The issue is not sex but the social consequences of homosexual acts

Members of the Ugandan gay community mourn at the funeral of murdered activist David Kato near Mataba, on January 28, 2011. The World Bank stalled a $90 million loan planned to help Uganda strengthen its health care system on Thursday after the country put in place a harsh anti-gay law. PHOTO/FILE 

In Summary

• Legislation always has a class character. Those able to secure their ‘criminalised’ forms of sexuality in safe places will not suffer the same fate as the poor who have no security in privilege.
• 'Is it not the mother of all ironies for a Bible-wielding African politician named “David” dressed in a three-piece suit, caressing his iPhone, and speaking a colonial language to condemn anything for its un-Africanness?’

By Godwin Murunga
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Many conflicting positions have been canvassed recently about gays.


 

There are those who think homosexuality is gross and homosexuals disposable. Others support gays and their rights and dismiss homophobes as existing decades behind socio-sexual realities.

Midway are those who acknowledge the humanity of gays but insist on their deviance. They want us to pity them and work to return them to normalcy.

All these positions focus on sex, that is, the physical act people engage in to express ultimate love for each other. The problem is that the issue under discussion, sex and sexuality, has many normalcies. 

CONTROLLING BODIES

Just take a peep in bedrooms of all the homophobic heterosexuals around. They enjoy a multiplicity of sexual expressions. But heteronormative society will publicly frown at this and dismiss any act that differs from their publicly acknowledged heterosexual socialisation as gross, alien and an affront to ‘our’ culture.

The focus on sex in gay debates serves the single purpose of justifying their discrimination. History is replete with examples, from discrimination of gentiles, aliens, blacks, women, to those Sylvia Tamale aptly calls non-conforming sexualities.

The key to achieving the discriminatory intent is to publicise the sexual issue.

But how much time does ‘a normal’ person devote to sexual activity? Why are we mobilising society to make sexual orientation the centre of our legislative agenda and public debate when in fact our ‘normal’ experience allocates miniscule time to sex? Don’t we have demanding priorities?

The issue is not sex but the social consequences of gay acts, including most importantly hateful discrimination. To be known to be, or suspected of, deviating from prescribed ways of experiencing sex is not only condemned through the harsh homophobic acts we have witnessed, but this goes to the extreme of murder.

The start of the murderous intent is found in the dehumanising language of the likes of Yoweri Museveni.

The move towards legislating homosexuality represents a re-introduction of state-sanctioned control that will not stop at discriminating and punishing non-conforming sexualities.

In Uganda, it has quickly moved towards controlling bodies in general, including banning of miniskirts. There is a gender dimension to this.

INTRUSIVENESS WITHOUT BOUNDS

The lesson is that new legislations targeting non-conforming sexualities will expand to include all non-conforming behaviour of minority, marginalised and underprivileged groups.

Legislation always has a class character. Those able to secure their ‘criminalised’ forms of sexuality in safe places will not suffer the same fate as the poor who have no security in privilege.

Ultimately, be warned that when society begins to legislate morality, the slippery slope towards totalitarianism is firmly set. When society begins to legislate the private domain, the intrusiveness of the state into the lives of citizens will know no bounds.

If we focus our attention on what people do in their bedrooms, what will prevent the state from listening to your phone, opening mail and hacking accounts?

We must understand that the consequences of homophobia are social, not sexual. Rumours aside, it is almost impossible to enforce homosexual charges in courts.

We must expose the double-edged sword that homophobia represents. We must accept that criminalisation of gay acts identifies homosexuals as a discriminated category that, by the same fact, enjoins them to mobilise to protect not just their rights to privately experience sex as they deem but also to protect themselves from a society that is pretentiously too intrusive.

For the charge that homosexuality is unAfrican, I can do no better than cite Professor Tamale: ‘Is it not the mother of all ironies for a Bible-wielding African politician named “David” dressed in a three-piece suit, caressing his iPhone, and speaking a colonial language to condemn anything for its un-Africanness?’