Nigeria Celebrates Homophobia and Hetero Infidelity

Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
December 12, 2011

The following homophobic and irrational opinion article appeared in the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper today written by Kola Animasaun. This was written in light of the impending passage of a virulent anti-gay statute in the Nigerian senate.

(I quote the first four paragraphs)
"Where do human rights begin and where do they end? I should think they should begin with al God-given rights and end where God's laws naturally "adhere to proper human rights."

"But the British Prime Minister has extended it to include making homosexuality legal. The British have been doing the best for themselves to redraw the natural laws in the last few years. They have made nonsense of the Bible and the Qur'an. And you want to believe that they do not believe in any of them.

"You hear of partners - male and female - living together and making nonsense of the sanctity of marriage. That of course does not seem to be the limit. Now, you have marriage between man and man; woman and woman.

"From time immemorial God warned us against both extremes. And he even demonstrated what would happen if we go against His injunctions. We should not forget the people of Lot - many years and many centuries ago - who were punished by turning them into pillars of salts - both sodomites and lesbians..." (read full story here)

Kola Animasaun is an author; one of his books is entitled 'The Voice of Reason'.

My response to this mindless discrimination follows:
Sirs and Mesdames,
Regarding your writer's words "making nonsense of the sanctity of marriage", instead of blasting a very small minority (of gays) who wish to love in private, I suggest the leaders--political, media and religious--of Nigeria look in the mirror and see how much straight married adults make nonsense of the sanctity of marriage by their infidelity and deceptive attitudes toward their vows.

By the tens of thousands, it is well known that husbands stray far and wide from their spouses--as evidenced by the huge increase of HIV cases among heterosexuals. How many of these men have abandoned their wives and children? How many secretly pursue sex with other women--and men? (It is telling that on today's 12/12/11 front page of the Vanguard there is a joke cartoon that openly suggests infidelity between a husband and his laundrywoman!).

In today's issue of PMNews (Nigeria) the author--a Nigerian woman--has written: "We now live in a civilised world where men carry the Bible and Koran on one hand, while they use the other to commit all sorts of crime. People keep using religious words and titles just to cover up for different atrocities they perpetrate. In fact, the pew is now more sanctified than the pulpit. Why go on preaching against people with two wives when clergy have five girls in his church and two from each church he visits? Why do you claim to be very polished and educated that you can’t imagine yourself with two wives when God knows you have ten already?"

Indeed, these are the people who should be demonized and condemned for their sinful and callous behavior--based on today's reality. Gays who want equality and marriage are a very very small minority of Nigerians who only want to be left alone to love in peace and are much more likely to be faithful than heterosexual husbands.

Reacting hysterically and disproportionately to these few gays--who could never possibly threaten the institution of marriage--today's alleged Christian leaders think they have found the real demons in the moral corruption in Nigerian society, basing their condemnation on ancient Biblical scripture that is unscientific, historically inaccurate, mysterious and factually confusing. (Not to mention prejudicial and selective: recall that the Bible says the greatest abomination is charging interest on borrowed money!)

Gays are not a threat to modern Nigerian society; corruption, greed, theft, infidelity, poverty and religious warfare are far more dangerous than a few homosexuals who simply want to care for each other. Also, be reminded that countess scientific studies have confirmed that (1) homosexuals have always existed in African cultures and (2) people are born with a predisposition toward sexual orientation; they don't suddenly chose it at the age of seven, fifteen or twenty-three as a fun thing to do in order to get beaten up for it!

Tend to your own morals before you condemn others. I think Jesus said something like that.



Protest the anti-gay Nigerian law
Forbes Magazine: Obama's Threat
The Economist Report
Washington Post Warns of HIV Increase


Other Nigerian homophobic rants online:
Business Day Online
Daily Trust
Nigeria Masterweb Daily News

+ much more

A Shining Moment for LGBT Gay Rights

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
July 25, 2011

I've never seen anything like it.

A gay deluge in the media: gay marriage in NY; mainstream gay-theme films; congressional approval of an openly gay federal gay judge; children of gays; Obama's administration's removal of support for DOMA; major newspaper editorials applauding gay marriage; an historic UN resolution, in June 2011, condemning discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation; imminent repeal of DADT in the military; the opening of the week-long North American OutGames (gay olympics) in Vancouver; the highly visible 'It Gets Better' anti-bullying national project; the newly digitized Gay and Lesbian Review; and just this week, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granted consultative status to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)...

There seems a current tsunami of social change, a cultural jump, a sudden leap into a new world (or part of it), a more humanistic world of civility, a world more aware, of progress against entrenched and angry prejudice against LGBT citizens.

Not to sugar-coat this unique phenomenon: there are still murders, violence and discrimination a-plenty around the world; a teenager in California is on trial for murdering a gay classmate; anti-gay protests in the USA against gay marriage; presidential candidates publicly airing their homophobic views; Focus on the Family anti-gay group distorting research at a congressional hearing (and getting caught); Michelle Bachman's connection to a gay-cure clinic; the Nigerian women’s soccer team claims homosexuality is eradicated among players...

But for now there is a shining moment when hope for a decent equitable society seems possible, appears happening, in America at least, as loving couples are given the freedom and right to marry and gay sexual orientation becomes a source of pride and a cause to celebrate our lives as good citizens, parents, professionals, military troops, judges and members of a country that makes humane things possible.

It is a moment a long time coming through terrible oppression, brutality and ignorance when gays were treated like animals. It is a long time coming from that to this recent (7-24-11) editorial comment in the New York Times:

"There are very few positions more repugnant than advocating intolerance."

Homophobia--Win a Few, Lose a Lot, Win a Few More

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
July 5, 2011

Sunday's New York Times (online, July 3) featured four articles about homosexuality in America--on the front page.

In the context of a recent wave of gay issues in the media (Governor Cuomo wins the NY gay marriage vote (photo right); Rhode Island approves civil unions; New Jersey's governor rejects gay marriage; the debate over DADT and DOM legislation; gay divorce; Republican presidential candidates taking positions on all these and the usual Catholic homophobia, etc.) this is not surprising, especially in the 'gay month' of June Pride. In one of these stories, no less a respected person than the NYT executive editor Bill Keller stated in a Sunday Magazine essay: "the move toward legalization of same-sex marriage in America had become inexorable."

Noble and affirmative and welcome as this position is, it's easy to take such comments in stride, here in media-blitzed, east coast, big city with a flamboyant gay parade, a governor and mayor out front, gay TV pop talent stars, gay Broadway plays. The present seems saturated with gay issues, which even President Obama is actively pondering ("evolving"), urged along by numerous gay people on his staff, to arrive at politically correct and humanistic positions toward his gay constituents. Clearly the cause is great and the struggle for equality goes on, step by step, city and state by city and state.

But we must not get too far ahead of the frontline in this culture war, which sometimes can be fatal to the 'special forces' of the gay movement. Surrounding, these mostly positive Times reports, are many more not so positive stories and postings that have come across my desk in the past few weeks, sent in from various countries including the USA:

Russia: June 25, 2011
About a dozen gay people were arrested and jailed for trying to hold a small gay Pride rally in Moscow. Police detained two groups of activists protesting their lack of rights in two central districts of the city. An Associated Press photographer saw unidentified individuals attack the demonstrators, trying to seize their banners before police moved in.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/25/russia-gay-pride-demonstrators-attacked-detained-_n_884510.html#s298183

Turkey: June 26, 2011
Thousands of Turks marched through Istanbul in a demonstration calling for improved rights and greater social acceptance for the country's homosexual community... as transgendered people continue to be murdered.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/06/26/turkey.gay.pride/index.html

Slovenia: July 18, 2011
A British police officer has spoken of his terror after being beaten by a gang of vicious thugs brandishing metal batons in a shocking homophobic attack. The gay officer was attacked while on holiday in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana by six or seven men who took exception to his sexuality.
http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/gay_policeman_victim_of_horrific_homophobic_attack_in_slovenia_1_2787331?commentssort=1

China: April 6, 2011
A weekend raid at a club in Shanghai was a stark reminder of what can happen when homophobia meets the all-too-heavy hand of the law. Shanghaiist reports: Early Sunday morning, police stormed into Q Bar in the middle of a go-go boy performance, turned the lights on, and shoved about 70 bar employees and patrons (save the foreigners) batch by batch into a minivan that whittled them away to the Xiaodongmen police station, just a stone's throw away from the bar. The state-backed Shanghai Daily said the bar was targeted "after complaints that it was staging sex shows". This was vigorously denied by the bar's owner.
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/04/06/party-police-cops-raid-gay-bar-in-shanghai/#ixzz1R65yzcsY

Vietnam: May 21, 2011
Every day in Vietnam, stigma, discrimination and violence threaten the basic constitutional rights of gay men, including access to the information, products and services that they need for their well-being. There is a special concern regarding MSM’s access to HIV services, as HIV prevalence among MSM was 14% in 2009.
http://en.baomoi.com/Home/society/hanoitimes.com.vn/Vietnam-speaks-out-on-International-Day-against-Homophobia/145146.epi

USA: July 2, 2011
Governor Lincoln Chafee signed a civil unions bill into law, making Rhode Island the fifth after Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware and Hawaii to recognize gay and lesbian couples with civil unions.
As a result, Thomas Tobin, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, has barred gay Catholics from entering a civil union:
“I am deeply disappointed that Rhode Island will establish civil unions in our state,” he wrote in The Rhode Island Catholic. “The concept of civil unions is a social experiment that promotes an immoral lifestyle, is a mockery of the institution of marriage as designed by God, undermines the well-being of our family and poses a threat to religious liberty...Because civil unions promote an unacceptable lifestyle, undermine the faith of the Church on holy matrimony, and cause scandal and confusion, Catholics may not participate in civil unions. To do so is a very grave violation of the moral law and, thus, seriously sinful. A civil union can never be accepted as a legitimate alternative to matrimony.”
http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=8841&MediaType=1&Category=26

Uganda: May 11, 2011
Uganda's parliament on Wednesday delayed debate on a controversial bill that once proposed the death penalty for some gays and lesbians, but officials suggested lawmakers could take up the matter on Friday. [They did not.] U.S. and world leaders and rights groups have denounced the bill in recent months in hopes parliament would reject it. Internet petitions have gathered more than 1.4 million signatures. The bill was first proposed in 2009 but has been avoided in parliament.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42990706/ns/world_news-africa/t/uganda-anti-gay-bill-delayed-after-outcry/

South Africa: June 29, 2011
Lesbian South Africans are living in fear as rape and murder become a daily threat in the townships they call home. Noxolo Nkosana, 23, is the latest victim of a series of violent attacks against lesbians. She was stabbed a stone's throw from her home in Crossroads township, Cape Town, as she returned from work one evening with her girlfriend. The two men - one of whom lives in her community - started yelling insults. "They were walking behind us. They just started swearing at me screaming: 'Hey you lesbian, you tomboy, we'll show you,'" Ms Nkosana tells the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13908662

There are few issues on the world stage more divisive than homosexuality. It is a fiery flashpoint in modern societies around the world, often hateful, sometimes murderous, always conflicted. Fueled primarily by religious bigotry that relies on ancient mythological 'holy' books, this is one culture war that may never go away since those old books are not about to be re-written--despite the fact that they indeed were originally written by unknown mortals living in primitive times.

Imagine if we used medical books from the middle ages to guide modern treatments. But religion is not science, which is based on facts and reality, and like politics people can hold whatever irrational views they want just because they want to and attribute their views to a religious doctrine or scripture, base on vague history, magical myth and entrenched hearsay. Bringing rationality into religion is like mixing oil with water. Nothing in nature or super-nature can ever cause them to blend. Rationality, religion and human sexuality will never be blended and will always be major hindrances and blind spots to civilization reaching its full potential; light and dark make gray in which one cannot see forward or backward.

Religious Fairy Tales vs Gay Marriage

Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
May 13, 2010

Today’s news brought a hysterically horrid report about the Pope in Portugal. He called for pastoral action to tackle abortion and same-sex marriage, which he called "some of today's most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good".

(Insidious means: harmful but enticing; seductive; having a gradual and cumulative effect; spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner.)

These vile words came as he spoke at the famous Fatima shrine, Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, one of the most revered sites in Catholicism.

The basilica (photo right) was built to commemorate alleged events of 1917 when three shepherd peasant children claimed to have had a vision of the "Virgin of the Rosary", (Our Lady of Fátima). The little children experienced the purported ‘Marian apparitions’ in a nearby sheep pasture. Strangely, people believed them and today millions of Catholics flock to the site in search of miracle cures and to worship there.

I find it incredulous that a modern Christian mind whose job it is to have compassion in the world for real human conditions could have such devout faith in unproven non-human fairy tales told by naive shepherd boys--and at the same time discredit real-life authentic love between two adults.

What’s terribly wrong with this picture!?

The Pope has no clue what gay marriage is and doesn’t want to know. He refuses to accept that it’s about love. That it’s a ceremony of devotion and commitment between two same-sex adults in the non-airy-fairy working world finding realistic ways to enhance each other’s daily lives.

The challenge is whether to attend to imaginary mythology or real life love? The choice seems so obvious as to not be a choice. Yet this supposed religious leader who wishes the world to be a better place, chooses to favor magical mysteries over real hands-on goodness in action.

The world will not be a better place until such influential leaders dressed in spotless while linen clothing and gold rings gives up his lofty spiritual myths, throws off his sterile robes and lives among the poor laying bricks and seeing the validity in all forms of human love.

He would rather protect sexual criminals in order to maintain hypocritical clerical ‘purity’ (talk about insidious!) than to recruit openly loving gay and lesbian adults into the church and bless them with marriage.

Human Myths That Make Us Inhumane

Richard Ammon, GlobalGayz.com
New York City

I am continually saddened by how far and deep irrational thought (myth) can infuse a society, especially regarding a political or religious issue.

Gay marriage is one issue that arouses irrational political and religious discomfort. It’s an issue that burns because it involves or implies human sexual behavior, which is an irrational force that urges many people into irrational behavior, usually surrounded by silence, rejection or advocacy—anything but indifference. Sex makes people squirm either in pleasure or in dismay. The myth of sex.

Marriage (hetero) on the other hand evokes a kind of charming myth, as some kind of ritual that bestows blessing, legitimacy and social approval on people. It’s associated with family, home, children, security—normalcy and stability in a world of flux and uncertainty. The ‘family unit’ is seen as the unquestioned bedrock of a culture despite its stressed and fraught reality and high divorce rate. The myth of family.

Add in the myth of ‘gay’ to the combination of sex and marriage and this creates another kind of myth that unsettles nearly every major society today.

Myths are countless, from Disney fairies to the magical figures who started world religions to alleged saints slaying dragons. Many are harmless and stimulate artistic imagination or are useful to perpetuate certain social ideals like ‘equality’. But other myths are dangerous and deadly such as the anti-gay myths that emerge from religious sources like the Bible and the Koran or the Talmud. The impact of these ancient books--all with mythological foundations--on the lives of modern LGBT people is staggering and forceful since out of myth comes very real behavior. And a belief in the rightness of one’s religious or political myths can lead to violence and repression and even warfare, or it can also lead to a Mother Theresa with boundless compassion.

Anti-gay mythologies certainly have led to a disproportionate tsunami against homosexually-natured people across the planet, from a mild silence among rural Thai farmers to Mormon excommunication to outright murder within the American (mostly Christian) military or to public execution in Muslim quarters, and even pervades wealthy corporate structures (where the myth of wealth reigns).

In the matter of gay marriage, myth has served as a lethal weapon against the current push for human rights equality. Something blinds the common mind from seeing the reality before them: human sexuality exists on a broad spectrum of behaviors, from monk-like celibacy to Copenhagen’s sex clubs to monogamous/polygamous marriage to secret transvestism, as well as transsexuality, open marriage liaisons and gay marriage. Human behavior is unquestionably the most diverse of any creature on earth.

But this is a reality that myth wants to deny, control, and constrain. A logical brain that deals with a thousands of ‘real’ decisions every week (driving, shopping, Twittering) suddenly becomes blind and irrational when sexuality or same-gender love and marriage come into view.

And people make big business off of this irrationality: churches evoke millions of dollars to defeat the ‘gay agenda’; bogus reparative ‘therapists’ charge big fees to ‘cure’ vulnerable homosexuals; marketing companies hire out their services to defeat gay marriage legislation and newspapers increase sales by covering ‘scandalous’ LGBT activity.

How deep these irrational myths go is seen daily in the reports from large and small countries, wealthy or poor: Americans defeat proposed gay marriage legislation; Ugandan and Rwandan politicians want to throw gay advocates in jail; Singapore will not consider disturbing the hetero-ist status quo. Jamaicans would be happy to kill you.
(Photo left: murdered African lesbian activist Fanny Ann Eddy)

The ‘real’ world of humans is surprisingly shaped by myths we do not see or recognize but urge us to act in inhumane ways.

PS: Another gay/human rights activist, Walter Trochez of Honduras, (photo right) was murdered on December 13, 2009. The madness continues. See story here.

Gaining Rights vs Being Privileged--Gays and Obama

Westhampton, MA - October 11, 2009
Richard Ammon - GlobalGayz.com

Last night President Obama gave a speech at a Human Rights Campaign fund-raising dinner in DC. This is remarkable in itself since no other president has ever given specific attention to a gay organization in a public forum. The press were there and captured his speech on paper and tape and video and YouTube. (Also see the controversial graffiti incident that followed.)

His attendance at this event, the night before a mass LGBT-rights rally in the city on National Coming Out Day, was partly motivated by the disgruntled noise LGBT leaders have made over the past few months in response to DADT, DOMA and gay marriage issues. His speech was an effort to assuage the aggravation felt in our community, by some, that he was not moving fast enough to rid these discriminatory statutes from our country.

The arguments against these laws are clearly justified—but the timing is not. The ‘homosexual agenda’ for equality has taken giant steps in the past five years, especially given how recently we banged down the doors at Stonewall and given how far backward we were treated as citizens (and still are in many places).

Hardly a month goes by that I don’t read of an important two-step forward and one backward across the fifty states. From the egregious Prop 8 in CA last November to the startling marriage decision in Iowa and quiet passage in New Hampshire a few months ago. We are making remarkable progress with our campaigns, money and high-school coming out (and middle-school as well. (See this NYT Cover story) Last week the House approved the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd hate crimes bill (attached to an obscenely bloated defense bill). The bill is also named for James Byrd Jr., a black man killed in a race-based attack in Texas the same year.

But for some that’s not enough. We seem to want it all, now: Obama should have eliminated DADT by now and pushed to change DOMA to include gay marriage!

To my mind this smacks of privilege and entitlement. We have collected some genuine goodies and we want more, now, and this president should let us move to the head of the line to get them.

This does not sit well with my queer mind.

The other night I went to a benefit dinner for a local marine sergeant here in rural Massachusetts who came home from Afghanistan with one leg, a shattered spine, fractured arm and a thousand bits of shrapnel under his skin. If you ask me who I want to see taken care of first, the sergeant or a lesbian spouse, the choice is hardly that. I want our young people taken out of harm’s way before I want to get married. I don’t want any more coffins hidden from TV cameras to help sanitize these horrid wars that Bush-Cheney started for delusional reasons.

I am willing to let these broken and dead soldiers take the front of the line before I can say ‘I Do’ or before queers get to serve openly in the military - much as they deserve to. (How ironic that we want to destroy DADT that sends people out of the service and out of harm’s way and instead insist that gay personnel be allowed to go into harm’s way with the possibility of coming home in a body bag! Is that some form of queer patriotic suicide?)

Not to mention the worst economic cramps for decades. I’d rather have my unemployed neighbor father-of-three get a job than me get married this year.

Have we lost our sense of place and proportion? Gay marriage will happen. DADT will fall. Lobbying works—for better or worse. Military leaders are being leaned on to re-evaluate the policy. They are softening. The public and even straight recruits are changing their minds.

We need to see the change that’s happening before our eyes, in the courts, in state legislatures and stop vilifying a president who is clearly on our side of the issues and wants to see justice and equality in the military and among partnerships.

Get in line for change. Send messages to the Pentagon and Congress. Makes phone calls. Support HRC - or not. Lean forward but don’t jump the queue.

Also see: DOMA Repeal Gains 100th Sponsor