Reality check on homosexuality

On February 3, 2021, another historic first happened in the United States. Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay person appointed to the American cabinet.

It was fitting that Kamala Harris – the first female and first African-American South-Asian US Vice President – swore in the first openly gay Cabinet member. On the stage with cameras rolling, Mr Buttigieg embraced and kissed his husband Chasten Buttigieg. It was a beautiful thing to behold. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, brought down another barrier.

It’s legal and constitutional in America for gays and lesbians to marry. Still, a lot of prejudice and discrimination remain. Substantive equality beckons. Question – can such a great thing happen in Kenya?

Like many Kenyans, I was raised in a religious family – Catholic, to be exact. I was even earmarked for the priesthood before I “saw the light and heard the good news.” However, that’s a story for my memoir.

As many religious people know, Christianity and Islam are homophobic religions. The Bible, as well as the Quran and Sharia, are replete with homophobic texts and teachings. Thus as a Christian and Muslim, it’s grafted into your DNA as a child to be homophobic. This virulent hatred for homosexuals is deeply ingrained in the faithful. It’s a hatred that’s un-interrogated, primordial, and reactionary. Unfortunately, the tyranny of the two messianic religions forbids one from thinking and questioning.

Vile attacks

Religious bondage muzzled me until high school. I’ve always been very curious intellectually. I remember questioning why people shake hands, often several times a day, with the same person. In my view, that only increased the chance of infecting one another by passing germs and pathogens.

Then I did research and found out that the handshake is a useless relic from the time when humans were vicious, primitive, and war-like Neanderthals. In the Stone Age, early humans would carry rocks in their hands as weapons. As humans evolved, they stopped carrying stones. They would open their palms to prove they were unarmed. The other person would replicate the gesture followed by a handgrip – a handshake to signify peace.

Many rituals and beliefs don’t make sense. What’s more depressing is most people can’t explain, or justify, many of those rituals and beliefs. In this sense, we are idiots to tradition. We do many things mindlessly. We believe many things without thinking, or subjecting them to the rigour of the intellect. We often act like damned fools.

As soon as I posted on my social media accounts the pictures of the Buttigiegs kissing, I was swamped with vile attacks and loud denouncements for celebrating the historic couple. Most of the calumny is unprintable. However, none of it – NONE – was thoughtful. No one could articulate their homophobia in a coherent argument except to call it dirty, un-African, and ungodly.

For the historical record, the homophobes should know that homosexuality is as African as heterosexuality. Sexuality isn’t rigid, or fixed. Sexuality is a spectrum – from gay, lesbian, pansexual, asexual, heterosexual, and everything else you can imagine. In a word – LBGTQIA+.

Homosexuality is normal

Heterosexuality, the dominant form of sexuality girded by heteropatriarchy would have us believe that it’s the only “normal” and “valid” sexuality. That’s baloney – all the other forms of sexuality have been with us for as long as we’ve walked the earth. In many families, including in Kenya, there are members of different sexual orientations, although some will never come out for fear of banishment, or even death. Many are in pretend marriages. They live miserable, sexually unfulfilled, lives.

We just need to think to debunk the dangerous and stupid beliefs and myths about homosexuals. That’s what I did. I did the same thing about misogyny, or the hatred for women. You cannot be concerned about justice and human rights and not question the rationale and history behind discrimination and different types of hatred.

You cannot hate one person just because of their colour, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and identity without being a moron. Nor do you have to be a woman, gay, or a child to stand up for women’s, gay, or children’s rights. You have to be inhumane and an idiot not to do so. We need to see the humanity of those who aren’t like us.

I was a homophobe until I thought about it. When you think, you realise it’s as stupid as believing that women are inferior to men, or Blacks are inferior to Whites. I’ve used the word “stupid” here deliberately to describe homophobia. It’s a failure to apply the mind at a very basic level.

It’s like thinking that men are superior to women until you realise that your mother, sister, aunt, daughter, and wife are all women. You can’t be any more stupid, if that’s what you believe. So, I say, let’s celebrate the Buttigiegs and be happy for them. Let’s work to rid Kenya of homophobia. Let’s publicly admit that homosexuality is normal.

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School. He’s chair of KHRC. @makaumutua