Anti-gay crusaders got it wrong on gay rights

Kenya’s best-known gay man died in the same week that the High Court declined to legalise same-sex relationships. The chances of that happening were slim, but sometimes life events coincide to create a shift in consciousness.

Reactions to Binyavanga Wainaina’s death and the High Court’s ruling were unsurprising. Just your typical “homosexuality is un-African” and ‘non-Biblical’ fare; nothing even vaguely original. I noticed a new trend as I waded through the bigotry swamp; the argument that Kenya has bigger “problems” to deal with than legalising homosexuality.

There was a lot of, ‘I’m not homophobic, but legalising same-sex relationships should not be our priority right now’, or ‘People should be allowed to date who they want, but we have other things to deal with as a country’, or ‘I have nothing against gay people but surely there we have bigger problems on our plate’.

Basically, a bunch of closeted homophobes trying to be politically correct with their bigotry. I don’t know what was worse, the poorly disguised contempt for gay people or the complete disregard for human dignity. That’s what was at stake in the High Court last Friday; the idea that human beings should have the agency to be who they are, and to live their lives authentically.

 Basic rights

Also, the idea that their choices should be respected and their value as equal members of society recognised. Anyone who claims that Kenya, as a nation state, has bigger things to deal with than the dignity of its gay citizens is attempting to dehumanise the homosexual minority, and to make them stateless in their own country.

It might seem clever to latch onto the broader priorities of government as a means to sanitise discrimination, but in reality, it’s not only daft, it is dangerous. When you begin to think of a group of people as sub-human and stateless, it becomes very easy to deny them their basic rights.  The systems of government should never be invoked to silence people, no matter who those people are, what they believe, and how they live. You may think that you are safe in the majority, but the state is a machine capable of ploughing everybody down.

Societies that support the legislation of personal choice on matters as private as sexual orientation have no respect for the autonomy of persons - that is, the right to live life on your own terms without the interreference of external forces. That right should be inherent. In fact, it is inherent, and would be recognised as such were it not for the distorted lens through which we have chosen to view it.

Personal choice

And let’s not forget the irony of upholding colonial-era laws when there is ample opportunity to trash them. The anti-sodomy provisions in our Penal Code – heck, the Penal Code itself – were conceived by colonialists for colonial reasons. Rest assured that the wellbeing of the natives did not influence any part of that reasoning. That should be motive enough to rethink the entire criminal justice system and the indignities that are woven into the very fabric of its laws. It’s such a shame that we still have dusty statutes on the shelves more than half a century after independence. And worse still, that we are guided by them.

Here’s the thing: I’m not even coming at this from a pro-gay perspective, neither am I making any pronouncements on the perceived rights and/or wrongs of homosexuality. I’m saying that grown men and women should have the agency to do what they feel is right. It is as simple as that. See, heterosexuals can wear their sexuality like a badge with zero fear of recrimination and perhaps that is why so many of us have no understanding of what it feels like to be disavowed by both state and countrymen.

This is surely what it means to be entitled and oblivious to the plight of others. You do not have to agree with homosexuality as a way of being, you just need the understanding that individual citizens must have the same right to exist, to live life on their own terms. The majority does not get to describe what life should look like, and then to project that picture on all people –if that were the case, there would still be black slaves in America. Might does not equal right. You might say that being gay is not right either but that shouldn’t be up for debate. What we should be discussing is how we can create a society where all men and women are allowed to be true to themselves.

Ms Masiga is Peace and Security editor, The Conversation Africa