Knowledge: Tool and Weapon against Homophobia

Ignorance.

Real knowledge about sex and sexuality is in itself a powerful force against homophobia. When ignorance is promoted over real knowledge, then the myths and fear and harm that we as gay human beings suffer from society continues.

Unfortunately, whereas before we fought to learn-, to get an education worth getting, nowadays there is an interesting trend.
The offer of an alternative 'education' that goes counter to knowledge as we know it. Check this.

Dozens of schools in the UK follow the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, a Christian fundamentalist course of learning that grew up in Texas, before expanding to other countries. ..... 27 UK schools....
Pupils in ACE schools do not study towards GCSEs or A-Levels, but to a International Christian Certificate of Education.

....., homosexuality is a choice, evolution is a lie, abortion is wrong, and AIDS can be avoided by following the Bible 

 It is indeed terrible.

They even offer clandestine exorcisms for gay students.

I am privileged to have gotten a good education. My dad used to tell me how he used to walk miles to get to school, daily. He was a great student, by all accounts. And, his education didnt stop then. He taught it to us...., The worst misdemeanor any of us could ever do was to reject an education.

Yet, to be taught ignorance in a world where knowledge is so abundant! Or to be denied knowledge.....!

Its always done, by well meaning parents, in the name of religion. In the name of religion indeed.

In the name of god. Its not a 'fundamentalist Christian phenomenon'. I watched this Al Jazeera documentary on female madrassas and was almost in tears. Girls, children, a nation's young, in this day and age of the motor car, rocket engines, jets and mobile phones firmly getting an education that denies them all other knowledge.

Is a tear jerker.

No more than the Chiboko girls, kidnapped out of school to go become sex slaves and chattel of a group that fights against 'Western education', curiously waving around western made guns.

Knowledge. True knowledge. How precious, precious it is.

More so for us queer, gay Africans. To combat ignorance. To combat the teaching of hate, and the unthinking rejection of us by other Africans. To make our lives tolerable.

Way to go Africa. But, we shall get there.

gug