Gays too must respect others’ opinion

By KIPKOECH TANUI

Right at the outset I will clue you into what I won’t be writing about after this piece today: homosexuals and lesbians! I wil also tell you why.

I don’t’ hate them, but I can’t fathom what would make a man and a woman drool and daydream erotically about a person of same sex. Now let me drop this line because I hate to imagine what happens when the same-sex ‘couples’ are together, whether as one or in torrid orgy of groupies. Which ruefully makes them feel ‘special’ and ‘different’, more so if they regard themselves as being in the league of gay celebrities such as UK’s Elton John and George Michael, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and that queen of screen Jane Lynch (strange surname if you ask me).

Gene theory

Yes, even if a gay man considers me the ugliest and not worthy of their approach, I still would not knowingly or freely associate with them. Hang me yes, but I won’t and that is a matter of choice, just like they chose their lifestyle. I don’t buy the idea that it is in the genes, or it springs somewhere from the socialisation path as one grows. No, that belongs to textbooks, and psychology and sociology classes. Life, as Bill Gates taught us, is not the endless glamour and banter on television; that belongs to the surreal wall.

Because I don’t understand them, please feel free to blame my upbringing, religious orientation or even what they like calling ‘cultural primitivity’. You can also, if you are one of them, or their fierce defender or ‘tolerator’ (my own creation!), choose to insult me even though I have haven’t compared them to pigs like that mad man of Zimbabwe I don’t like, called ‘Uncle Bob’.

One thing you can be certain, whatever your sexual orientation, is that I will never fight them or fight for them. See, the whole issue with gayism is that the West, particularly in trying to look more civil, diverse and tolerant of other’s life choices, has been soft on this issue. They fall under the minority rights, and it is a big campaign issue.

Yes, we all have our freedoms, but then as I have seen on online discussions, mine begins where yours ends and you don’t have to thrust your orientation before my face. Just do your thing with fellow cohorts and leave the rest of us out. Not that we are angelic or sinless, no! The thing is, we have our own sins, but they don’t include yours and we do not invite you to join in ours!

We know we live among gays, many of whom luckily fear the social repercussions of coming out for obvious reasons. But luckily, we are not about to see men kissing men and women fellow women, in public yet. But surely, the way it is, soon we may have to be explaining this unnerving ‘romance’ and ‘touch’ to our children.

Only then would we understand the predicament of many ‘straight’ as opposed to ‘weird’ Africans when they go to the US and bring up children in a neighbourhood where you have to explain to them why, if a child is born of a man and woman, their classmates have same-sex parents. Or you join a company and one day discover the ‘beauty’ in the corner was one time a man or woman, but later in life underwent a sex change!

Out of the loop

I don’t know what you imagine you would feel, depending on your sex, when you meet them in the gents or ladies, but I am sure if you are not in the loop, you may think of relocating.

The other reason why I won’t be writing about gay men and women soon is because they like publicity, especially the kind that seems to inundate our minds with the perception that they are many and are everywhere, and in all strata of the society.

This way they feed the perception they are ‘discriminated’ against and ‘suppressed’, and therefore prequalified candidates for funding through well-oiled gay movements and NGOs out there in the West.

I know I will be asked what I would do if my son or daughter joined this club. My answer goes as follows. I am trying my best to bring them up the way I want them to be, away from the corrupting influences that goaded others into this strange behaviour, despite the fact that we live in William Barclay’s permissive society. Secondly, in the words of renowned Nigeria’s preacher, TB Joshua: “If my parents were gay, I would not have been given birth to. Those that are asking this question — if your parents were gay, you would not have been born. You that are reading me — if your parents were gay, you would not be reading this today. God bless the reader and the hearer.”

His message, following President Goodluck Jonathan’s signing into law of an Act prescribing up to 14 years sentence for same-sex couples, of course struck a moderate tone, which went something like this: Let us not judge gay men and women but keep praying for them and striving to bring them over to the Lord’s side. “I mean, we should talk salvation, not condemnation. The Bible is my standard,” he said.

Thirdly, if I lose the war, as my fellow columnist Barack Muluka said one day, they would be no more be mine. I won’t say more on this line suffice to add that by then I may not be around anymore.

Okay, now bring on the brickbats: I am fresh from a long break during which this column missed out on four Fridays, and so I need hard knocks on the head to prove to me that I am different, but do I say so?

Happy and great 2014 gay and straight Kenyans!