The Pursuit of the Unnatural

The last few months have witnessed significant pressure on Africa to accept and open up space for gay and lesbian people to exists and express themselves, as part of enjoying their human rights.  Let me at the outset say that same sex unions of whatever nature are in my view unnatural.  It seems to me that there is concerted pressure around the world to redefine the natural and sneak it in as normal under the guise of human rights.

At home, a Kenyan novelist recently shot to immediate social media fame when he confessed to having been gay for a long time and this brought a whole new momentum to the push for recognition of gay and lesbian rights in the country.  In neighbouring Uganda, the government’s hard-line stance to make gay and lesbianism illegal has met with serious international condemnation, including withholding of economic support that the country has been receiving from various western governments.  Nigeria has in the past also received international wrath because of its laws against gay and lesbian practice.  In his most recent visit to the continent, American President Barack Obama kicked off a fuss when he lectured Africans on the importance of gay and lesbian rights.  What was worse is that he chose the wrong place for his lecture – Dakar-Senegal, home to majority Muslims – where his advice was least welcome – and the Senegal President, Macky Sal, promptly told him as much.  Many thought that he had accidentally switched his speeches and given the one for his next stop – South Africa – where his lecture would have been probably better received. 

Interestingly, this pressure on Africa comes at the same time when the eclectic Kenya Marriage bill has made a comeback and is making huge waves in the country.  While the marriage bill is about many things, the biggest waves are about whether men should marry many wives, and whether they require the consent of their existing wife(ves) to marry a subsequent wife.  I personally do not think much about that debate – I think it is more a quarrel between married and unmarried women, one side wanting to keep what they have and the other wanting to have what the other has.

My bigger interest is however around the pressure to accept the unnatural while frowning at the (uncomfortable as it maybe) natural. At the risk of censure from my Christian colleagues, I think polygamy is natural while gay and lesbianism are unnatural.  In a recent article, journalist Phillip Ochieng asserted that monogamy was initially a western culture that predates Christianity, and was sneaked in to keep women in check. (Wow).  While polygamy is well entrenched in African history, I am yet to hear of any African traditions that dealt with gay and lesbians.  While sodomy is well documented as a sin that was prevalent in Old Testament cities, polygamy was is well documented in the Old Testament palaces.  Most Africans today have a polygamous ancestry.  While my great grandfather would understand a polygamous conversation, he would be totally lost in a gay and lesbian conversation.  While I am probably pushing it – polygamy is clearly natural among the lions on the Mara and the wildebeests of the Serengeti than gay and lesbians will ever be.

Africa has been a net recipient of culture, from religions, to colonialism, to western and eastern cultures.  Christianity came to the continent bundled together with colonialism and western culture.  The departure of colonialism did not take with it the other influences and five decades later, Africans cannot remember what part was Christian and what part was western.  Worse still they cannot remember which part was their own.  The current debates around there gay and lesbian rights on the one hand, and the polygamy debate on the other needs to bring us back to the question – what really is OUR culture?  And more importantly, why are our ‘friends’ out there so insistent on the pursuit of the unnatural?