RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Nigeria's anti-gay law is a crime against reason

Dear Samuel,

I see that you are named after a judge and prophet of Israel and indeed share some of his ancient moral zeal.

Once again my dear Oga, many, many thanks for your preliminary brief thoughts, so rapidly followed by your succinct, illuminating epistle to We Sweden. Those two editions have been duly bookmarked, to be re-read even more carefully with more attention to some of the books and articles that you have recommended/ referenced.  In this day and age when some people write books which nobody bothers to read, or unread books that are awarded prizes even before they have been two weeks in circulation, our letters of respect and appreciation should be giving you some well-earned satisfaction.

 We notice some serious consequences brewing in the horizon.

Concerning absolute notions , the " Yours to command " of scripture , well it's said that even the devil  (Satan) has a couple of PhDs in the Biblical Hebrew and can quote  scriptures , can even quote what you call the "Old" Testament  , theTanakh, and appear to the unsuspecting in a" holier-than thou"  disguise or as an incarnation of  Baruch Spinoza or some other so called prophets.  I don't know whether or not the devil knows what you call the "New Testament" but I do know that according to the so called "Gospels",  when Jesus was tempted by the devil, the devil quoted suggestively  from the Hebrew Scriptures to tempt  him and Jesus refuted and countered  the devil's temptations  by quoting from the authoritative Hebrew Scriptures himself , I guess because the so called "New" Testament had not yet been composed and even Paul had not yet started slaughtering the Jews  who were calling themselves  Christians...

Reading some of the responses to the anti-gay Law in Nigeria, you would think that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had just signed into law a decree that requests all practicing homosexuals to report themselves at the nearest police station. I will return to all that shortly – and to  that "Analysis: Legal review of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act 2014"after consulting with my daughter (a  gold Medallist in Law (London) ) -  many years ago when I discussed same sex affairs with her I got masses of insight into what's happening right under my nose in Europe because she also specialised in The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms  ( see Article 12 for our purposes) but post-enlightenment Europe as we know is not Nigeria and I still wonder what would be the fate of same-sex couples from the West who may want to honeymoon in Nigeria – or even take up some official assignments there  - would they  - no hanky-panky  - have to live in separate bedrooms for example?

You have given me so much homework to do, and till I can  digest all that you've written  and maybe  even respond to some of what you've said  (some time after you are much less busy with the spring semester course syllabus) I should like to take up on these two opening points that you made:

1. Concerning the moral consequences of economic growth it would appear that on the moral level, with economic growth the greedy get even greedier ("may you never be satisfied" is the worst curse) and the  helpless poor (rat race) will turn even more to scapegoating anything or anyone that they can turn their anger on,  that's why the pastors are chasing more witches, are busy casting out demons and exorcising evil spirits "in Jesus name" etc But even  Nigerian impunity is said to be ever on the rise it's not as bad as it was a decade ago, or is it?

    

   Another consequence of economic growth is sexual liberty : For example when the woman is economically independent, she is much more her own boss in all matters  can even sing It's my house ( I saw Diana riding the elephant in India in 1979) More seriously, what do the Christian sections of  Nigeria say about applying the teachings of the Social Gospel? One seldom hears any mention of Black Liberation Theology for example - only more and more of Full Businessman Gospel choir blowing their trumpets for more prosperity for themselves...

    

2. I am incensed by what you say about the Muhammadu Buhari-Tunde Idiagbon administration, that "Unfortunately, the Buhari-Idiagbon regime did not carry out their reform as they should"- and then you dare to want to compare my man Muhammadu Buhariwith Mahathir Muhamad of Malaysia: "But later I will compare their neoliberal economic reforms with that of Prime Minister Mahathir Muhamad of Malaysia. The Malaysian Prime Minister introduced many reforms but let me give two examples that come across as authoritarian but they made a huge difference. First, he insisted that every civil servant, including permanent secretaries have to clock in and out. They have their time cards. He practiced it himself as Prime Minister. People did not like it but what can they do if the Prime Minister himself did that. The idea was to hold workers accountable."

    

   Buhari-& Idiagbon only had December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985 – during which time they were able to promulgate the WAR AGAINST INDISCIPLINE  which if they had been  given the time to continue  would have fulfilled all that you praise Prime Minister Mahathir Muhamad of Malaysia for. Had they not at every twist and turn been sabotaged and besieged by the vengeful corrupt elite that they had overthrown, they would have done wonders for Nigeria. Nigeria needs people  with the moral fibre of Muhammadu Buhari.

Here's some debating Same Sex Marriage with Professor Michael Sandel and his students

We are now leaving you with some peace and quiet - much needed for the enlightenment of your other students.

Sincerely,

We Sweden

To: We Sweden:



Below are my responses to some of the specific and key questions you raised in your message. I hope they help to clarify my thoughts and my concern for Nigeria as a country and Africa as continent. My apology in advance for some errors. I need to start working on my spring semester course syllabus. Here are the specific responses:
 
1. How Ordinary Nigerians Treat Others:The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth: - One of the issues that you raised is about how ordinary Nigerians treat each other. Benjamin Friedman (Harvard University Professor) in his book titled: "The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth"argues that economic growth is essential to 'greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness and dedication to democracy.' During times of expansion, he writes, nations tend to liberalize - increasing rights, reducing restrictions, expanding benefits for the needy. During times of stagnation, they veer toward authoritarianism. Economic growth not only raises living standards and makes liberal social policies possible, it causes people to be optimistic about the future, which improves human happiness. 'It is simply not true that moral considerations argue wholly against economic growth,' Friedman contends. Instead, moral considerations argue that large-scale growth must continue at least for several generations, both in the West and the developing world" (New York Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/books/review/27easterbrook.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print).  Without trying to be too economistic, it is fair to say that part of the problem in Nigeria in both the northern part of the country and the other parts is that economic growth without development or unfair distribution of social and economic opportunities has made people to be meaner to each other. The people in developed countries are not inherently more moral than people in developing countries. But there is a kind of environment that with a relatively fair distribution of opportunities, people feel relatively more secure and more willing to tolerate others i.e., live and let live. The environment created results in a mindset that is not they that is oriented towards survival of the fittest. In Nigeria, at least if people are not doing well economically, they feel they are religiously pious, which makes religion an effective coping mechanism for poverty. Karl Marx may not be right on everything he said on religion but he is right in a lot of ways. Even Karl Barth the conservative Christian theologian of the 20^th century wrote a preface to "The Essence of Christianity" (1861) by Ludwig Feuerbach. This is the book that primarily informed Marx's analysis of religion. The book is essentially about the projection theory of religion and Barth agreed that Feuerbach's book as a description of what was then happening in Europe was accurate. But he thought there are other ways that religion can be different. That is where he made his contribution.

 

2. Lessons from Muhammadu Buhari & Tunde Idiagbon: I agree with you that the duo's authoritarian regime could have made a lot of difference to Nigeria. China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan etc. all laid the foundation of their development under authoritarian regimes. Singapore is still treated like an authoritarian regime. And even in the United States, the country did not become a true liberal democracy until the 1960s; neither was it a free capitalist society as they claimed it was until the 1960s. Prior to the signing of the Civil Rights Act, there was no guaranteed of human rights or civil liberties for Blacks which is a key element of liberal democracy. Economically, the value of the labor of Blacks was not determined by the forces of demand and supply only. Their race mattered. Unfortunately, the Buhari-Idiagbon regime did not carry out their reform as they should. I was an undergraduate then. But later I will compare their neoliberal economic reforms with that of Prime Minister Mahathir Muhamad of Malaysia. The Malaysian Prime Minister introduced many reforms but let me give two examples that come across as authoritarian but they made a huge difference. First, he insisted that every civil servant, including permanent secretaries have to clock in and out. They have their time cards. He practiced it himself as Prime Minister. People did not like it but what can they do if the Prime Minister himself did that. The idea was to hold workers accountable.

 

Second, he insisted that every civil servant, including permanent secretaries must have a name tag at work. People did not like the idea but the Prime Minister, himself, wore a name tag any time he was on duty. The idea was that anyone interacting with government official should know the person's name for the sake of accountability. It is not enough to introduce reforms, but the reform needs to exemplify the reforms, be persistent and show that he or she believes the reforms. Furthermore, the reform must show results that even those who oppose it cannot deny the improvement they have brought about. The reforms improved the quality of service provided by Malaysian civil servants, as everyone was held accountable. The government could monitor people's commitment to work so that they do not just get paid without doing much. Even the World Bank commended this and many other reforms in Malaysia that enabled the country's government and people in achieving their goals. What this means is improving institutional capacity.

 

In Nigeria, the elites thought by creating more states and local government they would improve development but they increased corruption and overhead cost while ignoring the question of institutional capacity to deliver or executive services. Still, Buhari will always be remembered for this quote:

"Fellow Nigerians, finally we have dutifully intervened to save this nation from imminent collapse. We therefore expect all Nigerians, including those who participated directly or indirectly in bringing the nation into present predicaments, to cooperate with us. This generation of Nigerians and indeed future generations have no other country than Nigeria. We shall remain here and salvage it together. May God be with us all. Good Morning" (Inaugural Broadcast of January 1, 1984 in "The Inaugural Address and Ascension Speeches Of Nigerian Elected and Non-Elected Presidents and Prime Ministers, 1960-2010 by Solomon Williams Obotetukudo).

Nigeria can learn from the experiences of other developing countries, but most of  our universities have no courses or departments that focus on either Asian or Latin American Studies.  While it is true that many Nigerians have immigrated, few Nigerians have totally severed relations with the country.  This is true with people from many other African countries. For the majority of people in Africa, they will remain not on in the continent but in their country of birth. So the best way forward is to find a way to make it a better place that can effectively serve everyone's need.  I hope and pray that we will all remain committed to Africa even if for different reasons.

 
3. Religion that Promotes Spiritual Arrogance Rather than Humility and Care for the "Other.":  One of my major concerns with religion in Nigeria is not religion per se, but a kind of religion that promotes spiritual arrogance, lack of humility, and utmost disregard for the other. Religion is not the only institution that can promote that but when religion is involved, it becomes a crisis situation, because there is difference between individual corruption and "institutional corruption." Institutional corruption has more devastating effect because it can force individuals who do not want to be corrupt to be corrupt because there is no way out. When religious people are inspired by their faith to be corrupt, they operate as if they have downloaded the mindset of God in their flash drive and they can put it in the computer at any time and tell you what God is exactly thinking every day and every minute. In theory they preach about God and want to honor him, but in practice, they elevated themselves to God's position because they are not willing to concede that there is something mysterious about him that they cannot decode. Or it seems like they have a special and exclusive telephone number that they alone can use to call God and get the necessary information about human existence. Unfortunately they use the information to their advantage causing information asymmetry and therefore a source of power and privilege. But I do not accept that. They got it freely and it should be free to everyone. For those who are familiar with the teaching of Jesus, he said he did not come to be served but to serve others.

 

How can you build a religion around a person who is the son of God and who owns everything but decided to come to the world not in a pharaoh's or Babylonian palace but a manger, and then now you use material accumulation as an indication of his ethical teaching? At that current level, Nigerians can build as many churches and mosques as they want but the empirical evidence suggests that unless they change the way the practice religion, we will have a situation where religion will continue to expand and penetrate the culture and consciousness of Nigerian without impact on public morality. When people tell me that Christianity will change America, I ask them to explain what prevented it from changing America all these years since the time of the Puritans. If cannot answer that question, we are just making a claim without being serious. What will have to change in order for Christianity to behave different or have different impact? The 11^th hour on Sunday is still the most segregate hour in America. So in the same way, in Nigeria, if anyone believes that religion can change things for the better in a fundamental way, we have to ask, what prevented it from changing the country for the better 50 years after independence. What can we say will change in the hearts and minds in Nigerians to warrant this expectation? See this documentary here that illustrate my point about the way religion is experiencing some degree of institutional corruption in Nigeria: http://saharareporters.com/video/nigerias-millionaire-preachers-seyi-rhodes-channel-4 I believe there are Muslims and Christians who are trying their best to live out their lives as exemplary believers but their voices are a distant echo.

 
4. Cultural Objections to the LGBT Ignoring Culture While Emphasizing Abrahamic Religions:  You raised a very good point about this. Even BBC polls indicate that Nigeria is one of the most religious societies in the world. The reason why I said the signatories to the article expressing objection to the anti-homosexuality law should take religion seriously is because religion is closer to and more on the surface of the consciousness of the ordinary Nigerian than the principle of human rights. Even though the Nigerian constitution recognizes human rights, most of our elites do not operate our public institutions with that sense of restrain, respect and awareness. For instance, if you meet ordinary citizens walking on the street of Abuja and ask them what are their fundamental human rights guaranteed them by the Nigerian constitution, few will give you a good answer and even those that give you a good answer will confess that in practice, it does not mean much. Thus, we have to be strategic on the kind of rhetoric we use that will give us traction in such arguments. Nigerians know how take easy cover from this kind of debate and argument. They will even say human rights law in this case is imperialism. Let me give an example to illustrate my argument.

 

In Argentina, during the military dictatorship many people disappeared because of extra-judicial killing. Women wanted to protest against that, but they decided to protest against the killings not on human rights grounds even though they recognize and value it. They knew that the government did not care about human rights law and it was not something that is on the surface in the consciousness of ordinary citizens then. But the status of a mother was something deeply respected culturally, and is the on the surface of people's consciousness.  Consequently, they decided to protest against the military dictatorship on grounds that they were mothers, not on human rights grounds. They became Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and they gained serious traction because the military could not ignore them. I believe in championing women's rights but how you go about it and what it means will be different depending on social context. See is true with the way modern capitalism is institutionalized in different countries. (See story of Argentinian Mothers of Plaza de Mayo: http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/contemporary-07.html). 

 

So that is why the religious argument is very important. It is important also because for most Nigerians, that is the moral and philosophical foundation of the law. And so we need to go right into their moral high ground and turf, in order to create some space for our arguments. They cannot claim that the moral foundation of the law is in religion and then ignore other injunctions from that same religion that applies to them because the moral and philosophical foundations are the same. If we can produce a documentary showing the inherent contradiction and hypocrisy, we will force them to reexamine themselves assuming they have humility and willingness to be reflexive.

 

As for the cultural argument, it is equally important but even there, I feel sad as a sociologist. I feel sad because that kind of cultural argument show the shallowness of some of our leaders in their thinking. Let me give an example to illustrate my argument. Some years ago, an educational trip was organized by my University to South Africa and I was involved. We were in the country for two weeks. So one day in Johannesburg we were taken to a place where we heard serious presentations about rape, sexual child abuse, and pornography in South Africa. Then after that we were taken to a theater for an entertainment presentation titled "Africa Umoja: The Spirit of Togetherness" at Nelson Mandela Theater. I was seated in the front seat very close to the stage. And behold when the program started, a large number of women came almost naked on stage. Their chest was bare and literally only their private parts were covered even though they worse some little things here and there on their bodies, but that did not cover anything. The idea was that it was part of African culture, i.e., Zulu culture. I told my colleagues that that was just "free pay per view." When people said it was part of African culture, I disagreed with that simplistic reasoning. I said, let the Zulu list 100 elements of their cultural heritage and explain which ones were still being practiced and which ones were discarded and jettisoned; furthermore they should explain why other aspects of the culture were discarded but this particular one had to be kept. Why is it so necessary for the survival of Zulu or South African culture in the 21^st century? There was no answer. I am pretty confident that if you investigate this closely, you will find out that some more useful aspect or element of Zulu culture was discarded while this particular of exposing women's body was not. This was just like strip club, only that it was culturally approved and labeled as an expression of South African culture. But culture, its production, its distribution, its meaning and consumption are all contested issues in sociology and anthropology. Saying something is cultural on strict scholarly analysis is not a secure and innocent defense for an argument, at least among some social scientists.

 

The women were just used to travel around the world by the sponsor of the business, to show naked African women, when in the U.S., when Janet Jackson exposed her chest during super bowl entertainment it became a big issue i.e., wardrobe malfunction. The point is not that Americans are more morally and ethically concerned, but at least there is some modicum of concern about what should be officially condoned. My suspicion is that when the young women get old, the owner of the business will replace them with young ones because what made the entertainment attractive for the most part was the body of the women, and not the deeper South African culture that was purportedly portrayed. To show you how serious it was, one white female professor in our trip told me that she can only watch that video with her husband but not with the children.  So Africans cannot ignore being part of a global society, whether we like it or not. If in other parts of the world, women's body is treated with some respect but we allow African women to be cheap in exposing themselves to get some dollars in the name of culture, is that really a genuine effort to promote African culture?

 

Moreover, to study culture is to study power relations and how it is reproduced. It is not necessarily democratic or equal, and that is why we have popular culture and elite culture. To me, the weakness of the culture argument is that it is an indirect purported claim and expression that the whole evolution of the wisdom of Nigerian culture at this particular historical moment conveys this message to ourselves and the world: it is culturally important to express moral outrage at homosexuality but to culturally condone other forms of oppression in the culture that are more decisively destructive of the lives of the citizens. Does that impress you as such a way to view African or Nigerian culture as honorable? I like the cultural argument but my great disappointment is its limited scope and depth of reflection. Does it not put us in Hegel's dismissive position on African culture and people as lacking historical consciousness i.e., not knowing where we are coming from or going? I do not agree with that, but the best way we can elevate our continent is to show through what we do, that we are as capable as any group of human beings. The weakness of the cultural argument to me is not that African culture does not approve homosexuality, but that this kind of shallow reasoning expresses the best wisdom in African culture, which is a focus on a very limited area of human struggle, an area that is low in priority to the many other immediate existential and survival challenges that our citizens face.

 

Are we saying that the best wisdom in contemporary African culture condones the kind of injustice we see, or having no concern on other forms of sexual misbehavior that applies to us heterosexuals. I do not like it when some Africans, in order to end a conversation just use cultural defense and make culture to be like a black box that cannot be opened. Well, in cultural studies, there is a whole tradition of thorough interrogation of culture. In the West there is a whole "culture industry" according Herbert Marcuse which he analyzes with suspicion. So let the person with the cultural argument against LGBT takes a stand. We will interrogate him or her whether this is the best or the most reasoned expression of the wisdom of Nigerian culture at this historical moment. It will be so embarrassing if this was the case because it shows the lack of willingness for people to be honest with themselves and interrogate their own moral reasoning and behavior rather than just do that for others.

 
5. On the Phenomenal and Exponential Increase of Homo-Sexuality: Here I find an implicit bias in your trend of thinking. Please is there any evil thing in Nigeria that has not exponentially increased in the past fifty years? The quality of education has declined; access to and the quality of public services have worsened and have been commercialized leaving the poor suffering; death through road accidents has increased; white collar crime has increased; the dubious use of religion has increased; political violence and chicanery has increased; prostitution has increased; fornication and adultery have increased, etc. So why will you single out homosexuality for concern? Just as homosexuality has exponentially increased, so also, all those other things have exponentially increased. Take for instance the corrupt practice of fake medicine. How many people in Nigeria have died because of that? As I have said earlier, it is not that there was a time when Nigerians or any society for that matter had no corruption or moral problems, but in Nigeria, this has increased while religion practice and institutions have also increased and this indicates there is a problem somewhere. Durkheim will describe the situation as one of anomie. My feeling is that you are concerned about the exponential increase of homosexuality because of some moral outrage that it is wrong and a special kind of sin before God and "man." What I am trying to do is to examine the philosophical foundation of that moral outrage and concern. And when I did that, I found out that if you are to be honest with yourself or those Nigerians who are concerned about homosexuality are to be honest with themselves, the same philosophical foundation that justifies their moral outrage against homosexuality demands that they should demonstrate moral outrage on other things that are evil in Nigeria; actually of more serious evil, such as greed, avarice, and pride – all deadly sins. Most Nigerian elites and religious leaders are engaged in what might be called the idolatry of pride. Pride is indeed one of the seven deadly sins. Such people see themselves as the center of the universe; they want everything to revolve around them.  This is why they are more interested in interrogating other people's behavior but not their own. They are also willing to destroy the whole country if they do not get what they want.

 

6. On the Commercialization of Sex, Including Gay Sex: I am surprised that you raised this issue. In my school, there are many simplistically religious people who express outrage against this. I commend them for their moral outrage but I encourage them to understand the structure, evolution and functioning of their society. In a neoliberal globalized economy, your human rights and dignity while important, matter less, because there is a gradation of citizenship and human rights based on the following variables. You are relevant or your humanity matters in a neoliberal globalized economy based on the following: a) human capital: If you do not have any human capital that is of value in the neoliberal marketplace so that someone will hire you and pay you well, then you are irrelevant to a high degree. Human capital will make someone hire you even when they do not like you because of your race or national origin.  This is consistent with the argument made by Voltaire about how the market brings people together and they forget about their religious differences and only reserve the term "infidel" for those who file for bankruptcy; b) Purchasing Power or Consumer Status:  If you are not relevant because of your human capital, you can earn relevance through your purchasing power or being a consumer with effective purchasing power. In our world today, effective consumer status can give a person certain rights and privileges that regular citizenship would not. If you have money to spend and you are a customer or consumer with effective purchasing power, you are relevant to people who know that their business cannot prosper without your patronage. So even if they do not like your racial identity, gender or ethnic identity, their material interests softens their prejudiced attitude towards you. They become gentle and sober; c) Entrepreneurship and Producer of Valued Commodity: You can also become relevant if you are an entrepreneur that plays a central role in the functioning of the economic system, such as producing a commodity whose consumption is central to the operation of our market economy and society e.g., oil. So the day you do not produce that "essential commodity" as they call it in Nigeria, people know that you exist and they take you seriously.

 

If you do not have a positive standing in any of these three status-roles in a neoliberal economy, you are part of what is called"surplus people."Toillustrate the gravity of this statement, this means that, in effect, one hundred thousands of such surplus people might die before 6 a.m. the next morning and it will not affect the value of shares in New York Stock Market because they are irrelevant to the system. It happened after the Haitian earthquake.  Describing such people, Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University argues that statistically speaking it is better to be a cow in Europe than to be a kind of human being in the developing world. He said so because: a) the EU under common agricultural policy subsidizes each cow at more than $2 per day. There are many people in the developing world, including Nigeria that do not earn two dollars per day; b) the cow in the EU has more relevance and status in the neoliberal global economy because it produces something of economic value: milk, hides/ skin, cheese, and beef. 

 

And here is my main point: from this perspective, commercial sex is not surprising at all even if it is morally objectionable. I say so because although we live in a globalized economy with free markets, even if you have a product or labor to sell, there has to be a willing buyer and willing seller. If no one wants what you have, then you are irrelevant or you have to make yourself relevant by creating one. The best export of many developing countries unfortunately is human body, with cargo (labor), or sex. For many people, women in particular, but also men, offering themselves for commercial sex becomes very relevant and consistent with neoliberal globalization because that is the only product that they in their substantive situation have and they are willing sellers and there are willing buyers. If you watch this documentary: http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/sex-slaves-video_84cd4f96b.html, which is produced by Frontline, an arm of the U.S. Public Broadcasting Corporation, you will see how many women from former Soviet Republic end up being sold or voluntarily offer themselves to become more or less sex slaves in Turkey. One of the women was rescued and brought back home but it is sad when she said, she would have to return to Turkey because there was nothing she could do in her hometown to make money or earn a living respectfully. There is a great lesson for Nigeria or African countries here. So if we will set outside our religious morality for a minute, and examine how the global capitalist economy operates, especially the logic on which it operates, which many evangelicals Christians in the U.S. admire and see as God-ordained, we will arrive at the conclusion that in a neoliberal capitalist economy, citizenship and the rights that accompany it come in gradation to human beings.

 

There are many U.S. citizens who do not know where to sleep, have nothing to eat etc. even though they live in the freest country in the world, because under neoliberalism, the welfare state is dismantled more or less, and your ability to enjoy citizenship rights depend on your status and role in the marketplace rather than being a citizen. Even if you are not a citizen in the U.S. but if you have a good standing in the marketplace, you will do well, while the citizen is suffering. If you follow my argument and analysis, there is no reason why some men will not offer themselves as prostitutes. But if they do, why express special concern about them and not female prostitution which involves more human beings with equal dignity and has been in existence for a long time? This kind of reasoning can easily be seen as morally duplicitous. Are women not human? Are the women Nigerians too?  Is it not an abuse of their bodies to be in a situation where the only way they can survive is through prostitution? How do we get around that or resolve that? Well, focus on programs that will enable people to be employed, train them to acquire useful human capital, take care of macro-economic policies, provide infrastructure to lower the cost of entrepreneurship, and create a prosperous and peaceful social and political environment. If you do that, there may be still people who will engage in prostitution but probably not many to be concerned about. This is why I find the anti-homosexuality law a distraction and an attempt to obfuscate Nigeria's true problems. In my school I have arrived at the conclusion that many religious people just want to regurgitate their moral arguments without understanding the social realities of their societies. We have to do both.

 

7. On The Spread of HIV AIDS: HIV /AIDS have spread in Africa but the greatest mode of transmission is through heterosexual sex. And if you want to understand the problem well, you need to go beyond the narrow epidemiological approach and the use of narrow religious /moralistic approach. One book that you will find useful in understanding the spread of the disease using an interdisciplinary approach is: "AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization" by Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside." Along the same line, this book is very relevant in explaining the mode of transmission in Africa: "The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa"Helen Epstein. Epstein documents how heterosexual people in Africa may be participating in a sexual network of 20 to 30 people or more without knowing. A heterosexual man may have two female sexual partners on culturally understood temporary basis (i.e., sugar daddy or whatever); the two women have two other sexual partners each, and those four sexual partners in turn have two other sexual partners each. Everyone assumes he or she is just dealing with one person at the moment but they are involved in a network of sharing their bodies indirectly. Epstein drew a diagram representing this in the book, showing why the transmission is faster in Africa because once the disease gets into the network through one person, within a year, it will easily be transmitted to others depending on the frequency of mating. It is not every mating that leads to the transmission. Heterosexual transmission has been more detrimental to the spread of HIV/ AIDS than homosexual transmission, if you study it carefully.  At one point, one third of the national assembly legislators died because of HIV / AIDs (see story: http://www.amazon.com/Lifecycles-story-Malawi-Doug-Karr/dp/B000QRIK3G/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1390312182&sr=1-3-fkmr0&keywords=lifecyle+documentary+malawi)

 

Moreover, the issue is not the behavior but examining the social, political, and economic situations that predispose someone to be more likely to be involved in one behavior or the other. This is central to understanding the situation. Societies that are economically, politically and socially unstable tend to promote a more conducive environment for the spread of the disease. Migrant labor is an important factor, and the disadvantaged status of women also contributes to that risk. Senegal is a Muslim country but compared to other countries in Africa, they have been more successful in controlling the spread of the disease. See the documentary: "The Best of MacNeil / Lehrer: AIDS IN AFRICA." In Senegal, the religious leaders are realistic about prostitution and they cooperated with the government to ensure that prostitutes go for compulsory monthly checkup. They have to have an identity card that shows their medical record. In this way, the government can track any shift in the spread of the disease. If the government took the easy way of passing a law against prostitution only ignoring other things, the sex business will go underground and the disease will quietly spread. If you compare Senegal with Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Botswana, you will see how social stability, state capacity and other economic and political factors play key role in controlling the spread of the disease.

 

One factor that does not work is simple moralistic pontification like what is happening in Nigeria. Until recently, the Catholic Church was officially against condoms even there is scientific evidence that it reduces the risk of infection drastically. Similarly, many of the Pentecostal churches in Africa do not support the use of condoms and believe that you can cure HIV/AIDS through spiritual healing. And you might want to consider the role of cultural arguments here because African culture according to studies is such that men do not want to use condoms. Should we allow that to continue for cultural reasons? Some prostitutes are attacked when they insist on the client using condoms.

 

And to get an idea of how American religious groups impose their religious morality on African countries check the following documentary: The Age of AIDShttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/ ; Museveni's government appropriately saw the danger and threat of HIV / AIDS very early and he appropriately embarked on an open and vigorous campaign against it under the theme "ABC" i.e., abstain, be faithful, and if you cannot, use "condoms." The U.S. government under the influence of churches gave Uganda money but as a condition insisted that the campaign should just focus on AB (i.e., abstain and be faithful). But soon the rate of infection started going up because not everyone can abstain or be faithful. This is well established in the study of human behavior. Did you read about the story of a bishop in Nigeria who was set up, when a woman came for counseling and they were left alone. The woman dress off and the bishop could not control himself. He was confronted after the event and confessed that he lost self-control. What if he had acquired the virus, and then later he would have AIDS. The debate on condoms in Africa is similar to the debate that was generated by C. Everrett Koop, one time U.S. Surgeon General who got into trouble because he promoted the use of condoms as a public healthcare strategy knowing fully that based on social science research, no matter what you do, not everyone will abstain and be faithful and so such small group of infectors can lead to the spread of the disease. Koop was an evangelical but very much committed to the value of empirical data and research. In this case, he is unlike many African evangelicals or Pentecostals who tend to be anti-intellectual. See the debate about C. Everrett Koop here: http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/QQ/p-nid/87

 

8. Victorian Sexual Values and Mores: During the colonial period, Victorian sexual values of modesty would have restrained Europeans in promoting homosexuality.  Note that even western societies are just trying to cope with this issue in the 21^st century and even then there are oppositions given the legal cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Check the history. In some of the literature, some Europeans thought Africans had too much sex and criticize some Africans for that. I think what you are probably trying to get at is the promotion of the values of the "liberal democratic state and society." There are many experts who take this value seriously. I do not have time to explain what the vision of a liberal democratic society is, suffice to say that it has deep moral and ethical implications and go beyond mere republicanism and elections. If someone is truly gay and you deny him or her that identity, it can affect their sense of identity and wholesomeness.

 

If you remember the strong defense of liberty by John Stuart Mill in his "On Liberty"you get a sense of what a liberal society is aiming at. As one scholar said, a night guard ought not to be punished because he is drunk, unless if he got drunk on his job to the point where he or she cannot perform his or her role. This means one cannot be punished for a behavior that is within the law and does not harm someone, but simply because it offends someone's moral sensibility. Liberal democratic society requires tolerance. There will be a lot of good and bad things that happen but this is the price that western society chose to pay, which Africans are wrestling with. From a liberal perspective, it will not be fair to deny a homosexual the freedom to be who they are. Of course that does not give the person the right to proposition you.  

 

Now, you may disagree with that but I do not believe that properly understood, the agenda of the liberal state is to promote any particular religious values as such. John Stuart Mill believes in the clash of ideas and the freedom to express one's self so that through that we can decide what the best is. I am not gay but I will not tolerate a gay person being treated sub-humanly because of his or her sexual orientation. Simply because a person is homosexual does not mean they are not human anymore. Even prisoners have certain rights. When AIDs started in America, many church and religious schools refused to accommodate children with HIV/AIDS, but the public schools had to do that.  Here is a short documentary film illustrating how American Christian Conservatives are promoting The Gospel of Intolerance in Africa (Uganda)with a very imperialistic language and tendency but sugar-coated in Christian message: (see the documentary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/opinion/gospel-of-intolerance.html?emc=eta1).

 

9. On the Question of Conversion and Recruitment to the Cause of Homosexuality: Prostitution has been in existence in Africa for a long time, but why do you not see it as a situation where people are recruited or converted into it? I assume you are using these words in religious terms. But in sociological terms, recruitment and conversion from the point of view of sociology of crime and deviance is through differential opportunity (a theory) and differential association (also a theory). To become even a good criminal, there has to be the right opportunity for someone to acquire the skills, the motivation and to carry out one's mission. This opportunity is not available everywhere, and to even become a good criminal is not an easy task. Differential association theory says, to even be a good criminal,  you have to associate with the right people else it will not work, and so the question is where do you get the right people? What this means now is that you have to examine the social structure and process of your society in terms of the unequal opportunities in provides and the kinds of associations it provides. Poverty, hopelessness and desperation can recruit people to prostitution whether male or female. Remember Zimbardo's social experiment too, which illustrates that human behavior and choices is a function of their social context and the parameters within which they are constrained to behave (see Zimbardo's experiment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=760lwYmpXbc ). It is amazing that people's moral landscape easily changes when you change their social context or parameters within which they have to make decisions.  But it seems you are just focusing on the moral decision in isolation from what social science research shows are important in shaping moral decisions.

 

Do you remember that Abraham, the person God chose in the Old Testament according to the Bible blatantly lied on several occasions in order to save his life? I do not say this out of disrespect, but this is a fact. One of those instances that Abraham blatantly lied as recorded in the Bible was when he told the Egyptians (I think) that Sarah was his sister not wife. He was afraid that if he said she was his wife and given how attractive she was, they would kill him in order to possess her. At that historical juncture and moment, where was God's moral guidance in Abraham, the patriarch when he made that decision to tell a lie? The issue is the context. Many social science ideas can be illustrated in the Bible. Abraham was struggling for survival and he threw away the kind of careful moral judgment that you are trying to elevate, which I understand. The difference between us is that I understand there is morality but as a social scientist, I believe that context matters in moral decision making for humans because they are humans.  Do you remember when Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to participate in a conspiracy to kill Hitler (i.e., murder) because he thought it was a lesser evil that Nazi killing of innocent people? Bonhoeffer was later executed but he proudly went to the gallows and today we remember him for his willing not to compromise. And in his work, he addressed the question of Christian living their lives as if God has abandoned them as he abandoned Christ on the cross (sorry for those that are not Christians). Bonhoeffer knows what many Nigerian Christians ignore, and that is that moral decisions are made in social contexts, contexts that may not be one's making. When you change people's context, amazingly their moral choices change. There are many experiments in the lab that support this line of reasoning.

 

 From the sociological point of view, if you want to stop the recruitment and conversion, you have to examine what is wrong with the social structure and processes of society. But recruitment into prostitution is different from the substantive question of whether someone is a homosexual or not. To say that someone can just sinfully decide to become homosexual suggests that all of us have the potential of waking up that way since we all are susceptible to commit sin, if one was to think of this narrowly as a Christian. But I find this way of thinking simplistic. If you feel that you can just easily cure people out of homosexuality, read the following story about American Evangelicals closing an organization that for so many years committed itself to curing people from homosexuality but failed. They later apologized. See the story: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/june-web-only/exodus-international-alan-chambers-apologize-for-exgay-past.html.

 

One problem in all this discussion is that sometimes Africans want to claim equality with all human kind, but on other occasions, they quickly retreat to strict cultural arguments or "castles" by saying that they are unique and different. The reasoning behind this position needs to be worked out better instead of just making it a whimsical choice when one is looking for a cover. But if someone treats another African differently and justifies it on cultural arguments, the reaction is anger. Do African Christians honestly feel that American Evangelicals were not sincere in trying to get rid of homosexuality in the country? They should read the history very carefully. You may disagree with the evangelicals of the Right or even some on the Left, but you cannot deny that in many respects they are men and women of conviction. If they fail, why would African Christians succeed? The only reason why they would succeed is because many Christians do not want to think about their society, culture and history deeply. They just believe they can wish things away. As many on this forum would know, Peter Akinola ,the Anglican with highest ranking in Nigeria is the leader of GAFCON , the group that is opposed to the attempt to liberalize attitudes towards homosexuality in the Anglican Church, (see story: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/print.php?storyid=8980).

 

I watched the BBC documentary where he was the main character. We watched it with my children. There was a point where he was asked that given the limited resources of the church in Africa and given that they have devoted all or most of their resources to fight against the debate on liberalizing homosexuality, what are they going to do about poverty which is also an issue of Biblical concern given that the Bible teaches more about injustice than homosexuality? Akinola responded by saying: "poverty is always going to be with us." My children did not know him but when they heard it they said this guy is mean. When I use the documentary in class I always feel embarrassed because it shows the lack of depth in theological thinking and reflection in many African churches and among many African religious leaders. There is no reason why this should be the case, but I feel they just rely on Westerners to produce the theology for them, while Africans remain raw material for the theology, a kind of international dependency and division of labor in theological thinking. I do not say this out of arrogance or disrespect but with deep sense of humility, but believing that Africans can deeply think on their own and deserve to be recognized and affirmed for that. One would expect that at his high ranking position, he must have a deep and very thoughtful reflection on poverty. Poverty from a sociological point of view is something serious that can destroy a human being such that anyone who dismisses it the way he did demonstrates the distorted and disoriented nature of the thinking of many Nigerian religious leaders.

 

The problem with many Nigerian universities and churches (sometimes) is they do not study other societies to learn lessons from their experiences. Learning from someone does not mean one has to replicate verbatim what happened in the other contexts. What about the Temperance movement or law? Did it work? It actually created underground crime. Many people in Nigeria are living in insecurity because of crime and kidnapping but the government is channeling the limited law enforcing resources it has to arresting homosexuals as was the case in Bauchi. Is this not a kind of confusion in priorities? It looks like the church leaders never thought of crime, kidnapping and the insecurity they create as an issue of moral and ethical concern. In some churches in the North, there are security check points, and some people just worship in open space so as to be sure that they can see any danger coming.

 

10. On the Conferment of Requisite Dignity and Protection to Nigerian Gays from Homophia: The answer to the issue you raised here is more about having Africans or Nigerian people ask themselves: what does it mean to be  human and what do they owe another person for simply being human? When I teach some of my courses, I ask my students to bring the answer to the following two questions on the first day of classes: what does it mean to be human and what do you owe another person for knowing that the person is human? In this case, I am not interested in the other person's ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender etc. It is similar to late philosopher John Rawls' philosophical experiment on a just society, where he asks what kind of society would you like to be in, if you are going to be born into one but you do not know what kind of family or social location you are going to be born into? Will you set the entitlements for human beings in such society to the barest minimum standard or relatively high since you do not know in what social context you are going to be born into? Well, the great majority of people will set the minimum standard high because they are not sure where they will fall in the unfortunate category.

 

I will guarantee you that if you ask many pastors in Nigeria or religious leaders (both Muslim and Christina) what it means to be human and what they owe another person for being human, you will end up realizing that the liberal democratic state in spite of its limitation or problems offers you more guarantee as a human being than some of these religious vision of society in Nigeria. I am not saying that the liberal democratic state is perfect by any means. I critiqued neoliberal globalization above. But with all the problems of neoliberal globalization, it is far more transparent than the vision of theocracy that the men of God want to create where they become power / spiritual brokers between human beings and God, and they charge high service fees and cost, broadly speaking.

 

For many in Islam and Christianity, God's protection to you is only available if you belong to their religious group or denomination. If you are not, you are like a second class human being. Like one Rabbi said to an evangelical in reaction to evangelical support for the state of Israel, evangelicals just want to love them now, but would be happy to see them go to hell if the Jews as believers of Judaism refused to become Christians. In effect, the evangelicals are loving the Jews who refused to convert to death (see the documentary reference here: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/profile.html.  And many religious people are not ashamed to see themselves as the owners of the world.

 

Remember that this kind of exclusion is not even of gay people, but normal human beings whose only fault is they do not believe in what the people in a particular Christian or Islamic sect believe. I have studied this carefully and reflected on my own upbringing and saw all this. When I was growing up, anyone outside my denomination was seen as not a true Christian. As for Catholics, do not even talk about them. But later I will realize that the Catholic Church has a more systematic and long term reflection on social justice. Most evangelicals depend on a fire service approach on the question of social justice i.e., when Katrina type disaster happens, they rush there to show Christ's love, but when things are normal, the poor are on their own, or they are assisted to remain alive but addressing structural causes of the problems are considered socialist.  To see this naïve evangelical line of reasoning, see this documentary: Is God Green?http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/watch.html 

 

In some teachings of Islam, Christians or Jews are treated as second class citizens i.e., the status of men and women of the book. The goal is not one of envisioning of equal standing as citizens. Similarly, in Christianity, the vision of some Christians Pentecostals is to create a society where the criterion for citizenship is Christian righteousness. In Nigeria, they will say voting for Jesus. I can imagine that a Muslim hearing that will be scared jut as Christians are scared exclusive Islamic language that does not recognize one's right to equal citizenship especially in Northern Nigeria. Even at humanistic level, one feels the need to care for another human being because if we do not care for each other, we will all end up dead, as Thomas Hobbes envisioned in the state of nature (see his The Leviathan), where life is nasty, brutish and short. If you do not have that Christian righteousness in the society envisioned by some Pentecostals, you are out. People can be discriminated because of their religion or denomination.

 

So the issue here for me is that we have never deeply reflected on the question of what it means to be human and what we owe each other as human beings.  It is a simple but very crucial question. If you answer this question to yourself, you can determine your level of moral commitment to human dignity, including that of homosexuals. Are you willing to deny them any rights as citizens simply because of their sexual orientation? If so, what if someone deny you and me our rights and dignity because we are black and we do not fit what it really means to be human because as some say we have low IQ? The oppression of the Jews and the enslavement of Blacks in the United States and the Americas was not because they were homosexuals (even though Hitler killed homosexuals too). They were oppressed because someone saw something in the persons that had nothing to do with their sexual orientation but their persons. In terms of sexual orientation, man of the slave masters did not have problems sleeping with their female slaves and the male slaves in spite of their oppression, were virile enough to impregnate women and have children. So do you think that the sexual orientation of a person is the only thing that another human being see as wrong in someone and therefore oppressed the person? I have reflected on this issue very much and one day when I was asked to make a formal presentation after winning an award in my school, I titled my presentation: "On the Fragile Dignity of Humanity and the Disappearance of the Human." 

 

My preceding analysis illustrates that without tolerance, our dignity is fragile because anyone who is stronger can pick anything about you that they hate and use it to exclude you. And the nature of the debate leads me to conclude that we have forgotten about the human being, the human has disappeared, we are just arguing and ignoring the substantive human condition. What kind of religion is this? Think about that. What if someone denies women some rights because there is something inherent about them that he feels makes them to deserve less. These issues are interconnected because ultimately it depends on the person making the decision, his or her worldview and prejudices. What makes this often dangerous is if the person has power and they decide to use their power to translate their narrowly defined morality to favor themselves while writing off others from the human family. I think often religious people who behave this way have not taken time to reflect deeply about the archeology of oppression and dehumanization. You do not have to be homosexual before you can be oppressed. God forbid but if you find yourself in the wrong place and at the wrong time, your being straight and being follower of God, Christ, Allah or Muhammad, or being someone who honors African culture means NOTHING, because the oppressor will take care of you based on his or her values or worldview.

 

People who are straight on cultural and religious grounds want to exclude homosexuals. What if the homosexuals are many, have power and they also decide to legislate their interests? I can imagine a civil war if the forces are balanced? If both sides are passionate, even the weak side can resort to insurgency or guerrilla warfare to make life difficult for the other side as the ANC  did against Afrikaners to some extent. Is that the kind of society we want to live in? Remember that the Blacks in South Africa were oppressed not because they were few in number or that they had no solid moral arguments; rather it was inequality in power and the Whites used their power to legislate their prejudices against Blacks into law and that had disastrous consequences on the Black majority. Thus at one point in South Africa, excluding Blacks was natural, but now that power relations has changed, it looks unnatural. To talk about protection and lack of protection while ignoring the question of power relations and the necessity for deep reflection that requires people to understand their own humanity in a deeper way is to miss the point in my view. My humanity is not based simply on my heterosexuality. It is ultimately based on it being recognized and respected by others irrespective of my power and human fallibility. So if the others have power and prejudices against me, and they think they can ignore my humanity and get away with it, unless they have moral and ethical restrain they can do that.

 

Note that Robert Novak defines a human being in functional terms i.e., having the capacity to be creative or make rational decisions. Does that mean that if you get someone who does not measure up your standard of rationality and creativity he or she is loses his or her humanity? Novak is a Catholic priest but very conservative. Being homosexual in my view should not affect someone's humanity and dignity, even if one finds it objectionable. There are many people behaving in an objectionable way to my moral and ethical commitment in the U.S. or the world, but I will never deny them the status of being human. If we do not draw a line, it will be a slippery slope. The reason why we do not prosecute fornicators and adulterers is not because everyone thinks it is right. No, on the contrary this is not the case. But we feel there are other ways to deal with it. Here we are implying that heterosexual fornication and adultery is mild aberration and therefore can be tolerated by God and angels in heaven, but homosexuality is more biological and such persons are incorrigible. Actually the level of greed, pride and arrogance in Nigeria among the elites can equality be seen as a psychopathic problem leading to social pathology. One can as well say that some of them need some psychiatry treatment to learn that there is no limit to acquisition and there is dignity in serving human welfare instead of avarice.

 

11. Confusion About Legislation -- The Difference Between Legalization and Decriminalization: I think your last question conflates these two ideas. Homosexuality has always been in existence in Nigeria and many other societies. The reason why you did not hear about it is simply because in all societies, cultural mores suppress or regulate the expression and practice of sexual desire or intimacy, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Many forms of western dressing by women in the West is considered not modest in many churches in some parts of Nigeria, although things are changing. When I was growing up, you could not sit in the same place with your wife in church. Women have their section and so do men. Today it is different because the cultural mores have been relaxed. In America, you can caress your wife while the pastor is preaching. So as societies become freer, there will be less regulation and that will allow more creativity but also more possibility of things that violate our moral sensibilities. In the West, they have chosen that this is a good price to pay for creativity, freedom, flourishing or as von Hayek says, pursuing one's utopia. In Africa, we like consuming western things but we do not want to face the reality in terms what is the cultural context that produced the things we want to enjoy.

 

When I was in Malaysia, officials of the Islamic party complained about the introduction of computers in mosques to teach computer literacy because of pornography. The Prime Minister asked them, what made them to go to that website? What kind of society allows for the kind of creativity that produces the products and ideas that we enjoy or we want to import to our countries? Why don't those leaders in Abuja ask themselves how the SUVs they drive are produced? What about all these church leaders that use sophisticated technology in their churches, or use sophisticated drugs and private jets? Do they assume that all the people in America, Europe, or Asia who produced the products they consume are persons who are Christians (who believe in the death and resurrection of Christ), or believe in the Prophet Muhammad or the Qur'an?  Does Bishop Oyedepo in Nigeria know the values and lifestyle of the kind of people who produced his private jet?  Don't some people in the West boycott some products because of their moral and ethical reservation about how the products were produced? If Nigerians are really religious, they should scrutinize the beliefs, lifestyles and moral choices of those who produced the products they import and use as status symbol. I do not think with all their religious and moral audacity, they can afford that. That is why I said that many religious people fail to appreciate the moral crisis set in motion by modernity, especially advanced modernity. Actually many of the people who produce the products that are imported in Nigeria care less about the religion of those Nigerians but the Nigerians themselves are satisfied with the inferior position of just consuming the products of modernity but not asking the kind of society or social arrangements that produced them so that they too can produce those same products and be independent. But given the world we live in, will there be uniquely Christian or Islamic science or technology for cell phones, private jets, SUVs. The best they can expect is some superficial aspect of the finishing but the basic science for the production has  no respect for whether your morality about homosexuality, whether Jesus died and resurrected or whether the Qur'an was dictated or not.

 

This willingness of the African to simply consume imported products was a concern expressed by Frantz Fanon in the chapter titled "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness"in his book the Wretched of the Earth. He was concerned that the post-colonial bourgeoisie was more concerned about enjoying western products but never bothering to think about what it takes to create or produce those products. The science of producing the products care less about the sexual moral preferences of the consumers, and the producers will not tolerate the consumers in Nigeria trying to impose their moral values on them (the producers). The religious person in Nigeria (and many African countries) hardly has the moral courage to investigate the moral and ethical conditions surrounding the products he or she imports from the West, to see whether their production conform to his or her ideal religious beliefs.  It will be too expensive for them to get such products produced assuming they are serious enough about enforcing their religious beliefs in the market and Public Square, and so what do they do? The sell out their conscience while targeting a small group of powerless people to prove their spiritual piety.

 

But as Socrates asked Euthyphro when he (Euthyphro) said piety means doing what the gods say you should do: are things pious simply because the gods say they are pious, or are they pious because there is something inherent in the act or thing that makes it pious independent of what the gods say? Moreover, how do we resolve the situation when the gods disagree among themselves, in our case different interpretations of the ideal society even within the same religion? Of course Euthyphro realized that actually he did not know what piety was but out of pride he thought he knew it. The lesson: we need humility, and maybe we have tolerate the fact that the real world is far more complex that we cannot systematize it in one religious tradition, consequently we need tolerance even when we disagree with each other. No religion can evangelize and convert all other people. Get use to that. The literature on religious conversion is clear on this.

 

Thank you very much. These are my reflections.  

Samuel

 

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Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 17:38:08 -0800
From: cornelius...@gmail.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Nigeria's anti-gay law is a crime against reason

Professor Samuel Zalanga,
 Many, many thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. As the Gospel according to Mathew says, "Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house". I wonder what the big time Nigerian pastors, Muslim prayer leaders and Nigerian culture leaders are saying about this legislation.
With some major theological reservations, I have no choice but to agree with at least 80% of what you just said and the Nigerian situation is symptomatic of Africa and the Caribbean generally, although we must be careful about generalising about Africa: male sex tourism to Morocco for example, is well known.
The seriousness and concern shown in your response touched me, touched a lot of other people too, I'm sure.  We have yet to read a more serious and sincere stocktaking of where we are in our priorities when it comes to improving our educational institutions, fighting poverty, economic and social injustice, hypocrisy, corruption and immorality, and now there are those select LGBT areas where the pious sinners in government are now out, busily legislating on behalf of the church, but still being very extra careful not to legislate against themselves of course. Clearly what's needed is some Muhammadu Buhari- Tunde Idiagbon W.A.I.  - War against indiscipline, including fiscal indiscipline. That's why some people are still asking where's the $50 billion oil money that's gone missing.
As the bard puts it, "You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules." In their own defence, the criminals also usually quote Jesus, saying, "Let him that is without sin, and throw the first stone!" And thus, even you, Samuel Zalanga are neutralised and stopped in your tracks. The other self-defence quotation, as if they are quoting from a law book when in fact they're only quoting from Paul's letter to the Romans, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God!" And since all means ALL, all includes the police constable, the magistrate, and the attorney-general, the director of the anti-corruption commission, the comptroller of customs, Umaru Dikko  and even the chief justice himself.
 Nigeria is still a secular country although In Sharia country such as in Zamfara State however, adultery and fornication are under the jurisdiction of the Sharia jurisprudence are they not?  You seem to be overemphasising the Abrahamic religious moralism over and above the cultural objections to the blooming of LGBT culture - but  that is to be expected from a committed Christian as yourself...
Concerning your argument about the insincerity of those who want to scapegoat the LGBT when they themselves are guilty of other kinds of sex crimes, I am told by people who are in various countries in Africa on a regular basis, that the phenomenon known as homosexuality is exponentially on the increase, and  that what is so upsetting for the naked eye to see – so the homophobic reporters tell me, is the commercialisation of sex, including homosexual and lesbian sex – and of course the regular business in the world's oldest profession , all of which goes hand in hand ( hand in glove, and sometimes without a raincoat/ condom)  - arm in arm with tourism. At one time leading to the rapid spread of HIV.
 In the bad old days of Apartheid South Africa, people hopped over to Botswana for the weekend to enjoy some cross-border inter-racial sex......
Once upon a time,  I knew  ( in the ordinary sense of the word) a few homosexuals in our Freetown society (I guess they thought it was a part of elite Creole culture) one of our French teachers  from Belgium was rumoured to be one and my other French Mr. White  from Canada,  no rumours about him at all ; the librarian an Englishman was also rumoured to be one – and so one suspects that  even if homosexuality was born in Africa it has been rapidly promoted under the benign influence of foreign  experts working or living in Africa. (Just before Sierra Leone's independence the mayor of Freetown, Lucien Genet, was a Frenchman (no rumours about him – I would have heard.)
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