Gays are people too

Today I choose to swim against the tide and wade into the murky waters of the gay debate.

I am not an advocate or activist for gay rights or whatever you want to call them, what I am is a human being that cares about how another human being is treated.

When I met my friend, let’s call him Y, I was an African woman stuck in what I term as “the normal”.

I did not understand why he, a strapping young gentleman of chocolate complexion, had chosen to live his life with a fellow man.

I will not play into the stereotypes and say that his hips swayed when he walked, or that he donned a tight fitting trouser and a deep V shirt.

No. In fact, Y is the most ‘ungay‘ person I had ever met or suspected to be a homosexual.

He was shockingly ‘normal’. Before the meeting, I had already made assumptions about what gay people are like.

I figured all I needed to do was make those assumptions statements of fact.

Y knew that I had already judged his ‘kind’ before the meeting, yet he had agreed to meet me.

When I was in campus, I had taken on a project that required me to write about a new experience.

My lecturer thought that it would be more effective if I stepped out of my comfort zone, and so I did.

A friend of a friend made a phone call to the only gay acquaintance she had and a meeting was quickly arranged.

Meeting Y was a big step for me. I was certain fire would fall from the skies as I had read happened in the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Bible.

Five minutes into the meeting, and I started seeing Y as a human being and not as his sexual orientation.

He presented me with everything that was totally opposite of what mainstream media had conditioned me to expect from the gay society.

He did not have the oohs and aahs associated with the female gender.

He did not have those hand gestures that ooze femininity or toss his head back.

He did not clasp his hands together in an endearing manner or giggle. In fact, he annoyingly looked like the man I would want to present to my parents as my future husband.

He reeked of masculinity.

I suppose in the first 30 seconds of my meeting with Y, I acted as the villager who had just come to the city for the first time and was trying to compare what he or she had read on paper to what was before them.

Those seconds summed up to one of the most enlightening moments I have had in my short life.

Needless to say, seven years later, Y remains one of my best friends. He is not evil, he is human.

And while I might not agree with his orientation, I know that killing him is not the right thing to do. I am not his Creator.

If I kill him, have I not sinned as well? Should I borrow from the scripture? I suppose I have put myself on the receiving end of some serious tongue lashing by writing this post.

However, I find that this topic, which many Africans and more so Kenyans have been ignoring for many years, has to be addressed.

Whether we like it or not, a substantial number of Kenyans are gay.

Whether we want to accept it or not, gay men marry straight women in order to hide their orientation thus making a joke of the covenant that is marriage.

We have created more sin in our lack of acceptance of what some might refer to as ‘the white man’s disease’.

‘Correctional’ rape will not help avert gay behaviour.

Homosexuality is “largely considered to be taboo and repugnant to the cultural values and morality” of Kenya.

The state punishes same-sex sexual acts as crimes. ‘Gayism’ in Kenya attracts max of 14 years imprisonment penalty or 21 years in special circumstances.

In fact, gay people are often stoned to death by mobs.

As disgusting as they make you feel, as holier than thou as you deem yourself, you would not do the same to your brother, sister, son or daughter.

You would not be laughing then.

Many people think that being gay is a psychological thing, arguing that one cannot possibly be born with such a gene.

Some even go as far as to say that the gay lifestyle is something Africans have borrowed from the Western Culture.

Truth is, Gay people have existed since the beginning of time, they were just more ‘discrete’ then.

Tell me this, how is that different from the priest who preaches peace and sodomizes the altar boy after mass?

How is that different from the nun who married Christ but parts her legs for the man of the cloth at night?

How is that different from the father who impregnates his own daughter?

Gay is sin, so is murder, so is lying, so is stealing, so is having sex before marriage. The bible says so.

Should we kill everybody then?

A sin is a sin.

There is a reason why Gay people are here to stay. It is because just like murderers, liars, fornicators, adulterers and thieves, humanity is made of sin.

Should we kill everybody then? What would Jesus do?

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kenya Gay homosexuality gays humanity Kenyans sin

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