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
s*x, 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 homos*xual 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 homos*xuality 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
homos*xuality. 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 homos*xual 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 homos*xuality 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 s*xual consent).
There has also been some nationalist posturing among supporters of the
law. Homos*xuality 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 s*x 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-s*x 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.
