Must read! Chimamanda Adichie writes on the anti-gay law

Article written by award winning writer
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie titled 'Why
can't he just be like everyone else?'
Find it below...
I will call him Sochukwuma. A thin,
smiling boy who liked to play with us
girls at the university primary school
in Nsukka. We were young. We knew
he was different, we said, 'he's not
like the other boys.' But his was a
benign and unquestioned difference;
it was simply what it was. We did not
have a name for him. We did not know
the word 'gay.' He was Sochukwuma
and he was friendly and he played oga
so well that his side always won.
In secondary school, some boys in his
class tried to throw Sochukwuma off a
second floor balcony. They were
strapping teenagers who had learned
to notice, and fear, difference. They
had a name for him. Homo. They
mocked him because his hips swayed
when he walked and his hands
fluttered when he spoke. He brushed
away their taunts, silently, sometimes
grinning an uncomfortable grin. He
must have wished that he could be
what they wanted him to be. I imagine
now how helplessly lonely he must
have felt. The boys often asked, "Why
can't he just be like everyone else?"
Possible answers to that question include
'because he is abnormal,' 'because he is
a sinner, 'because he chose the
lifestyle.' But the truest answer is 'We
don't know.' There is humility and
humanity in accepting that there are
things we simply don't know. At the age
of 8, Sochukwuma was obviously
different. It was not about sex, because
it could not possibly have been – his
hormones were of course not yet fully
formed – but it was an awareness of
himself, and other children's awareness
of him, as different. He could not have
'chosen the lifestyle' because he was too
young to do so. And why would he – or
anybody – choose to be homosexual in a
world that makes life so difficult for
homosexuals?
The new law that criminalizes
homosexuality is popular among
Nigerians. But it shows a failure of our
democracy, because the mark of a true
democracy is not in the rule of its
majority but in the protection of its
minority – otherwise mob justice would
be considered democratic. The law is
also unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a
strange priority in a country with so
many real problems. Above all else,
however, it is unjust. Even if this was not
a country of abysmal electricity supply
where university graduates are barely
literate and people die of easily-
treatable causes and Boko Haram
commits casual mass murders, this law
would still be unjust. We cannot be a
just society unless we are able to
accommodate benign difference, accept
benign difference, live and let live. We
may not understand homosexuality, we
may find it personally abhorrent but our
response cannot be to criminalize it.
A crime is a crime for a reason. A crime
has victims. A crime harms society. On
what basis is homosexuality a crime?
Adults do no harm to society in how they
love and whom they love. This is a law
that will not prevent crime, but will,
instead, lead to crimes of violence: there
are already, in different parts of Nigeria,
attacks on people 'suspected' of being
gay. Ours is a society where men are
openly affectionate with one another.
Men hold hands. Men hug each other.
Shall we now arrest friends who share a
hotel room, or who walk side by side?
How do we determine the clunky
expressions in the law – 'mutually
beneficial,' 'directly or indirectly?'
Many Nigerians support the law because
they believe the Bible condemns
homosexuality. The Bible can be a basis
for how we choose to live our personal
lives, but it cannot be a basis for the
laws we pass, not only because the holy
books of different religions do not have
equal significance for all Nigerians but
also because the holy books are read
differently by different people. The
Bible, for example, also condemns
fornication and adultery and divorce, but
they are not crimes.
For supporters of the law, there seems
to be something about homosexuality
that sets it apart. A sense that it is not
'normal.' If we are part of a majority
group, we tend to think others in
minority groups are abnormal, not
because they have done anything
wrong, but because we have defined
normal to be what we are and since they
are not like us, then they are abnormal.
Supporters of the law want a certain
semblance of human homogeneity. But
we cannot legislate into existence a
world that does not exist: the truth of
our human condition is that we are a
diverse, multi-faceted species. The
measure of our humanity lies, in part, in
how we think of those different from us.
We cannot – should not – have empathy
only for people who are like us.
Some supporters of the law have asked –
what is next, a marriage between a man
and a dog?' Or 'have you seen animals
being gay?' (Actually, studies show that
there is homosexual behavior in many
species of animals.) But, quite simply,
people are not dogs, and to accept the
premise – that a homosexual is
comparable to an animal – is inhumane.
We cannot reduce the humanity of our
fellow men and women because of how
and who they love. Some animals eat
their own kind, others desert their
young. Shall we follow those examples,
too?
Other supporters suggest that gay men
sexually abuse little boys. But pedophilia
and homosexuality are two very
different things. There are men who
abuse little girls, and women who abuse
little boys, and we do not presume that
they do it because they are
heterosexuals. Child molestation is an
ugly crime that is committed by both
straight and gay adults (this is why it is a
crime: children, by virtue of being non-
adults, require protection and are unable
to give sexual consent).
There has also been some nationalist
posturing among supporters of the law.
Homosexuality is 'unafrican,' they say,
and we will not become like the west.
The west is not exactly a homosexual
haven; acts of discrimination against
homosexuals are not uncommon in the
US and Europe. But it is the idea of
'unafricanness' that is truly insidious.
Sochukwuma was born of Igbo parents
and had Igbo grandparents and Igbo
great-grandparents. He was born a
person who would romantically love
other men. Many Nigerians know
somebody like him. The boy who
behaved like a girl. The girl who behaved
like a boy. The effeminate man. The
unusual woman. These were people we
knew, people like us, born and raised on
African soil. How then are they
'unafrican?'
If anything, it is the passage of the law
itself that is 'unafrican.' It goes against
the values of tolerance and 'live and let
live' that are part of many African
cultures. (In 1970s Igboland, Area
Scatter was a popular musician, a man
who dressed like a woman, wore
makeup, plaited his hair. We don't know
if he was gay – I think he was – but if he
performed today, he could conceivably
be sentenced to fourteen years in
prison. For being who he is.) And it is
informed not by a home-grown debate
but by a cynically borrowed one: we
turned on CNN and heard western
countries debating 'same sex marriage'
and we decided that we, too, would pass
a law banning same sex marriage.
Where, in Nigeria, whose constitution
defines marriage as being between a
man and a woman, has any homosexual
asked for same-sex marriage?
This is an unjust law. It should be
repealed. Throughout history, many
inhumane laws have been passed, and
have subsequently been repealed.
Barack Obama, for example, would not
be here today had his parents obeyed
American laws that criminalized
marriage between blacks and whites.
An acquaintance recently asked me, 'if
you support gays, how would you have
been born?' Of course, there were gay
Nigerians when I was conceived. Gay
people have existed as long as humans
have existed. They have always been a
small percentage of the human
population. We don't know why. What
matters is this: Sochukwuma is a
Nigerian and his existence is not a crime.