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.
The popular comic star and his wife dedicated their newborn baby last Sunday, the 16th of February 2014 at their church in Lekki Phase 1.
