had a decent enough grasp of logic to know that people with “gay feelings” but no “straight feelings” are gay. It was denial, pure and simple, and my teasing Paul was a way to deflect attention away from myself.
When people ask me how I can even for a split second feel sadness for hypocrites like Reverend George “I hired him to carry my luggage” Rekers, the anti-gay crusader who was recently caught hiring an escort from rentboy.com [1] for a European vacation, I answer: Because I know what denial feels like.
True, I came clean about my sexuality at 19, whereas Rekers is still dissembling at 61. True, I participated in some schoolboy teasing—the potential damage of which ought not to be underestimated—whereas Rekers has made a career out of spreading lies about gays, writing books with titles like Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality, and offering highly paid testimony in Florida and Arkansas against gay adoption. There’s a huge difference.
But part of preventing future cases like these is first to understand them, and I can understand them best by drawing on my own experience. The human capacity for keeping separate sets of “mental books” is as familiar as it is remarkable.
Why is Rekers’ case important? Because it provides yet another stunning example of what it looks like when someone tries to fight his internal demons by scapegoating openly gay and lesbian people. Rekers has spent his life attacking in others what he can’t control in himself, harming countless LGBT innocents in the process. This is the danger of the closet.
Rekers insists that he is not gay, and at one level, he’s right. The term “gay” often refers to a mode of self-understanding and public identity, and Rekers just isn’t there. On this reading, anyone can be a homosexual, but it takes courage to be gay. Sadly, like the Reverend Ted “I’m heterosexual with issues” Haggard before him, Reverend Rekers may never get there.
So let Rekers have his “I’m not gay but my rentboy is” t-shirt. I’ll even believe him when he says that there was no sex, strictly speaking. According to the rentboy, “Lucien” (aka Geo, aka Jo-Vanni), in interviews with the Miami New Times and blogger Joe.My.God, their sessions consisted of daily nude massages where Lucien stroked Rekers “across his penis, thigh… and his anus over the butt cheeks,” causing Rekers to become “rock hard.” (At 61, Rekers doesn’t have the same excuse for erections as my high school classmate.)
This is precisely what one would expect from a “Not Gay” deeply closeted homosexual who has spent his career denouncing the “unacceptable health risks of [homosexual] behavior.” Rekers can maintain this charade only by drawing the boundaries of “homosexual behavior” about as narrowly as Bill Clinton drew those of “sexual relations”—which, as you’ll recall, the president did not have with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. The claims are true on one level—the strained, self-serving, and possibly delusional one.
It’s when I imagine these mental contortions that I feel the split second of sympathy for Rekers. As David Link writes at the Independent Gay Forum, “If the glaringly obvious conclusion is true—that Rekers is, in fact, a frustrated homosexual who won’t allow himself to actually have sex with another man—then he has created for himself exactly the hell he and his colleagues believe homosexuals are headed for or deserve.”
However, it’s one thing to create demons for yourself, and quite another to project them onto innocent bystanders whom you then attack as “deviant” in books, articles, and courtroom testimony. Frankly, there aren’t enough rentboys in Miami to carry that kind of karmic baggage.
Rekers still insists that he sought out the young man because he wanted to share the Gospel. I recommend starting with the “Truth shall set you free” part, followed by some lessons on penance.
John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays at 365gay.com [2]. Read more about him at www.johncorvino.com [3].
John will be a volunteer faculty member again this summer for Campus Pride’s LGBT Leadership Camp. For more about Campus Pride’s work, or to make a donation on John’s behalf to support this year’s program, visit http://www.campuspride.org/ [4].
[1] http://rentboy.com/
[2] http://365gay.com/
[3] http://www.johncorvino.com/
[4] http://www.campuspride.org/
Video: Rentboy dance party!
I’m sure this won’t surprise you, but George Rekers, the anti-gay advocate caught with a male “escort” is indeed gay – at least according to the escort, says the Miami New-Times.
“It’s a situation where he’s going against homosexuality when he is a homosexual,” Jo-vanni Roman, known as Lucien, told the New-Times. “In all honestly [sic], he should disassociate himself from these [antigay] groups.”
Roman said that he was hired to give Rekers daily rub downs in the nude.
Why is all of this important? Because Rekers – Baptist minister, psychology professor, has a “long, long record” of anti-gay work, doing research on why gays shouldn’t be able to adopt or marry (Washington Post [1] for the PDF).
Stephen Colbert had a great bit about all of this – see below for his in-studio, rentboy dance party:
The Colbert Report [2]
Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alpha Dog of the Week – George Rekers [3]
www.colbertnation.com [4]
Colbert Report Full Episodes [5]
Political Humor [6]
Fox News [7]
[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/the_family_research_council_co.html
[2] http://www.colbertnation.com
[3] http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/308752/may-05-2010/alpha-dog-of-the-week—george-rekers
[4] http://www.colbertnation.com/
[5] http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/
[6] http://www.indecisionforever.com
[7] http://www.colbertnation.com/video/tag/Fox+News
Watch: Pre-Stonewall CBS report on homosexuality
Watch: Pre-Stonewall CBS report on homosexuality
Prop 8 trial witness: Being gay not a choice
(San Francisco) A social psychologist testifying in a trial challenging California’s gay marriage ban says leading mental health associations stopped thinking of homosexuality as a mental illness decades ago.
Lawyers for two same-sex couples suing to overturn the voter-enacted ban called University of California, Davis researcher Gregory Herek as an expert …
Russian Orthodox Church embraces gays
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church says that, although the church views homosexuality as a sin, homosexuality is a personal choice.
Patriarch Kirill says gays and lesbians must not be persecuted or discriminated against in any way, though the church still opposes same-sex marriages.
The patriarch’s statements, a breakthrough for the …
Rwanda to vote on criminalizing gay sex
From Voice of America:
The coalition Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders says draft language to criminalize homosexuality could be voted on in the Rwandan lower house of parliament by Friday. The draft code would then pass to the Rwandan senate for approval.
The amended language for Article 217 acquired …
US politicos – including Obama – speak out against Uganda law
Towleroad has a round-up of who has spoken up against the Uganda bill which would mandate the death penalty for anyone found to be gay.
* Statement from the White House: “The president strongly opposes efforts, such as the draft law pending in Uganda, that would criminalize homosexuality and move against …
Uganda to remove death penalty from anti-gay bill
Uganda will drop executions and life imprisonment from it’s ”anti-homosexuality,” but will instead direct gays to “ex-gay” programs.
James Nsaba Buturo, minister for ethics and integrity, said the modified bill would come before Parliament in two weeks, Pink News said.
The US State Department, France and the UK all had expressed concern over the …
