Seyi Omooba: A princess refuses to play her role

The acting of Celie

I have been following the case of Seyi Omooba, the actress or rather the actor as I have noticed the gender-specificity appears to have been taken out of the noun for the acting profession. She was to have taken the lead role of Celie in a stage production of The Colour Purple until it was found that sometime in the past written view on Facebook that called into question her ability to take on the role.

Apparently, the role of Celie does have some same-sex attraction and it is left to the director to decide how that is interpreted and the actor to give that the best expression possible that the audience will suspend belief and be absorbed in the depiction and quality of the performance. That is what actors do, it does not make actors the roles they play in real life.

The mind of Seyi

Ms Omooba, however, wears her religion on her sleeve and that appears to come before her vocation for which she was by all terms fully qualified to do, for that is why she auditioned and was selected to play Celie. She was not minded to play the part as she had said on a Facebook post that, “I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn't mean its [sic] right.” [BBC News: Seyi Omooba: Actress sacked over anti-gay post loses legal fight]

Now, Ms Omooba is entitled to her views and beliefs, we live in a free country, what she believes to be right is her prerogative and that is fine by me, even if those views question the essence of my being and that of the broader LGBTI+ community, or that of any other person. Prejudices abound, what matters is the ability despite our persuasion, that difference exists and that is the way the world is. We can all live our lives happily respecting that.

The princess throws a strop

Having expressed those views way back in 2014, they had not changed when she took on the role of Celia and Ms Omooba was going to depict the role within the constraints of her worldview making no allowances for either directorial discretion or that of the author of The Colour Purple. At which point it was decided she was incompatible with the role and the theatre seeking an amicable settlement offered her unconditionally full salary to walk away, but she was not going quietly.

She took the case to tribunal seeking substantial redress and compensation, supported by a fundamentalist religious organisation founded by her father and has lost.

It has not escaped my notice that the name Ọmọọba is Yoruba for the child of a king, suggesting prince or princess, we still have gender roles in royal titles. Her father is both a religious and community leader who has been honoured with an MBE for his community work whilst being strident homophobic, but we can separate the issues, it does not make him any less worthy of honour.

The choices she made

His princess, fully imbued with the teachings of her father needed to work in a rather different environment that offers equality of opportunity and the acceptance of diversity, but chose to use her inability to adapt to a different environment to play the victim of discrimination, thankfully, she could not play the race card because it is very likely the role that once went to Whoopi Goldberg in the 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg and had Quincy Jones as one of the producers would most definitely have gone to another African American.

This is what Ms Omooba had to say on the website of Christian Concern, “When I received the email that I was going to be dropped from the cast, I was heartbroken. The agency told me that I would receive financial compensation, but I am not in this for the money. For me it’s not about the money or my face – it was about telling and expressing Celie’s story, as I interpret it as a performer, because that is what I love to do.”

“Yet the theatre and the agency gave me the choice of either losing my career or renouncing my faith. I could not do this, not even to save the career that I love.” [Christian Concern: Seyi Omooba]

No, sweet child, you cannot unilaterally interpret a role divergent from what the director requires the role to be. Celie’s story was written in 1982, was depicted on film in 1985 and there is a musical remake to be released in 2023, society and norms have so moved on. [Wikipedia: The Colour Purple (Film)]

The choices they made

Yet, much as this might have been a career-boosting opportunity, no one was asking you to choose between your faith or your career, you made that choice. Your career was not ending, you created the circumstances for questioning if you were suitable for the role and whether you could be represented by your management agency. As the lawyer for the agency stated at tribunal, “Her comments had so adversely affected her future employability that her contract with Global was ‘an empty vessel.’” [The Telegraph: Actress Seyi Omooba loses tribunal claim over her dismissal from The Color Purple]

It would appear rather than for the common good, you took the selfish and unchristianly stance to jeopardise the fortunes of the theatre ready to compensate you and the management agency about to lose clients because of what you chose to represent; prejudice, bigotry, entitlement, and intransigence.

The opportunity she did not embrace

Her troubles began when in 2019, after she was announced as the lead for The Colour Purple, a member of the cast of Hamilton, Aaron Lee Lambert asked on Twitter, with a caption of her Facebook post, “Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately.”

@Seyiomooba Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately. pic.twitter.com/GK2xbzZYgy

— Aaron Lee Lambert (@aleelambert) March 15, 2019

Ms Omooba did not answer to the issue for months and the theatre seeing the public relations disaster brewing had to take measures to both save the production and their enterprise when it became apparent that she was not ready to temper her views. In the comments that followed the tweet, it was revealed she had recently refused to appear in a pride video along with members of the cast of another production she featured in. Besides, she had before appeared in a concert version of The Colour Purple.

She had no case, just trouble

Laid out in those terms, it was unlikely Ms Omooba had any intention of playing or depicting any of the LGBTQ aspects of the Celie character, one cannot suggest what presumably chaste component she would have brought to give the role a meaningful interpretation in consonance with the original writing.

The tribunal ruling against her demands for compensation for loss of earnings, future losses and reputational damage concluded, “If there is damage to her reputation, it was not caused by being dropped from the production but by an unconnected person's tweeting... of her Facebook post and the outcry resulting from that.” [BBC News: Seyi Omooba: Actress sacked over anti-gay post loses legal fight]

We all have to live with others

My takeaway from this case is simple, you are free to have whatever views you espouse, but the moment you publish them, they are on the record for a public and global audience that extends well beyond the community that would fully agree with our opinions that it is necessary that the expression of such views do not become a future impediment to progress.

Bigotry, prejudice, hypocrisy, lies, unkindness, hate, inhumanity no matter how reasoned our positions are do not win laurels, they eventually become burdens unintended and consequential.

Religious intransigence in a liberal and secular environment is the harbinger of notoriety and personal grief. Your beliefs exist within constructs, never in a vacuum. Ms Omooba accepted the construct that homosexuality is legal, and much as she could comment on the rightness or the wrongness of the law, she chose a moralistic dimension that set her apart from the profession and broader society that had made accommodations for living and let live, it became her undoing.

Within fundamental Christian circles, Ms Omooba might be lauded and celebrated for her courage and integrity, that is probably where she can ply her trade, in the cohort of those who believe the same way as she does. However, if she needs an audience to her art and talent beyond that setting, the change will have to happen to her, though she might well think it is the society that needs to bend to her will. That is her hill if she chooses to die on it.

Thought Picnic: Be a fool, quietly

Abuse is free like air

Now, I have been at the receiving end of all kinds of abuse that it is a waste of mental energy to begin to find categories or classifications for those different types of abuse. What has mattered is how I dealt with abuse, the ones I could to run from, the ones that caused harm, the ones for which I was equipped to withstand, or the ones for which maintaining my counsel was the higher moral ground. Abuse, in the end, will not define me.

However, on reading a story and commenting on it on Twitter, I thought giving my views a bit of flesh on a blog can be useful. Some might say, having seen some of my blogs that I have opinions and many of them. I probably have many more than I have dared express and I hope that is the beginning of wisdom.

Be at home with your thinking

A football player based in Canada decided to go on a homophobic rant on Twitter, reinforcing his views with more deeply held opinions, and don’t we all have the urge to say just what is on our minds without let or hindrance? It is a free world. [Queerty: Football player goes on antigay rant, says he doesn’t care about getting fired, gets fired]

I would have felt that his being on a football team meant that he understood the rules of football and he was a good player. Also, as a Canadian resident, and I do not care to check if he is native or immigrant, this is a matter of knowing where you live. He could not have been unaware of the societal needs to accommodate diversity, no matter how diverse from his worldview.

Know when you’re mouthing away

I was a bit surprised that as a football player, he appeared not to know the difference between playing home and playing away. I would even aver that, in Canada, when expressing homophobia, you're quite dangerously playing away and not at home where your supporters would cheer you on to score a goal.

Basically, as I continued my Twitter thread, I stated, there are certain antics you never get up to when playing away, the consequences of which might be dire and grave for your team and the little troop of supporters that showed up for the away game. Therein is my lesson in football etiquette.

The unerring winds of social backlash

We live in times of the instant consequence for the slightest infractions, not to talk of the gravest sins of commission that would land in the docket of the unforgivable. By all means, you are free to have any opinion, it takes another force of providence, insight, intuition, or just reticence to realise you just need the discipline not to express every opinion you have.

I concluded, speaking more to myself than to others, in terms of expressing views that are discriminatory, exclusionary, or hateful, know the law of the land, the sway of moral outrage, and anticipate the unerring winds of social backlash that can dispossess you of your livelihood and make you a pariah. Be a fool quietly. Be not intrigued, I write first to adjure myself, whether it relates to others can only be an unfortunate coincidence.

South Africa: Tom Moses' Robben Island experience

Robben Island

Having gotten Table Mountain out of the way on Friday afternoon, I had the whole of Saturday to do Robben Island for many reasons, most especially to get a good idea of what Apartheid was to the people the system considered criminal, inferior, undesirable, radical or reactionary.

I had decided on making out for the first possible journey on Saturday and once again, it was possible to book a tour of the island online and print out the ticket to avoid long queues.

The UberBlack taxi I ordered took me to the other side of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and note it is Alfred the second son of Queen Victoria and not Alfred the consort.

After taken directions to the Nelson Mandela Gateway on the V&A Waterfront, I went through security and found myself boarding the slowest of the ferries (The Jester) to Robben Island.

A preamble

I knew that because Thandi appeared to be the fastest which passed us on the way out and on its return and Thembikile which I boarded on my way back, left Jester in its wake even though Jester left a good 15 minutes before. The Sea Princess was in the dock, but not in service on that day, or probably it was there to service VIPs.

Robben Island has at one time or the other been a war garrison, a prison, a leper colony and now it is a nature reserve, a World Heritage Site and a very popular tourist attraction which for its use as a prison in the Apartheid times gives it prominence in the history and the stories told during the tour.

They served an abhorrent system

On arrival at the Robben Island harbour and getting off the boat to board the bus that would first take us on a tour of the island before we went to view the prisons, I could not help but notice the obviously pretentious Auschwitz-like sign at the entrance. At Auschwitz, it was Arbeit Macht Frei, here at Robben Island, it was We Serve With Pride, also in Afrikaans.

They served the Apartheid System with Pride.

Of the stories I heard of man’s inhumanity to man coloured by race, prejudice and injustice, the fear authorities have of alternative thought that refused to be subjugated to inhumane and atrociously cruel and evil law, there was no service to humanity nor pride to be had in the what happened on Robben Island.

However, Robben Island and the experience of being incarcerated there created some amazingly remarkable men who took from that episode in their lives something that exemplifies the human spirit in forgiveness, reconciliation and leadership – prominent amongst such men is Nelson Mandela who died exactly two years before on the day of my visit to Robben Island.

Through the experience of Tom Moses

People were segregated on Robben Island according to race and the black race was treated the least favourably in incarceration, they were treated lower than dogs, issued with shorts rather and trousers, had no shoes, slept on mats on the floor rather than on beds and they did the most labour intensive work of quarrying by hand and building the prison blocks in which they were housed.

The bus driver and tour guide had relationships with Robben Island as relations of people who had been imprisoned on the island. I was sad beside an Australian lady and it was poignant as an Englishman visiting the old penal colony of Robben Island to remember there that the British once used Australia as a penal colony.

However, it was the story of Tom Moses, an inmate of Robben Island who was sent there at the age of 19, from the 3^rd December 1976 to the 31^st May 1985, for all sorts of contrived offences as terrorism, insurrection, anti-nationalist crimes and opposing Apartheid that left us numb with shock and a feeling of helplessness at what people might have experienced when Robben Island got its rotten reputation.

One of the buildings on the island was a church which is under the care of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu family, one could not help but notice the irony of it being named The Church of the Good Shepherd it was built by lepers in 1895.

Tom Moses, a personification of the greatness of the human spirit.

One of the buildings on the island was a church which is under the care of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu family, one could not help but notice the irony of it being named The Church of the Good Shepherd it was built by lepers in 1895.

The story endures

However, the most enduring experience of visiting Robben Island was not the non-venomous snakes, the big guns installed to protect the island in WWII, the penguins that nest on the shores of the island, the dog kennels I first thought were cells for human being, the captivating pictures we were privileged to take, Nelson Mandela’s old cell, but the human story told in the voice, the person and the eyes of Tom Moses.

On one World Heritage site looking onto another captivating World Heritage site.

In fact, it was the story told in the living experience of Tom Moses, I was both honoured and privileged to have the opportunity to hear his story, a story told without bitterness, full of forgiveness and more so, a willingness to show that the human spirit might travail in the worst possible circumstances and yet triumph in ways that will humble the most haughty of men.

On leaving the prison cells, I took my own short walk to freedom and reflected on what the day was, it left me full of admiration of those who took lessons from their Robben Island experience to make the world a better place and saddened at the thought that Jacob Zuma, the current President of South Africa, seems to have forgotten what that experience imparted to greater, more reflecting and more considerate men than himself.

Berlin: That We May Never Forget

A sign of times past

Just at the entrance of Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn Station is a panel board of place names. Twelve in a list that spells the recording of one of man’s greatest inhumanities to man.

A list of Nazi Concentration Camps

These were the Nazi Concentration Camp names of which if you have read a bit of World War II history, Auschwitz is the most prominent.

The Nazis used these camps for various activities as hostage, labour, prisoner-of-war, re-education, transit and extermination camps. It was in some of these extermination camps that they systemically killed off people, most especially the Jews in what is known as the Holocaust.

Feeling the presence of pain

Now, I have never visited any of these places, but in 2007, I visited Pawiak Prison in Warsaw and that experience still lives with me, for I am of the opinion that where innocent blood is shed, there is always a memorial of feeling and uneasiness that beclouds that place.

Blog - PAWIAK!

However, what struck me more about the Nazi setup was their attention to detail that created a bureaucracy of such efficiency that the particularity of things they documented just took your breath away.

Badges of badgering

One good example of this was the identification in the Nazi Concentration Camps where tattooed numbers, badges and armbands immediately identified the type of prisoner you were.

Nazi Concentration Camp Badges – Courtesy Wikipedia

So, you had political prisoners (red), professional criminals (green), emigrants (blue), Jehovah’s Witnesses (purple), Homosexuals and sexual offenders (pink), asocial elements (black), Roma gypsies (brown) and so on. Pink triangle along with the rainbow flag now signify LGBTI causes and diversity.

The Original Rainbow Flag – Courtesy Wikipedia

The two superimposed triangles in the sign of the Star of David depicted Jews, typically yellow but could have other colours signifying Jew and another offender category.

That we may never forget.

The most important lesson to learn from this and in that understand why World War II was fought and won for our liberty, freedom and acceptance of difference and diversity is in the many memorials that say as shown on that sign, “Orte Des Schreckens, Die Wir Niemals Vergessen Dürfen.” This roughly translates to, “The Places of Horror, That We May Never Forget.”

They who have no history and keep no memorials are destined to repeat history, those reminded of the horrific past are quicker to embrace the greater good of humanity and human existence.

More correctly, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana or “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” Edmund Burke.

We speak of history because there is a burden of truth we must carry for the present in order to secure a future of peace and happiness.

Opinion: Deadening the blows of bigotry with insightful quotes

Introduction

Yesterday morning, I read a quote on Kevin Maxwell’s blog that may not fit on a placard but will definitely serve well in a heated discussion where participants are open to some persuasion.

A bit about Kevin Maxwell; he ticks many boxes that define the struggles that minorities face in being treated with respect, with dignity, if need be, some sensitivity and where the environment might tend to hostility, the force of the law and the reorientation of the mind and mind-set should encourage mainstream acceptance.

Kevin Maxwell was a police officer who just happens to be mixed-race of white English & black Caribbean descent and gay. The last two elements that I introduced somewhat flippantly should be insignificant in a multicultural open society as race or sexuality should never define a person, their personality, their character, their conduct, their acceptance, their status or their career especially in the service of their country. [About Kevin Maxwell]

Challenging discrimination

The subtle use of the phrase, “the force of the law” in a previous paragraph has meant that Kevin can challenge issues of discrimination, both racial and homophobic that he experienced at work, from the media and from certain sections of the public. Kevin Maxwell won his case against Scotland Yard for discrimination, bruising that the battle for justice was. [BBC – February 2012] [The Independent – June 2013]

Kevin documents his experience in Broken: The Not So Secret Policeman with the subtext, “One Man’s Fight for Justice.” [Kevin Maxwell] [Youtube]

His is a fight against many fronts of the stigma of mental illness; depression brought on by the discrimination he suffered and standing as a man challenging unfortunately entrenched attitudes of “cover-up and containment” deployed by institutions that would rather discredit and intimidate than face up to complaints raised amongst their ranks. [The Independent – June 2013]

O God!

It is against this background that I have followed Kevin Maxwell’s story, and I found the quote he published yesterday in the blog – Godly Gay Fact.

As pertains to the quote, I always research the source and strive to attribute because that is what must be done, and so I retweeted, "Homosexuality is god's way of ensuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children." —Sam Austin

"Homosexuality is god's way of ensuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children." —Sam Austin // #LGBT #Quote
— Randall Reynolds (@randallr01) March 17, 2012

To my mind, this quote has a disarming quality to be used in a discussion, in an argument or on a protest placard against those whose implacable religious view is that all we, as human beings must do is reproduce and propagate.

Deadening the blows of bigotry

I am all for reproducing and propagating everything that is good in the broadest sense of that goal which accommodates and appreciates diversity, but I will not stand for reproducing and propagating difference, discrimination, bigotry, hatred, denigration or any act or practice, in word or in deed that diminishes our common and shared humanity.

Where we find people to engage, the respect for, and the interaction of allowing participants to speak and to listen in turn, achieves much, and we make much progress.

We deaden the bigoted stances; which reminds me of a blog I wrote on the second Sunday of November as today, eight years ago, titled Does gay marriage affect your marriage? That question was as disarming and it was effective; it stopped their mouths as they tackled the absurdity of their positions.

Every identity harbours diversity

The quote that inspired this blog was seemingly directed at a particular audience, but it triggered off a somewhat negative response from an unexpected angle; someone who took umbrage at the juxtaposition of homosexuality and religion because of their being probably an agnostic, an atheist, an evolutionist, a scientist or whatever else might define or not define them.

Much as we all have our persuasions, the struggle for rights, a sense of identity and justice when in throes of societal ambivalence of acceptance, indifference or rejection requires that all ears get a sounding, an opinion that might gather them to a centre of agreement.

Homosexuals are people with a history, culture, traditions, beliefs, prejudices, spirituality or the lack of the same, struggles and situations, just as anyone else anywhere else in the world, it should not define that person, but to some that is the only thing that stands out when mentioned.

Accommodating interesting opinions

We should however be careful when in the pursuit of the broadest range of rights to people who yet suffer issues of openness, shame, discrimination, oppression and persecution that what we reject and resent so strongly in the campaigns for acceptance and equality does not antagonise when the better part of valour is to inform.

Then again, the debate is open, robust and lively, through easy quotes crystallising thoughts or hard-won battles that Kevin Maxwell has fought.

Shalom! Have a nice Sunday.

Human Rights Day 2011: Gay Rights are Human Rights too

All human beings are born free

Today, the 10th of December marks the International Human Rights Day [1] and it is the 63^rd year since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) [2] was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948.

There are 30 articles in the UDHR divided into 4 columns as described in the second reference but the one of most particular import is Article 1.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Our humanity should come before all else

I believe this article embodies the purpose, reason and sense of our humanity regardless of culture, tradition, religion, creed, race or law – it presents an non-religious concept that draws on our empathy, our compassion, our quest for fairness and justice for ourselves and fellow human-beings.

On the 6^th of December 2011, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Programmes Headquarters in Geneva in commemoration of Human Rights Day 2011 in which she addressed the next human rights issue that the world faces today.

It pertains to the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) persons all around the world and in it she made five fundamental points in support of the human rights issues with regards to LGBT persons. It is essential to keep the core tenet of Article 1 in mind as you review the themes of her historic speech.

The core points about LGBT rights

Gay rights are human rights; it goes to the heart of being born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality; there are gays everywhere in the world including in places where certain leaders and people pretend there isn’t.

Violence to other human-beings is not cultural or religious; it is criminal, it is the duty of our governments to protect first and prosecute the criminals, not the victims.

Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination; it tends to divide our humanity and gives rise to other inequalities in our societies.

Progress comes from being willing to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes; what if by some circumstance probably unimaginable to some, you found you were in that minority that is being discriminated against, where you had no rights because of who you were?

There is much I can do try and flesh out each theme that she covered but the case she made was clear; it is first about our humanity than anything that distinguishes us; the matter is global; we cannot criminalise people for who are naturally are regardless of your views of those people and if you were by happenstance of those people, what will you fight for?

The shaky ground on which we stand to condemn others

However, in concluding this piece which in some cases will probably have a deeply religious readership from some parts of the globe, I can only conclude with a comment I saw on Facebook because it goes to the core of the matter of rights, of culture, of beliefs and of our fairness to our fellow human beings.

One of the best comments against a supporter of the anti-gay bill (The Nigerian Senate passed a Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition bill recently with even more homophobic sanctions.) I've (This was on Jeremy Weate’s Facebook wall.) read today (re-quoted with permission).

"I don't need to be a homo to respect the freedom of a homo. Your biblical quotes are the same quotes handed to you by invaders as they took your relatives into slavery. You have been freed physically, but not mentally. Weren't your ancestors spiritual people before the missionaries showed up? For an African with a long history, you cling blindly to a religion that was recently handed to you. Simply put, you are a lost cause. Goodluck releasing yourself from yourself devised blindfold." Taken from Jeremy Weate's Facebook status

In all, human rights is about protecting the rights of others in order to ensure ours are protected and enshrined in law despite our differences, disagreements and disputing; the greatest goal of our human existence can only be to appreciate the best in others who we may naturally not find ourselves associating with. There are few for all sorts of reasons who have dared to reach that goal.

Sources

[1] Human Rights Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Transcript of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's on LGBT rights

Thought Picnic: Civil Laws Always Trump Personal Beliefs

Another one of those things

Every once in a while, I dare to stick my toe in the barracuda infested waters of Nigeria discourse and commentary outside the haunts that I am more comfortable with when it comes to addressing social issues.

I cannot understand how it always ends up looking like a battle field where the fundamentally religious is pitched against the norms of civil society and reason is in danger of being suffocated and derived of the oxygen of tolerance.

Reneging on a contract for religious reasons

It started off on Facebook, with the following status:

A Canadian florist refused to provide flowers for a wedding after she found out that the couple was same-sex. Kim Evans, of Petals and Promises Wedding Flowers, reportedly agreed to sell flowers to the couple, but then backed out when she learned they were gay, citing her Christian faith. The couple was not identified, but their wedding planner said the florist's rebuff was "going to stay with them for years. [Link to Source – Facebook membership might be required.] The original news story is found here [1].

I will concentrate more on my views than that of others but suffice it to say that the moment someone applauded the act of Kim Evans and I raised issues about the wrongness of her act it developed into the well-trotted scriptures about sin, sinners, homosexuals, Christianity, the Levitical laws and much more.

This blog fleshes out the opinions I shared and the direction in which I had hope to steer the discourse.

The test for faith, hope and love

I like the way she has cited her Christian faith which probably is a valid excuse considering the circumstances, but that is a very personal if not a selfish thing. If she cited her Christian hope, she cannot have hoped to win her customers over to her kind of thinking by her actions it would read as being outrageously wicked to mar the couple’s happy day just because it did not correlate with her beliefs.

No matter how one dares to stretch the imagination there is not a smidgen of Christian love to see because love is tender, love is kind and does not create offence, her only refuge could be her faith because love has a selflessness that demands a lot of Christians when dealing with the world at large.

The “infidels” had entered a contractual agreement with her company out of good faith and just to give context to the matters of faith, hope and charity (love), there is a Bible verse [2] that states; “Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love”. She probably passed the test of faith, one can only wonder what she hoped for but she definitely failed the test of love.

I went on to wonder how this looks for people looking at the broader issue of Christians who cannot be trusted to follow through on agreed contracts because their intolerance and bigotry (my view was that the withdrawal of business on the basis of religious belief was an outward display of prejudice) gets in the way of them ministering love that might work winning these people to the truth.

And I concluded, she was wrong!

A lack of comprehension

A number of comments followed from the idea that there was no prejudice in the lady’s actions to the fundamentalist homophobia seeking refuge in scriptural superfluity until someone interjected to bring a sense of frail humanity into focus but sides had been taken and some were already implacably entrenched.

I followed taking this reasoned support by identifying the gulf that had developed in educational standards in Nigeria where we are allowed the latitude of critical thinking and contextual analysis of issues which helped our comprehension of matters and the allusion that Nuhu Ribadu made on the presidential debates last Friday that Nigerian education is in tatters.

That sadly illustrates the fact that many with whom we engage are unable to accommodate different perspectives to an issue once they have found something they are familiar with to sink their teeth into.

Whilst they might well be able to reel off quotes and verses they very rarely find ways put such into context that exposes any critical thinking ability or logical process such that everything is literal and the figurative is too abstract to appreciate and as the assumed discourse develops contrived analogies are lumped in that it might just take a treatise to unravel the jumble that makes for the flawed thought process.

When you engage

It then get very easy to digress and concentrate on the subjective and sentimental without addressing the core issue which is personal beliefs are personal and private and not one is stopped from having such beliefs but when such a person has to interact with the public like running a business there are civil laws that have precedence over those belief systems allowing for a level playing field of clear communication and protection from prejudice and discrimination by reason of civil laws.

Like one religious person did say in the news story, “The shopkeeper has every right to her own convictions as long as she is a private citizen in her own house, but if she opens her doors to sell flowers, then she must be prepared to meet and deal with the public.”

This is the dilemma many religious people face their inability to appreciate the boundaries of their religious beliefs in the context of the society that they have to deal with. One option is for such people to assemble and reside in religious ghettos, separate from an influence and situation that would make their beliefs a subject of societal scrutiny.

The state ranks above personal beliefs

Recently, we have had cases of the religious beliefs conflicting with the sense of duty where people paid to provide a public service allow their prejudices to decline serving sections of society with different moral values or belief systems or they feel their religious laws are superior to the state and civil laws.

That situation is untenable and presents opportunities for a chaotic society if everyone believed themselves outside the ambit of civil laws that do not agree with their faiths.

The bigger lesson is found in the admonition or rather the advice to [2], “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.”

This is one case where Caesar and God are confused in roles and service, when they are supposed to be separate spheres of operation, and what we know as the separation of state and religion or more particularly, the separation of personal belief systems from how we interact in the public space.

Sources

[1] Florist refuses to outfit same-sex couple's wedding - New Brunswick - CBC News

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. NLT

[3] Luke 20:25 "Caesar's," they replied. He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." KJV

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Nigeria: Women badly represented at CEDAW convention

Going to UN to defend

When Hajiya Saudatu Bungudu announced [Source: allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Minister to Defend CEDAW Bill in UN] last month that she would lead a delegation of Nigerian women to the United Nations to defend the sixth country report on the implementation of CEDAW [Source: Wikipedia] in Nigeria, many would have had great expectations.

She as the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development would have been expected to say in truth, detail and candour how the Nigerian woman had been emancipated year on year in terms of rights, privileges, means and achievable goals.

CEDAW is the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women which came in force on the 3^rd of September 1981 with Nigeria signing the treaty on the 23^rd of April 1984 and ratifying that treaty on the 13^th of June 1985, a good six years before the Netherlands. [Source: CEDAW: States parties]

Little to defend

Hajiya Bungudu seemed to have a lot to defend but the text of it all indicates not much had been done.

Legislation was yet to be promulgated and schemes were yet to be put in place to deal with trafficking – a subject highlighted with harrowing detail by the CNN earlier this year on the World’s Untold Stories series with the title Trapped [CNN.com World’s Untold Stories] – widowhood rights, female genital mutilation, unwholesome practices against women and the provision of equal opportunities.

Part of the legislation being promulgated is the Nudity Bill which cannot seem to earn enough opprobrium and seems to draw the most appalling derision, sponsored by the Senator Eme Ufot Ekaette, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Women and Youth [Source: Nigerian Senate – a much improved web site]

Senator Ekaette is a qualified pharmacist and she seems to have brought her prescriptive abilities to this bill.

A dosage of plain nudity

The bill defines public nudity as

a. State of nakedness in the public or open;

b. State of indecent dressing which expose in the public or in the open any of the following parts of the human body:

i. The breast of a female above the age of 14 years;

ii. The laps of a female above the age of 14 years;

iii. The belly and or waist of a female above the age of 14 years;

iv. Any part of the body from two (2) inches below the shoulders downwards to the knee of a female person above the age of 14 years;

v. Any part of the body of the male person above the age of 14 years from the waist to the knee;

c. Any form of dressing with a transparent cloth or clothing in the public or the open which exposes any part of the body from two inches below the shoulders level downward to the knee of a female person above the age of 14 years; provided that exposure of the hands of the female person above the age of 14 years shall not be construed as public nudity.

d. Any form of dressing with a transparent cloth or clothing which exposes any part of the body of the male person above the age of 14 years from the waist to the knee in the public or open.

[Source: Culled from Vanguard Online Edition - Nudity Bill: How Govt officials embarrassed Nigeria with a 73-man delegation at the UN]

Only a pharmacist can consider a dosage of nudity measured 2 inches below the shoulder, it would be like giving an epidural for a broken finger nail.

I could remember as a child, my grandmothers who were well above 14 years of age went around bare-chested, probably because their mammary organs might have lost their sexual appeal to men at large, but I would not say that they were not still of value to the men who sired their children.

Men as rabid sexual animals

Obviously, this whole prescription frenzy panders to the conception that African men are voracious sexual animals who on seeing female flesh succumb to the canine tendency to sniff any and every faecal orifice to satisfy their uncontrolled need for sex.

Well, the men have to clearly let the women know that they are well advanced members of the Homo sapiens sapiens [Source: Wikipedia] species that could exercise restraint, self-control and discernment regardless of what they see.

In fact, many men would like to excuse their wiles and blame their lapses on the women – I would say it is criminal and any man who for whatever state of undress a woman is in, who allows his instincts to molest to take control of his better judgement should be caged like a dog and prodded with red hot iron rods till he learns to join the human race.

Just as everyone has a right to be disgusted and I do get disgusted by some fashion I see, those who decide to be so uncouth about their fashion have a right to express themselves so unashamedly, we just have to find ways of bearing the pain of the decline of style and comportment.

Commonsense is winning

It is unfortunate that those put in leadership to advance the cause of women have been pre-occupied with legislation that creates other means of abuse, discrimination and denigration of women and womanhood.

Thankfully, commonsense has prevailed in the Nigerian Senate that both times the bill was introduced; it has suffered and not advanced as the Senate President has clearly tried to make the sponsors see the difference between issues of morality and those of objective legislation.

This did not deter the women’s delegation from taking this bill to the United Nations to make a complete ridicule of Nigerians.

The first examination

At the 41^st Session of the CEDAW Committee, Nigeria’s document [Source: 41st Session of the CEDAW Committee - WWW.FIDH.ORG] was examined on the 3^rd of July 2008 with the interesting note that the National Assembly rejected a bill to incorporate CEDAW conventions into domestic legislation in 2007.

It noted that legislation still sustained discrimination against women as the inability to transfer their nationality amongst other discriminatory issues mentioned earlier.

Two particular issues suffered more scrutiny - the Nudity Bill and the compulsory pregnancy and HIV tests for university students [Source: akin.blog-city.com - The flaw of the covenant] – this all was preparatory work for the scrutineers at the open session that the Minister later visited to defend the CEDAW that could not make the law books in Nigeria.

The showdown

The minister lead a delegation of 73 members [Source: Vanguard Online Edition - Nudity Bill: How Govt officials embarrassed Nigeria with a 73-man delegation at the UN] to a 2-hour convention that discussed the Nigerian document and all she had to say in the light of glaring evidence amounted to dissimulation because all they had were proposals, draft legislation and activities in the pipeline, there was nothing in the laws of Nigeria that had positively identified the pressing case for the emancipation of women.

A delegate from Jamaica (Glenda Simms) rounded in on the Nudity Bill and with sarcastic derisiveness wondered if the police would have measuring tapes to check the length of dresses in some sort stop-and-measure crack down.

She was as vehement as to suggest that dress codes were about the abuse of power and dressing a woman from head to toe was a form of rape as women had a right to aesthetics of their bodies and the right to present themselves any way they wanted.

The delegate from Algeria (Meriem Belmihoub) on counting their conspicuous number hoped that Nigerian women were just as represented in political life and governance.

The delegate from Bangladesh (Ferdous Ara Begum) wondered about the tardiness in adopting a bill on violence against women.

Between the extremes of a liberated Jamaica through a changing Algeria to the more conservative Bangladesh, no country could have been so roundly condemned and castigated for losing sight of more pressing issues and priorities to address the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world, the discrimination against married and pregnant women, sexual harassment in the work place and a host of other pertinent women’s rights issues.

Speechless in embarrassment

In the end, the delegation of eminent women on a foreign jaunt could not defend the absurd bill and ended up defending the atrocious laws that give men more preference over women – they were at that point an utter embarrassment and disgrace.

There is much work to be done about women’s rights in Nigeria, I have my doubts that the women who went to the UN have the acumen to promote visionary and courageous goals for women and there are definitely better qualified women of Nigerian descent who can do a better job.

I would hope that people who can make things happen in Nigeria would work at encouraging these women to step forward and really give this issue a good shake up because the ladies who have gone on before have to my disappointment been useless, to say the least and that is a real shame. To whom much was given, however little, a lot more was expected.