credits:The PUNCH
I
understand Senator David Mark, the President of the Senate of the
Federal Republic, is a very pious man. I don’t know Mark personally, but
those who know him say the retired General is one person who pursues
his cause with the zeal of a soldier. It was this zeal that he brought
to bear as a minister of communications in the regime of the “Evil
Genius”, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, by making sure that the “ordinary
people” did not have access to telephone and upbraiding university
students for protesting fuel price increase “when many of them didn’t
have cars”.
When Mark wanted to run for president a
few years ago, he granted an interview in which he declared: “If I have
my way, I will say whoever does not have a military background should
not be made president,” noting that, “civilians don’t have the requisite
training”. According to Mark, even journalists should undergo military
training because, “It gives you the confidence that you need and makes
you to be everything”. He went on: “I can tell you that a staff sergeant
in the army is better than a university graduate in this country. That
is the truth. If you give me a graduate and a staff sergeant, I will
pick the sergeant because I can train the sergeant”. The point Mark was
trying to make was that nobody should deny him the opportunity to rule
Nigeria simply because he was once a soldier.
Mark has since made his mark (no pun
intended) on our democratic landscape. He has been a senator since the
return to democracy in 1999. He is in his second term as Senate
President, the first and only senator to achieve this feat in the 4th
Republic. He was one of the senators who supported the bill that sought
to give President Olusegun Obasanjo a third term in office. He was one
of the few officers alleged to have played a prominent role in the
annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. And the way he is
going, Mark may yet fulfil his ambition of being the President and
Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria.
Mark’s latest pet project is his crusade
against gays and lesbians, that extraterrestrial, subhuman group that
has descended on our great country and seeks to pervert our collective
morality. Some people have argued that if Mark and his colleagues could
expend a quarter of the time and energy they are expending hounding gays
and lesbians, the country might be a safer and more prosperous place
for her citizens. But that is beside the point. We all know the Upper
Chamber of the National Assembly is nothing more than a retirement home
for public officers who have lost their immunity.
As a devout and morally-upright
Christian who aspires to be a Knight of the Catholic Church someday, I
can understand Mark’s antipathy toward gays and lesbians.
But to allow
that to becloud his legislative judgment in a supposedly secular nation
like ours, is to say the least, troubling. Unfortunately, that is
exactly what he is doing by championing the anti-gay movement in the
Senate. During his latest outing at a civic reception in honour of John
Cardinal Olorunfemi Onaiyekan in Abuja, Mark said, “The need to nurture
and preserve sanity, morality and humanity in our nation informed the
decision of the Nigerian Senate to legislate against same-sex marriage
and homosexuality”.
It is important to read Mark’s statement
clearly. The issue is not just opposition to same-sex marriage, but to
homosexuality as well. This clarification is important because, among
other things, the criminalisation of same-sex marriage which attracts 14
years’ imprisonment will equally be applicable to anybody who engages
in homosexual acts if Mark’s fantasy becomes law.
“We will not compromise on this. I want
to invite you all to join the crusade of decency in our society. There
are many good values we can copy from other societies but certainly not
this one (same-sex marriage),” Mark implored his audience. “We have to
prove to the rest of the world, who are advocates of this unnatural way
that we Nigerians promote and respect sanity, morality and humanity.”
It was perhaps in keeping with Mark’s
injunction to prove to the rest of the world that Nigerians “promote and
respect sanity, morality and humanity” that a few weeks ago, as
reported by Steve Aborisade of Nigeriahivinfo.com, anti-gay
crusaders apprehended three men in Ekwe, Njaba Local Government Area of
Imo State. Their offence? Engaging in homosexual acts! The men were
paraded naked, bound like farm animals. We can only imagine the fate of
these men; citizens have been lynched or burnt to death for lesser
crimes.
That is the face of the new Nigeria of
moral warriors that Mark envisages. But really, what haven’t we
compromised as a nation? We have compromised on corruption. We have
compromised on probity and accountability. We have compromised on
freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. Indeed, we have compromised
on all the ethical standards that make a modern nation function. But
those things don’t concern us. We only need to weed our society of these
sexual deviants who are polluting us with their foreign way of life.
There are a few issues arising from the
gay bashing that has become not only fashionable, but a comfortable
distraction and a uniting topic between the ruling class and a section
of the people they oppress. One is that homosexuality is foreign to our
culture and that it was brought to us and is being promoted by Europeans
and Americans. The other is that it is against religious doctrines. But
homosexuality is not a White man’s “disease”. Homosexuals are found in
every society in the world, including ours.
One of the most insightful articles I
have read on this debate is that by Wole Soyinka. In the piece, The
Sexual Minority and Legislative Zealotry, the Nobel Laureate takes our
legislative zealots and religious bigots to task on their fear mongering
and distaste for science. It is a piece worth reading for anyone
interested in understanding the anti-gay hysteria in Nigeria.
On the issue of “foreign interference”,
Soyinka had this to say: “The noisome emissions that surged from a
handful of foreign governments last year should not be permitted to
obscure the fundamental issue of the right to private choices of the
free, adult citizen in any land – Asian, African, European, etc. Those
external responses were of such a nature – hysterical, hypocritical and
disproportionate – that, speaking for myself at least, I could only
wonder if they had not been generated by a desperate need for
distraction away from the economic crisis that confronted, at that very
time, those parts of the world”.
Now that we have laid the incubus of
“foreign interference” to rest, perhaps we can address the other issues
that rile our anti-gay crusaders. Some of those who attack gays and
lesbians say homosexuality is “abnormal” and “unnatural”. Others have
gone a step further to query why the West that opposes polygamy supports
homosexuality. This, of course, is a faulty analogy. We can have the
debate about same-sex marriage, just like polygamy, but to criminalise
homosexuality is the height of “legislative zealotry”.
The debate on polygamy and same-sex
marriage would also fall within the realm of the debate on whether a
50-year old senator can marry a 13-year-old. Of all the issues above,
same-sex marriage, in my view, is the least upsetting. I have yet to see
how same-sex marriage affects the rights of citizens or is a threat to
society as do polygamy and paedophilia.
We all know where science stands on the
issue of homosexuality. It does appear, therefore, that beyond the
religious argument, there has not been any “persuasive” argument put
forward by homophobes. But we can’t give in to the religious argument
for obvious reasons. Nigeria is a secular state. The other reason is
that it is a very slippery slope. If we hound homosexuals on the basis
of religion, then we create room for other religious bigots who have
made our country a living hell in their purported attempt to propitiate
Heaven.
Caution is the word, Mr. Mark. All the
balderdash that homosexuality is not in our culture, is simply that:
balderdash. The bottom line is that we are dealing with a relationship
between two consenting adults. What crime has been committed? The crime
of falling in love?
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) community does not pose a national security threat.
Rather, those we need to wage a war against are bigots, whether they be
religious, ethnic or sexual.
If we allow Mark and his colleagues to
legislate on what adults do in their bedrooms, they may one day begin to
think of legislating on what a woman, for example, does to her body. By
the way, I have yet to hear what the concerned Mark has said about the
ridiculous two-year jail term given by an Abuja High Court to John
Yakubu Yusuf, Deputy Director of the Police Pension Office, who pleaded
guilty to embezzling N27bn of pension funds in the same Abuja where he,
and other lords, reign.
