By Gedion Onyango In a previous post, “Africa: The link between gay rights, chieftaincy and patronage”, I made a sociological analysis of gay legislation status in sub-Saharan Africa, and encouraged more research into the issue. The responses I got were interesting. The commentators’ views broadened my perspectives and more explanations from me are in order. […]
gay rights
Posted inEquality
Africa: The link between gay rights, chieftaincy and patronage
By Gedion Onyango The gay stance between Uganda versus international community is simply a struggle in defining standard international socio-cultural norms in a globalised system. This involves the processes of determining who defines these norms and how these norms should be enforced. It also brings into question contents of these norms and how these norms […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
Spreading hate in the name of God
For 10 minutes or so, the Wits Art Museum resembled a Pentecostal revivalist meeting. Hands were raised in worship as the crowd swayed and sang hymns. On stage, two pastors lay their hands on the person kneeling in front of them, the subject of their passionate prayers. This was not supposed to be. Not because […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Museveni’s gay cult
By Steven Hussey Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s motives for criminalising homosexuality are hopelessly uninformed, unscientific and proof of gross ignorance when it comes to sexual orientation. He said, “No study has shown you can be homosexual by nature. That man can choose to love a man … is a matter of choice. After listening to […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Your homophobia is un-African
The average gay African is no stranger to torture, rape, prison or terror. Thirty-eight countries in Africa now oppress LGBT individuals in one way or another, and although a recent wave of anti-gay legislation is gaining massive media traction, the dignity of these people has never really been embraced in all corners of the continent. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Why stop at just the gays?
By Thabo Seroke A couple of months ago, Uganda asked a question that could usher in the systematic hate aimed at a group of people. The question was simple: Who is going to inspire the senseless murder of gender-variant people in Africa? This was not a view that needed to be vocalised by Ugandans, but […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Methodist in the madness
Ecclesia de Lange, a minister axed by the Methodist church because of her sexuality, has embarked on a David and Goliath-type battle in taking the church to court for discriminatory actions. By doing so she is holding the church to account — in the eyes of both the public and the law — for its […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Bribing politicians to honour gay rights
In November 2012, Malawi’s first female president, Joyce Banda, temporarily suspended anti-gay laws, urging debate. Instead of acknowledging these laws as inhumane, reports suggest that Malawi feared losing money from liberal Western donors who insist that sexual minorities be protected. Gay rights are in vogue for Western funders, the European Union has already given 1.8 million […]
Posted inGeneral
Gay Pride is political
“I’m queer, too, you stupid f**k,” screamed the Joburg Pride board chair, Tanya Harford, as she lunged at me. Her attack was in response to my colleagues and me telling her that we were part of the LGBT community. She was trying forcibly to remove us from the road where about 20 of us (almost […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Homosexuality is African
By Eusebius McKaiser As a gay African, with a background in analytic philosophy, the most annoying opposition to my sexual orientation is the claim that my lifestyle is un-African. It is annoying because historic and anthropological claims about the origins of behaviour seldom offer principled reasons why a lifestyle should never be allowed. Colonialists are […]
Posted inGeneral
Joyce Banda: Not your average president
By Anneke Meerkotter If you do a search of Joyce Banda’s speech on May 18 2012, you will find a range of international media articles with headlines such as “Malawi president vows to repeal gay ban” (BBC, Huffington Post); “Malawi to overturn homosexual ban” (Guardian); “Malawi president to repeal gay laws” (Al-Jazeera) or “Malawi’s Banda […]
Posted inNews/Politics
But gay is a Western invention
By Matthew Beetar Wow, go Hillary Clinton! As a friend on Facebook said, “It’s about time that the world’s most powerful leaders started acting like leaders”. In her recent speech made before the UN, the US Secretary of State argues, in short, that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) rights are human rights, concluding that […]