A beautiful image of yet another happy African couple, this time courtesy of Towleroad:
Tshepo Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithole
South Africa is the only African country which has enshrined the rights of all, including homosexual persons, into law and where gay marriage is legal.
More from Towleroad:
Lawrence Kaala and Muzamil Serwadda
Ugandans, Muzamil Serwadda and Lawrence Kaala, are now married. They got married last Saturday in a beautiful ceremony that had me reaching for the tissues just on seeing the pictures of the blushing couple. It’s not every day that I allow myself to get all soapy or jealous but on this occasion I simply let myself go, choking on tears of joy for the happy couple.
But I digress. This is not meant to be about me.
The ins and outs of their marriage are now being thrashed out in the press, against a backdrop of threats of deportation back to Uganda for Kaala. Some mischievous writers have even suggested that the wedding was all a sham, a ploy to circumvent the long arm of Swedish immigration which was attempting to deport Kaala.
Aah!
Sweden mustn’t pander to such silliness. For these two men to have made the commitment they have made, in such a blaze of publicity, can only have been prompted by a depth of feeling Sweden must not interfere with.
The thought that the lovers could be separated and one of them sent to live in America would be callous. But to Uganda? Serwadda and Kaala have crossed the Rubicon and I am afraid that is no longer an option.
Why?
Idle social network Ugandans wouldn’t be any kinder
I am trying to imagine the circus that would ensue at Entebbe Airport the moment it became known that one of the men who married another man in Sweden had landed.
Ayayaya!
Ugandans are not a violent people, but they can be a gossipy, tactless, insensitive, prying lot and I can’t for the life of me think of where Kaala could now live or walk in peace. He would likely have a line of hecklers waiting for him outside his gate (if he has one) . I can see young children throwing at him embarrassing, prurient, questions they’ve heard Martin Ssempa ask in church or on his radio talk show. I can hear the jeers from idle, unemployed, bystanders as he waits for his groceries to be bagged at the local market. I can hear the sniggering as he waits in line at the upscale Standard Chartered Bank on Speke Road.
It wouldn’t necessarily be physical violence but it would be death by a thousand cuts – far more psychologically and emotionally debilitating. A blow to the head or a knife to the jugular would be preferable.
No, Kaala can now have no life to speak of in Uganda and Sweden cannot deport him, whatever their assessment about the two men’s wedding is. Frankly, it beggars belief that anyone could think Serwadda and Kaala would go through the process they did merely to create headlines in Uganda and elsewhere.
Sweden is a big enough country to have a place for both Serwadda and Kaala. They should be left in peace to work on their marriage, love and happiness – as married Swedish citizens.
What God has united, Sweden cannot, must not, rent asunder.
Now, where is my box of tissues? I have just been sent a picture of Lawrence and Muzamil sharing a kiss after they said ‘I do.’
No, it didn’t happen in Uganda, but in Sweden. Check out the report in the Gay Star News.
Exchanging rings: Muzamil and Kaala
I must admit that the groom and groom look rather dashing.
And, no, I am not revealing a confidence. The reports have already made their way around the world so I am only jumping on the band wagon of the happy couple.
Who can do anything other than to wish them all the best for the future?
Jimmie Walker (then & now)
I must admit I thought that JJ (Jimmie Walker) of Good Times fame was dead, so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that he is still around – 30 years on. But, goodness gracious, he hasn’t aged well at all, has he?
He has some pretty strong opinions, too, especially now that he is also promoting his “memoir.’
Money quote:
Huh? What on earth is Walker talking about?
Jimmie Walker would apparently walk over coals to keep the company of Anne Coulter and Florida’s Allen West.
Aah, I hear you say.
Precisely.
Oh well … one hopes Walker makes enough money from the sales of his memoir to buy himself a nice dictionary. Or a chemical peel.
Another minister who made national headlines on the subject of gays and religion is the Bishop Carlton Pearson. Rev. Pearson was ousted from his mega-church in Tulsa, Oklahoma for teaching that Muslims, Buddhists, and homosexuals go to heaven. The larger faith community has however rallied behind Pearson and many are now embracing his teaching of inclusion.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has endorsed gay marriage, shutting yet another gate that Mitt Romney might have thought was still open to him in whatever quest he may have had for the African-American vote.
The endorsement likely has very little to do with the NAACP believing fervently that homosexual black men and women should marry each other. After all, the NAACP has never given Bayard Rustin, the civil rights activist, due credit for his selfless contribution (as a gay man) alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, something that should be easier to do if their thinking on homosexuality has really evolved.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) – His pivotal contribution to the civil rights movements was downplayed for decades because he was homosexual
It must be all about sending a message to Mitt Romney that there will be no black votes for him come November 2012. In the election that brought Barack Obama to power, blacks voted over 90% for him. That percentage should rise to near 100% this time round, what with all the terrible things the Republicans have done to push blacks and other minorities deeper into the Democratic camp.
Take their rejection of the Affordable Care Act or their tacit approval of Tea Party politics which everyone can see are racist. And of course it’s pretty apparent that the Republicans have vowed to do what it takes, including bringing America to its economic knees, in order to remove the black man in charge from power. Obama must not get a second term because … he is black.
The response to Obama’s gay marriage “evolution” from usually introverted Africa has been muted because, of course, Obama is one of us and we can’t be seen to be attacking him incessantly without looking like traitors. So, the pulpits and political rostrums have been largely silent following Obama’s revelation that his thoughts on gay marriage have evolved.
On a continent where mere talk of homosexuality is still heretic, Obama’s pronouncement should have caused fits of apoplexy in the churches, mosques and national parliaments. The lack of response can thus be seen as Africa finally retreating, at least where public, hysterical, repostes to “our Obama” are concerned. The priests and politicians might not like what he is saying but he is our black man, a son of the Kenyan soil who, thus, has more justification for calling himself African-American than the sons of slaves who were transported to America 300 years ago. We can’t continue nit-picking everything he says that we don’t like – that would be treachery.
In the same vein, the NAACP have closed ranks despite the fact they don’t have a strong history of being gay rights advocates, let alone supporters of gay marriage.
The most important achievement Obama has had on this subject, perhaps, is to make the gay discussion mainstream in Africa and all over the world. Whereas only 10 years it was impossible to hold a rational discussion about homosexuality, today the discussion is as heated as it is happening in bars, on public airwaves, around water coolers, in village meetings and in churches. The context is usually along the lines of “Obama said …” Or why is Obama …?”
From African governments pretending that they didn’t have any gay citizens, to being ignored and/or relegated to the fringes, Obama’s administration has ensure that gays are talked about in African corridors of power up to and including what he might do to the US Aid they rely on if they don’t begin to show that they see the gay question from his point of view.
The subject of homosexuality has lost almost all its mysticism even in the smallest sub-Saharan villages in the 42 months Obama has been in power in the United States. Talk about a seminal leader, setting the agenda.
As an internet friend likes to say: We are moving.
If you thought the black churches, with their congregations were going to run away from Obama following his “evolution” on gay marriage, think again. They have listened to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fallen into line.
Money quote:
“as civil rights leaders we cannot fight to gain rights for some and not for all.” Reverend Al Sharpton, president of National Action Network; Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of NAACP; Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation; and the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
That’s almost a verbatim quote of the slain civil rights leader’s clarion call of half a century earlier: “I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others …”
Amen!
Also check out this touching “mind evolution” by an erstwhile [black] opponent of homosexuality that would rate respectably next to Saul’s conversion on the Road to Damascus.
I am afraid if Mitt Romney expected to see the flood gates open and black voters rush to his camp on account of Barack Obama’s support of gay marriage, he is going to be badly disappointed.
The black vote’s not for turning.
Related articles
Ugandans are discussing homosexuality, again, this time following Barack Obama’s admission hat his thoughts on gay marriage have evolved to a point where he feels that gays should marry if they so wish.
It’s mostly a grown-up discussion if you ask me but you can take a look for yourself here. As a friend from another site likes to say, ‘we are moving.’
Money quote from a straight Ugandan man:
Once upon a time, there were three men. They all lived in slightly different eras and all three achieved notable success in their chosen fields of specialization.
One of the men was/is white, the other Latino and the third one is African-American (black) with mixed parentage.
Of the three men, Elton Joh had the earliest secret which bothered him so much that he decided to do something about banishing it; on February 14 1984, he married a woman called Renate Blauel. To everyone’s consternation, the marriage lasted four years, following which Elton John revealed the “secret” that had been gnawing at him for years: he was happy to be a gay man. Those who could bother rolled their eyes and went back to living their lives. They had, after all, known that Elton John was gay well before he wed that … woman … and their only surprise was that the marriage had lasted as long as it did.
Sold thei world stale news: Ricky Martin, Elton John, Barack Obama
Almost 20 years later, a phenom by the name of Ricky Martin graced stages with waist and butt wiggles that had nubile girls swooning in the aisles when they were not wading in their juices on account of his … well … phenomenal pelvic thrusts. The stadium cleaners shrugged their shoulders after Martin’s shows and gamely mopped up the fans’ hormonal fluids. Martin made a lot of money being a sex symbol even though he had just two songs in his repertoire.
Ricky Martin, like Elton John had a secret. It ate away at him, zapped his creative artistry until one day in March 2010 he decided to give up the ghost. He confirmed that he was, had always been gay. A few eyebrows were raised and then everyone went back to their business. This wasn’t really such fresh news after all, was it, even his erstwhile dyed in the wool fans reasoned.
The third man is Barack Obama. Beating the odds for a black man, and a first term senator, Barack Obama run for the highest political office in the United States and won handily. But Barack Obama had a secret. He was a liberal senator from Illinois, a black one at that, and he cared, truly cared for those less fortunate than himself. Not only that, Obama had another secret; he was a thoughtful man who understood fairness and commonsense even when the political odds were seemingly stacked against both.
So, Barack Obama pushed for the Affordable Care Act and … got it. He then refused to enforce the ridiculous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy of the United States military even as his opponents demanded shrilly that he protects American forces from the homosexuals already serving honorably. DADT was finally repealed on Obama’s watch and Obama didn’t lose any sleep over the reversal of what had been, for all intents and purpose, a blight on America’s collective conscience.
But Obama still had another secret; his mind was “evolving” over gay marriage. Finally, in a blaze of publicity, Barack Obama told the world, that, with wise counsel from his daughters, he had come round to the view that homosexuals deserved to marry if they so wished. The headline writers went into a frenzy.
A few days later, the same writers are asking themselves openly: hang on, was this really newsworthy? Were we really surprised by the “announcement?’
Any sensible journalist, commentator now realizes that they were foolish for working themselves into a lather over the Obama pro-gay marriage announcement. They had known all along what his thoughts on it were.
Like Elton John and Ricky Martin before him, Barack Obama announced very stale news May 12, 2012. Like the two men before him, Obama will reap big from managing to excite the world about something they already knew.
Talk about selling snow to the Eskimos.
Front Page Africa is reporting about troubled gay times in Liberia.
Front Paqe Africa coverage
The root cause of the current strife seems to be an activist called Archie Ponpon (pictured left) who took it upon himself to demand same-sex marriage rights for Liberians. His call prompted Liberia’s former first lady to petition Parliament; a petition that has coalesced the opposition to homosexuals in parliament and stirred up the backlash that Front Page is now reporting.
Information getting to me suggests that Ponpon unilaterally decided that the agenda would be gay marriage in Liberia; this in a a country which, like in most African countries, takes a dim view of mere same-sex loving. The reaction from the Liberian legislators and the public is thus understandable even though the threats of violence are, obviously, a primitive overreaction.
It is difficult to understand, though, what Ponpon expected to achieve. If it was debate, he has certainly got Liberia talking. The downside of that is that talking about gay marriage in a country where just being gay is still taboo places an undue burden on those who are trying to fight for the basic gay rights of living and association. It is the equivalent of attempting to run before you can crawl. That Ponpon seems to have acted alone is also not helpful to the gay cause in Liberia.
The lesson from all this seems to be (and one hopes that activists all over Africa take note of it) that actions such as these need to be coordinated with the key stakeholders; the grassroots who will bear the brunt of whatever action is decided upon. Some activists will, understandably be impatient to see change in the causes they hold dear and might therefore move on their own to guide the agenda in their chosen direction.
While it is right that leadership often means leading, ill-thought-out ventures such as Ponpon’s tend to come back and bite the leaders and their followers in the way that we are now seeing in Liberia. With collective responsibility, the entire community will understand that they are in it together even if their decisions backfire. But Ponpon seems to have led the gay community into a quagmire they weren’t ready for – all on the back of his own ill-considered militancy.
Not a good strategy, not good at all.
I just say things as I see them, Just know that this is "How Gerald Sees it"
to love. to be loved. to never forget your own insignificance. to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. to seek joy in the saddest places. to pursue beauty to its lair...above all, to watch. to try and understand. to never look away. and never, never, to forget. [arundhati roy]
SEXUALITY, LOVE, LIFE...
Celebrating life as a gay nudist man! This is my nudecentric journal with a same gender loving perspective, the world through my eyes!
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In the wider scheme of things, I dont exist. The Kenyan gay man is a myth and you may never meet one in your life time. However,I and many others like me do exist; just not openly. This blog was created to allow access to the pysche of me who represents the thousands of us who are unrepresented. I know its anonymous and thus contradicts the essence of what Iam aiming to do. But if it does inform, educate and demystify the Kenyan gay man, then the purpose is served
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ideas for success in relationships, career, happiness, health, wealth. Awkward grammar. Some jokes thrown in for fun
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The struggle to repeal 76 countries’ anti-gay laws and release gay prisoners there
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Where the sublime and ridiculous are dissected
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