African homophobia

Homophobia in Africa is expressing itself in horrific ways. In Uganda, gay rights activist, David Kato, was recently murdered. Although the Ugandan government tried to muddy what happened through fabrications about Kato's lifestyle, the truth is that it was a homophobic hate crime. In South Africa, similar horrific things are happening, where women are raped in order to 'correct' their lesbianism. Avaaz is running a campaign to bring this into public awareness here. They write,

Thembi (name changed) was pulled from a taxi near her home, beaten and raped by a man who crowed that he was ‘curing’ her of her lesbianism.Thembi is not alone -- this vicious crime is recurrent in South Africa, where lesbians live in terror of attack. But no one has ever been convicted of 'corrective rape'. Amazingly, from a tiny Cape Town safehouse a few brave activists are risking their lives to ensure that this heinous practice is stopped and their massive campaign has forced the government into talks.

A significant contributor to the problem is the lack of education in this area. Many people in Africa (including South Africa) have absurd misconceptions about what it means to be homosexual. Some of these include that being homosexual is primarily about sex (as opposed to sexual orientation) and that homosexuals are promiscuous and dangerous in that they might have sex with anyone, including children, of the same sex.

How hard is it to accept all human being as human beings? According to Albert Kinsey's research in the 1930s (which has been confirmed again and again over the past eighty years in studies done across the world) most people fall somewhere on a continuum between straight and gay. Very few people are fully one or fully the other. Realising this may help us to realise that those on the more gay end of the continuum are as human as those on the more straight end. And all human beings have a desire to commit to a loved one for the long term, to be in a safe and loving relationship and to contribute positively to the world around them.

Let's be careful with the homophobic jokes we tell or the condemning things we say, keeping in mind that that small homophobic attitude in us is resulting in rape, jail sentences and death in some other, not so far away, contexts.