Nigeria: #BringBackOurGirls, but jail our gays?
We want to free the Chibok girls, while keeping our gay compatriots firmly locked in their closets. You don’t have to be a theorist of democracy to know that both issues are connected, and that any society that purports to sacrifice one for the other will ultimately have neither.
As we march for the girls, let us not forget the gays.
Why have the same Nigerians who could not lift a finger in defense of homosexuals and lesbians suddenly found their collective voice in protest against the Boko Haram outrage? And while we are it, why have the same people who railed against western intervention in Nigerian/African affairs and pointedly asked ‘those Americans’ to mind their own business become desperate to have American military intelligence support, gay officers and all? …
On the face of it, the anti-gay legislation and the violent abduction of the Chibok girls are apples and oranges, bearing no comparison whatsoever. Part of my aim here is to show that they are actually fundamentally linked, and to argue that our contrasting responses to them speak volumes about the character of the Nigerian public, and the narrow (and often narrow-minded) elite that we have allowed to hijack the mantle of civil society. …
The Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act was … (and remains) a divisive issue, one in which an initial feeling of disgust is regularly allowed to impede critical debate. But that is precisely what should have recommended it to civil society; a matter in which the public has leaned in one direction, but where public enlightenment would have advanced the debate. It is morally ambiguous. And that is the point.
When you are the father of two boys, happily married and secure in your heterosexual skin, you are constantly asked why you speak up for those ‘those people’ and why you couldn’t just stay out of it since ‘it’s none of your problem.’
Here is my answer, in brief: If the study of society teaches us anything at all, it is that, in this life, everything is connected. Men who identify as feminists do so because they know that what touches one, touches all. This is something most Nigerians are yet to internalize. We want security, but balk at any serious discussion of justice. We want to free the Chibok girls, while keeping our gay compatriots firmly locked in their closets. You don’t have to be a theorist of democracy to know that both issues are connected, and that any society that purports to sacrifice one for the other will ultimately have neither.
As we march for the girls, let us not forget the gays.
Prof. Ebenezer Obadare has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and teaches in the sociology department at the University of Kansas in the United States.
For his full commentary, visit allAfrica.com: “Nigeria: Bring Back Our Girls, and Yet, Keep Our Gays in the Closet?”
Dozens of people have reportedly been arrested in response to passage of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (the “Jail the Gays Law”). The law provides for prison sentences of up to 10 years for belonging to a gay organization, supporting same-sex marriages, and public displays of same-sex affection, and up to 14 years for marrying someone of the same sex.
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