Marriage Of Kenyan Gay Couple Sparks Debate

There's an interesting article written by Makua Matua in the prominent Kenyan newspaper The Nation which demolishes the idea that "homosexuality is un-African." Ever since the couple pictured above, Daniel Chege and Charles Ngengi, got married in October in Britain, the Kenyan media has been enthralled.

Many Kenyans have been outraged that two men of Kenyan descent would get married to each other and have contacted (and threatened) the men's relatives who still live in the rural sections of their African homeland. The wedding was a public recognition of their legally registered British civil partnership, since Ngengi is a British citizen.

Now Mr. Matua, who is the Dean of the SUNY Buffalo Law School and chair of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, has written an incisive piece of writing intended to combat the nonsensical and virulent homophobia exposed by the same-sex marriage of two gay Kenyan men:

One common – but completely false – argument is that it is un-African to be gay. This is an absurdly vacuous claim that is internally illogical and utterly ahistorical. Most Kenyans are today indoctrinated by religious institutions, cultural guardians, and the moral police to be anti-gay. Rather than find someone to love, anti-gay crusaders find it convenient to find someone innocent to hate. Why has such a hatefully primitive and backward cosmology gone unchallenged?

Let me illustrate the seriousness of the problem by giving you a short human rights history of the last 50 years. Can you imagine a credible defence today for apartheid or the view that blacks are inferior to whites, and that the former exist solely to serve the latter?

How would you like to be declared illegal – or unworthy of existence – simply because you are black or African? Would you agree that all women and girls in your life – your mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, aunt, and grandmother – are inferior beings because of their female gender?

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Modern democracy is not possible without two key interrelated principles – equal protection and anti-discrimination. Understand that it is “identity” that is afforded equal protection by insulating it from discrimination.

Historically, “identity” referred to your “state of being” – colour, sex, ethnicity, race, religion, language, marital status, national origin, political opinion, disability, and wealth or other social status.

But today “identity” is understood to include sexual orientation. That is why many countries explicitly prohibit discrimination against gays in social, political, and economic life. Others regard attacks on gays a hate crime. Civilised countries recognise gay marriages.

I have heard it said that being gay is “un-African.” Some Africans, who obviously know very little about the continent, have charged that there were no gays in Africa! The historical record, however, amply demonstrates that there were – and continues to be – gay Africans.

Let's hope that lawmakers in neighboring Uganda who are considering legislation that would punish homosexuality as a capital offense will read this article in The Nation and come to their senses.