First and foremost, I am not homophobic. I do not hate gay men. In fact, I do not have a singular reason to hate a guy because of his sexuality. (I could detest him because of the way he goes about his sexuality but not to hate him for his choice of sexuality) And, again, where I come from, we don’t do hate.
Let’s see what Hermann Hesse the great German writer and philosopher has to say about hatred. “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us”
You’ve heard that yea? Whatever we hate in a person is in us. Anyways, scratch that!
The first time I heard of the word ‘homosexuality’ was sometime in 2004. I was done with primary school and secondary school was before me. I hadn’t gained admission yet into a school. One evening, a humid evening, my mother called me into her room. Getting there, I saw her with a bible, an eyeglasses sitting on her nose. I can’t remember what scripture was that she read but I remember she didn’t keep the bible there as a costume.
She began in a hushed tone and then loud whispers. She reminded me of how I was no more a child and how the devil was after every child of God. Next, she began to warn me about boys. I waited for her to explain herself well. I mean; few years back in primary school, it was a strict warning about girls. Few years later, it’s about boys now. I thought that maybe in the next three years she would warn me about women or grand fathers. Who knows? I felt there were different people to avoid as you strike different ages.
What was I saying? Her warnings yes!
She warned me never to let any boy touch me too much or dare to touch my penis. She said God would do many things to me if I let these happen. Who wants God to do him/her many things?
Fast-forward to 2005. Young me got an admission into DMGS Onitsha. First day in school, apprehension was my surname; I treaded carefully, anyone who was laughing and hit me or touch me in that frenzy automatically became a suspect, anyone who would persuade me to take something from him had just announced himself as a homosexual to me, anyone who invited me to his hostel just made me understand that the devil could wear uniforms and could be your classmate.
My mother’s gospel kept ringing inside my head and I was careful to a fault. Age came closer, maturity knocked, I opened and learnt that I could hug and play with boys and not indulge in vexing God.
Now, I have gotten to the level in my life where I have friends who are gay. I have gotten to that level where I could sleep in the same room with a gay guy. These are one of those things that come with maturity, social intelligence and grace.
Why am I saying all these? Because I have taken my time from 2005 till today to study the gay community and this piece is what I have come up with. I think I know about being gay more than many gay people. But that’s not today’s topic.
From my vantage point, I have come up with two major problems that bemoans me. Problems I have with them. They are viz:
- internal homophobia
- indecision
INTERNAL HOMOPHOBIA: The main problem black Americans had some time in history was ‘Negro Negrophobia’. As silly and as unserious as it sounds, it is the hating of one’s self. It is the inability to accept and love you as a black. Negro negrophobia is a most absurd disease. Can you imagine some black running to escape his blackness?
To escape from himself?
His obsession with fleeing from himself proves he is unfit to live. His running to embrace his white enemy proves he is a suicide. The entire affair shows he is mad. Some call it alienation, a mental disorder. Yet some black sirens now sing in praise of alienation, beckoning all blacks to acquire the disease
What were and is the symptom of Negro negrophobia? The most popular of all is bleaching.
Letting go of your reality simply to have a short-lived romance with a life that isn’t yours. This is exactly what killed Michael Jackson. He is such a valuable negative example. He did what many others wished they could afford at the time, he got what people yearned for. People who were bereft of common sense. He joined the bandwagon of crazy blacks who wanted to be white. Not only did he join the bandwagon. He fought his way to the top and became a monumental embarrassment to the concept of black preservation and emancipation.
Now, that was the black world. This is about the homosexual world. The world of men who claim to be born to love men yet they hate themselves and remain bound. They try to run out of their reality, they wish they weren’t gay only because convention says a capital “NO” where they think and feel a “YES” should be.
Sounds like a joke isn’t it? If you feel it is right, come out; shout it on the roof tops. When the homophobics attack you, as a homophile, let your shout be louder. The shouts of Martin Luther king and every other black that was oppressed at the time was louder than that of the whites. If they didn’t accept themselves to be a black or if they had negrophobia, Serena Williams would obviously not be what she is today. They felt it was right to be black, they spoke it, they acted it, they lived it, and it came to pass.
I have seen and known gays who hate themselves and try to run from being gay. Running away from being gay is like chasing your shadow. It is as futile as making faces at a blind man. I look at them as unserious and mad. What the gays are suffering now is not up to half of what the blacks suffered in the 1960s. I mean; those black brethren were massacred for only their color. There were places where they shouldn’t try to go for being black. They couldn’t sit down in public places.
Ordinary sitting down?
So, when gay people say they are suffering, I look at them and shake my head!
Many of them in a quest to run away from being gays go and become pastors. They use it as a smoke screen and a façade. Speaking long grammars about heaven and many other things simply because they want to escape that reality of theirs.
ANTIDOTE: In the words of a popular gay man Glenn Greenwald “there are different ways that kids who are gays take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say ‘you know what? You’re imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but don’t accept them. I am going to instead turn the light on you and see what your flaws are and impose the same judgmental standards on you’
INDECISION
The second problem is indecision. Hear Maimonides: “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision”
Indecision remains the back bone of confusion. Confusion comes from ones inability to tell what it him/her wants is. Then, you find yourself between a rock and a hard choice.
Many gay men do not know what they want. They feel they want a guy as a sexual partner but they lose focus when a friend invites them for his wedding. They know they want a wife but they also want a guy. I think this was why Joshua in the bible asked “choose you this day whom you will serve”. When things like this happen, I wonder if to them, women are the real course and men are the borrowed courses.
I know a client who due to pressure from family decided to get himself a wife. This person in question is somebody who I know that he has absolutely nothing for women. Now, he woke up one morning in a quest to please family, advertised his indecision by marrying someone’s daughter. Ok, the marriage has packed up now. Talking with her few weeks back, she said for almost two and a half years her husband didn’t lay hands on her. She was dying slowly in the marriage and because she was a pastor’s wife, she couldn’t talk for the sake of the ‘ministry’.
Now, as a gay, women are your rivals. They are your unconscious enemy. You just don’t like them. Does this mean that they don’t have female friends? NO!
Espousing a woman could be synonymous to what the Trojans did in history. Carrying the Greek wooden horse into their own citadel whereby hastening their peoples destruction. Bringing a woman into your house as a gay man is you being indecisive, it is you being many things (which having sense is obviously not one of them), it is you telling people who know that you’re gay that homosexuality is a charade and a joke. Little wonder they are laughed at.
ANTIDOTE: since you have chosen to be gay, my brother, stick to that. If it gratifies your vanity and every other thing, just be like that. The day you become tired, be straight. The thing is; a road cannot be straight and crooked at the same time. So, if you’re not straight, you’re gay. Don’t come and be saying that the both interest you. When your family forces you to marry, tell them you are GAY! I mean; tell them you don’t have a thing for women. Don’t marry a girl only to start cheating on her with men. Marry a man! That is you being decisive.
To wrap everything up, I would like to state the obvious. The sexuality someone wants to practice is nobody’s business. It’s more like in a world where people dream to be doctors, lawyers and engineers. Yet, someone like Zuckerberg decided to drop out… you dig?
Because all your village people are straight doesn’t mean that every village must be straight. When people tell me they are gay, I appreciate their boldness and tell them that I am straight. It is my life and it is their life. Different strokes for different folks.
Finally, I remember somebody asking me if I was gay few weeks ago. I didn’t find it offensive or insulting. I laughed and quoted exactly what Rienhard Bonkee said when he was asked about the same sex marriage. I quote; “I don’t know because I have never actually given it a thought. But, one thing I know is that when I get to a gas station, they put the nozzle into the tank hole and not into the exhaust hole”.
(THE MAD MAN WRITES) 