Sometimes, don’t you wonder, why there seems to be so much pain in the world?
Watching a cartoon, some Grecian story… a classical adapted to today’s digital world. A nephew of mine loves them. Comes and sits and watches them. I also like them. Yeah, used to like them and still do. When I am not doing something else.
I am in a funny mood. Thoughtful. Pensive. My lover wonders whether there is something wrong. Not really. Just a calm, pensive, reflectiveness on life and what it is.
Life is not like a cartoon. Those made for kid stories, sanitized and made to be special. For a child’s consumption. Life is hard and tough. Life is a desert with sand dunes, a rocky desert with no water sometimes, a jungle green with wild animals lurking in the depths of the forest.
Sometimes life is lonely. Sometimes life is too crowded. Sometimes, we are consumed in the things which control us. The making of money. The search for status. Or simple survival.
Who’s to determine what is important to life? Who determines what is, and what is not?
Early in the morning, on Sanyu FM, there was a discussion on the Bahati Bill. These were Christians talking about the bill as it is. They were actually positive. In that they don’t want the bill to pass. For the simple reason that, according to them, it would be putting a ‘moral’ question in the hands of the government. This was God’s sphere of influence, they seemed to say. And, the government had nothing to do with it.
Of course I was with them. I mean, I am with anyone but the one who believes that this bill should be passed. The bill legislates death and life imprisonment for me. Me and my lover. I don’t have a qualm, nor am I able to weigh how bad the support is.
For me, it is no longer an abstraction. It is a reality.
The bill will most likely become law. And, I will have to walk the tightrope that this country of mine will have become for me.
I was struck by how ignorant about me the rest of the population is. The people, the presenters on Ssanyu FM were Christians. They were discussing things from a compassionate point of view. Was death okay for these people? Was life imprisonment ok? What about those who have tried to change and failed? What about those who recruit? What about…?
There were lots of questions.
Yet ignorance, blithely aired out was inescapable. One of the presenters said, very, very sincerely that, ‘Anal sex is so un-natural that, those who recruit for homosexuals have to give them lubricant for anal sex.’
Yes, I may not have got the words right. But that is the gist of the remark.
Yet, these were well meaning Christians, discussing how terrible this bill is.
I was struck by how ignorant the average Ugandan is. At the moment, I have to appeal to his religious sensibilities, to shame him into thinking of the bill as too harsh. Too un-Christian. I cannot claim my right to life. I cannot even dare come out and say that here I am. I must stay hidden, and discuss this bill without showing how passionate I am about it. That it means life and death to me.
I cannot teach fellow Ugandans about what I am. They have taken the darkest of rumours about what I am, and they believe that that is what I am. And, if I try to enlighten them, I am ‘promoting homosexuality’.
And, if the bill becomes law, that will be the hardest problem. Any objective discussion of my sexuality will be ‘promoting’ homosexuality. It will be banned. It will no longer be legal. Imagine, giving out lubricant for sex is ‘promoting homosexuality’!
I must admit that Ugandans are weird in their illogic of homosexuality. I mean, take this fact. They said that homosexuality was very, very common in prison. That the prisoners were using ‘Blue Band’ a very popular brand of margarine, for lubrication. So, the prison authorities banned the Blue Band. No person would visit and bring the poor prisoners any blue band. And, the authorities sat back, satisfied that they have solved the problem. They had made homosexual sex in prison harder.
I shook my head when I heard that. The logic seems so flawed that it is impossible for me to start explaining where it starts going wrong.
By the way, there has been another flare up of the fact that homosexual sex occurs a lot in prison.
(I wonder, Ssempa and co accuse us of ‘recruitment’. That is the catch phrase which justifies the genocidal law to become. To make sure us ‘recruiters’ can no longer recruit. But, what of prison? I mean, with the rampart reports of homosexual sex in prison, isn’t it right to assume that ‘recruiters’ are working overtime in the prison? Isnt it right to assume that every ex-prisoner is a homosexual, having been ‘recruited’ in Uganda
Anyway, my MP, Beti Kamya, called upon Honourable Bahati to look into homosexuality in prison. I heard her. She said it.
And, what she said fell flat. Absolutely. None of the people who heard her understood the irony of what she said. They just agreed. Hon. Bahati should research and ban the homosexuality in prison.
I shake my head.
Ugandans are not stupid. No, I know we are not.
But we are acting stupid. Ignorant. And, we will not be educated. Not at all. At least, not with regards to homosexuality. Gayism, as some people call it in Ugandanese.
the deities help gay Ugandans
gug
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