Africa: Gay and lesbian voices in African blogosphere

Homosexuality is perceived as a new phenomenon in Africa and a taboo. It is outlawed in many African countries. Many African leaders have condemned homosexuality as being un-African. The Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe once described gays as worse than dogs and pigs. Former Namibia’s President, Sam Nujoma, once stated that “Homosexuals must be condemned and rejected in our society.”
Nigeria introduced a bill in 2007 banning same sex marriage. According to Rod 2.0 the bill is the most comprehensive homophobic legislation ever proposed in the world. Early this year homosexuals in Nigeria stormed the National Assembly seeking for legislation that will guarantee the protection.
Lifestyle, culture and religion have become the invisible fence to many homosexuals in Africa barring them from their freedom of sexual expression. A Kenyan blogger, Wilde Yearnings, was quite optimistic after US President Barack Obama officially declared June being a gay pride month and decriminalizing of homosexuality all over the world earlier this month. He posted Obama’s speech on his blog:
My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world…NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.
Naughy Feeling commented on the post:
It is great our comrades in America are getting recognition. In our dear country we can’t stick our necks in the sand and tell ourselves all will be well. The gigantous task ahead demands of us that we kid not ourselves of the responsibility ahead of us. It may require sacrifices but all for the greater good. May God bless LGBT kenya n give us strength for what is ahead. But hey, look on the bright side, we can still have fun at it.
But will culture, religion and lifestyle factors derail the decriminalisation of homosexuality in most African countries or will it be as Wilde Yearnings described “meanwhile in Kenya… The struggle continues…”?
It has been said that homosexuality is a lifestyle adapted by Africans from the West, SebaSpace a Ugandan blogger tries to points out that his “sexuality” and “him ” are one, that homosexuality cannot be a lifestyle because for him to be involved with someone it has to be sexually, emotionally and spiritually bringing the fact that homosexuality is a physiological function too.
SebaSpace has been on a constant war with an anti-gay blogger also from Uganda and the war is always revolving around religion, culture and lifestyle. This created a stir in the LGBT blogosphere and another gay Kenyan blogger wrotes a post to answer the three questions The Red Pepper had asked. The questions were:
1. If you try to drink water through the ear, you naturally spoil it because it was created by God to do the hearing function. That’s physical harm.
2. when they discovered you were gay. You know very well how we love having grandchildren in Africa. Imagine what goes on in your parents’ minds to know that you will never give them grandchildren (I am assuming that you a die-hard gay man but if you are bi, please forgive me). So that is emotional harm.
3. Spiritual harm. You tamper with God’s plan of procreation. Understand that the main reason of creating the sexual organs was procreation purposes. For you in an attempt to be very creative, you put your organs at the disposal of pleasure only (I hope it is fun).If you have radical parents, they can start questioning God as to why he gave them such a child. I know parents of a gay boy who visited scores of witchdoctors thinking that their child had been bewitched. I can give you as many reasons as possible. I hope you are an objective gentleman who looks at things objectively.With so much hate from all sides, will the African Leaders put their priorities in order from all the pressure by the UN, IMF and World Bank and speak out for the sexual minorities or will still hold them in this invisible cage?
His answers:
The Ugandan rag called Red Pepper has been engaging Afro gay, a fellow Gay blogger from Uganda in arguments regarding the situation on Homosexuality in Uganda. Follow this link to see the full post. Recently, the editor of red pepper wrote to Afro arguing that he (Afro) was causing Physical, emotional and Spiritual harm to his family by being gay.
I promised Afro that I will write my responses to the Editor on my blog and link back with him. I have taken their questions, edited without altering the message and I have responded to each question.
I tend to disagree with you when you say that homos have never done anybody physical, emotional or spiritual harm.
Without any prejudice I want to tell you that they are guilty of all the three accounts.
Count 1. If you try to drink water through the ear, you naturally spoil it because it was created by God to do the hearing function. That’s physical harm.
Red pepper has made three elementary mistakes (assumptions) 1) The common one that homosexuality is equal to sodomy (their shallow analogy of the ear above) 2) Following number 1 above that sodomy is practiced only by homosexuals and 3) That all homosexuals engage in anal sex.
I will deal with the last one first. Is the paper saying they are ok with someone with homosexual orientation as long as they don’t engage in sex? Have they ever heard of celibate gay people and gay people who don’t engage in anal sex? Well, I have and know both types.
It’s worth noting, that from the very beginning sodomy and homosexuality were two categorically separate things. The correct definition of sodomy–then and now–is simply non-procreative sex, whether practiced by heterosexuals or homosexuals. It includes oral sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, contraceptive sex, coitus interruptus, and anal sex–any sex in which semen does not find its way into a uterus.
The anal sex thing is one elephant in the room, but it’s not an inherent part of being gay, it isn’t an activity engaged in exclusively by gay people.
SebaSpace refused to answer the questions from Red Pepper. He gives reasons for his refusal: @ Africa: Gay and lesbian voices in African blogosphere
Global Voices Kenya

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Twitter mistake causes gay marriage internet stir

(San Francisco, California) A year-old story on the California Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the state’s gay marriage ban had the blogosphere buzzing last week.

A Web version of the Los Angeles Times newspaper story on the justices’ May 15, 2008, ruling was misread by some inattentive bloggers, who apparently didn’t …

Group Renews Fight for Same-Sex Marriage in California

SAN FRANCISCO — As the California Supreme Court mulls the fate of a 2008 ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage, one of the state’s largest gay rights groups is laying the groundwork for a campaign to overturn the measure, perhaps as soon as next year.

The announcement by the group, Equality California, comes almost a year after the court’s initial decision to legalize same-sex marriage, a ruling that voters negated in November when they passed the ballot measure, Proposition 8. The proposition has since been challenged in court, but gay rights advocates worry the court will uphold it, and are preparing for the next stage of the fight.

“We’re hoping the court rules the right way, but we’re not counting on it,” said Marc Solomon, Equality California’s newly hired marriage director. “And we believe that 2010 is the right time to go back to the ballot.”

The possibility of a ballot measure to overturn Proposition 8 has been floated online and elsewhere since the election, but the announcement is a concrete signal that California might soon be embroiled in another electoral fight over same-sex marriage. The November campaign ranked as one of the most divisive and expensive ballot measure fights ever, with the two sides spending more than $80 million combined.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said a second campaign would be a mistake. “The fact is that the people of California have already spoken,” said Brian S. Brown, the executive director in National Organization for Marriage, in Princeton, N.J. “And they don’t like being told they were wrong the first time.”

Mr. Solomon, who came to California after several years of working on behalf of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize such unions, in 2004, stopped short of announcing of a formal campaign to put the issue on the California ballot, which would require an extensive signature-gathering effort. See Group Renews Fight for Same-Sex Marriage in California New York Times * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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Gay, lesbian groups call for public restroom equity in Taipei

Gay and lesbian student activists yesterday called on universities to alter public toilet designations to accommodate gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students’ needs.

“Because public toilets at schools are designated as either men’s rooms or women’s rooms, it creates a lot of trouble for GLBT students who may not always look the way mainstream opinion would expect someone of their gender to look,” Tsai Pi-jung (蔡璧嶸), president of National Chengchi University’s (NCCU) Gay Student Club, told a press conference in Taipei.

“We suggest that schools change the designation on public restrooms from marking the gender to marking whether it has toilets or urinals or both inside,” he said.

Tsai then showed two restroom signs he had made. On one, the shape of a toilet is drawn to indicate that “there are only toilets inside,” and the other has a shape of a toilet and the shape of a urinal drawn to indicate that “both toilets and urinals are inside.”

“This way, public toilets would be designated by ‘function’ instead of ‘gender,’” he said.

NCCU’s Lesbian Student Club president has short hair and dresses in jeans and a T-shirt. People sometimes mistake her for a man, she said.

Wishing only to be known as “Strawberry,” she told the press conference that women sometimes asked her what she was doing in the women’s restroom.

“Whenever that happens, I have to explain that I am a woman. Then I’m asked why I dress like a man,” Strawberry said. “Why do I have to go through all this questioning when I just want to use the bathroom?”

A student from Shih Hsin University Graduate School of Journalism who wished to be known only as “Hsiao Mo (小莫),” is a man who likes to dress in what would be considered women’s clothing. He usually encounters the same problem. See Gay, lesbian groups call for public restroom equity Taipei Times

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