Opinion: Regardless of our sexuality, our past and future is our whole story

We are still learning

The issue of sexuality is a very complex subject that too many of us still have to get our heads around. Across the spectrum of moralism through to science, people hold as many views as they can about what determines why people turn out the way they finally decide they should be.

In some parts of the world, we have in the last hundred years reached a level of acceptance on the matter of human sexuality and the relationships that ensue from such, yet, in other places, persecution, prosecution, animosity and danger bedevils people who just happen to be different.

I have seen people got from seemingly fulfilled heterosexuality to bisexuality or homosexuality and the other way round. The preponderance of heterosexuality weighs heavily on those not so inclined that absurd views and therapies are deployed to convert or change people to a particular ‘norm’ causing more harm than comfort. It is gratifying that such activities are now being outlawed.

Transsexuality is their reality

One area we all seem to struggle the most with is transsexuality, the case of people with one sex who seemed to be wired as the opposite sex.

The fact that people have been changing from the sex of their birth to another is hardly a new one and there are processes and procedures that allow for that. What has gotten people talking is the very prominent people who appear to have fully expressed lives in one sexuality and gender going public about changing their sex.

I visited the issue of Kellie Palace Maloney last year, but the one of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner has elicited much commentary, some positive and some negative.

A seething transphobia, it is

What got to me was a petition to have Caitlyn Jenner stripped of the Olympic gold medal she won as Bruce Jenner, the decathlete at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada. The screaming preposterous absurdity of the idea left me utterly exasperated and the arguments put forth were but for the Englishman’s politeness in me ready for risible condemnation and that would have been the start.

Tearing away the veneer of faux righteous indignation of the petitioners you are presented with shameless and deplorable transphobia, a clear fear of the unknown to the seething anger that a bastion of some presumed norm had deserted that profile leaving others somewhat vulnerable.

I will not promote those arguments here, rather, my case was simple. Regardless of the fact that Caitlyn Jenner always thought of herself as female even when she competed at the 1976 Olympics 39 years ago, ‘she in her head’ and ‘he in his body’ competed fairly, won the competition handsomely and was justly rewarded with the laurel of Olympic champion. That fact of history can never be expunged, erased or repudiated.

See the person first

To use the ‘she in her head’ argument to suggest she competed as ‘she in her body’ and thereby was ineligible to compete will be to persecute and punish someone for what is invariably a thought crime. One cannot begin to imagine the conflicts and struggles to remain one thing when you really think you are another. For those able to come to a full expression of themselves and live that realisation, no greater victory could have been won in their lifetimes.

Thankfully, I found someone to help buttress my case, Ayo Sogunro elevated the discussion by saying the person won the medal and their current iteration should not impact on that clear evidence.

@gboukzi That's not the issue I see. To me: Who won the medal? The person that won it owns it--whatever their current iteration. @forakin

— AYO SOGUNRO (@ayosogunro) June 4, 2015

I am glad that the International Olympic Committee has rejected that petition, Caitlyn Jenner will keep the medals she won as Bruce Jenner, that is part of her life story and long may this reasonableness continue. The issue should never have been up for discussion in any case, but that is the kind of world we live in.

The story is never lost

In the same vein, I was glad to read that Kellie Palace Maloney has returned to the career she made as Frank Maloney and has taken two boxers into her stable as a boxing promoter. As a person, Kellie Palace Maloney has 30 years’ experience as a boxing promoter, nothing can take that away from her. Her decision to restart boxing promotion with a low profile will not suddenly make her a neophyte, she comes with a life story that people in boxing cannot ignore.

Apparently, the boxers, macho and male as they seem recognised that and sought her out to help their careers and that is the right thing to do, if you have the skill, the know-how and the ability to mentor and manage people, that you have changed your gender does not mean you have lost your well-earned experience.

We can’t lose our history

In her own words, she said, “I have achieved a lot as Frank. I could never totally lose him.” In my view, that is what stories are about, we achieve a lot as our younger selves, we do not totally lose that, we build on it. Women can achieve a lot with their maiden names and they never lose that because they adopt a married name.

Consequently, a person can achieve a lot as one gender and they should never have to lose that because they have changed their gender. The ability, the knowledge, the experience and person will still be there, that they have changed from male to female or vice versa should never ever be used to persecute, prosecute, purloin or punish them.

We can’t lose our history, but we can gain a great future.

That is the kind of world I want to live in, one that lives and lets others live their lives to the full.

Thank you.

Opinion: To Be A Homosexual in Africa Today

The freedoms I have

Sometimes I forget that privileges and conveniences I have by reason of birth and location, taking many things for granted that many others desire to see, if they can beyond, the next hour.

The life I have today I cherish, the health I have has been a constant blessing - each day I desire the world is a better place for all people, sadly, for some, each day is a worse hell than the day before.

I have no answers to many of these problems, but I hope for the few I meet, I can seed a word of hope, some encouragement and maybe more to brighten them up towards the things they face.

Justified to do justice

Yet, I have watched as people secure in the sense of who they think they are from their religion, their status, their morality, their identity or their beliefs of superiority bray like an irate mob to consume those who are different.

They have found an easy outlet of convenience, justified in their words and deeds to act in the stead of God and culture to remove from their communities those that do not conform.

The hatred dripping from their fangs like vampires after a feast of bloody abandon, they have whipped up a frenzy of hysteria; we must protect our values from corruption, but the corruption they perceive has always been part of our humanity, from the time there was the opportunity between people to find affection and express that affection as intimately as they dare to care.

Difference and diversity

Before the law that instructs about whether things we right or wrong, we existed almost oblivious of each other yet enjoyed the brotherhood and neighbourliness of our humanity until knowledge came of how different we were.

Some celebrated and embraced our diversity, others exploited and exacerbated our differences, the former was the selfless act of love in the mould of the Good Samaritan, and the latter was the selfish act of hatred giving scope for unimaginable evil.

Yet, we are allowed the courage of our convictions to take the easy path of convenience and follow the crowd of thoughts that would ostracise the other to belong to the many.

We have schooled ourselves to not acquiesce, groomed ourselves never to tolerate, and decided we cannot accommodate those that are to our thinking different, bad, dangerous, evil, degenerate, repulsive, hell-bound and condemned.

A fellow human being

Such is the homosexual to many of us, a fellow human being, who should if we had our way never be fellow, nor dare to be human for their being does not deserve to walk the streets we walk.

But think on this matter; in any population on the face of the earth and the diversity that each unit when compartmentalised might contain, anything from 1% to 10% or more would be so radically different from us – shall we treat them like dogs for their status, their race, their tribe, their handicap, their sexuality, their speech, their beliefs, their views, their culture, their lifestyles, their origin, their mix, their loves, their hates and much else?

Then think on this, if you belonged to any minority where the tyranny of the majority reigned supreme to blackmail, to persecute, to bully, to prosecute, to excoriate, to condemn, to lynch and to put to death.

That is the unbearable existence of the gay African (a fellow human being) in their hostile communities; anything up to and possible more than 80 million* Africans who have always lived in Africa and hardly been exposed to influences outside Africa are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or intersexual, they have nowhere to go but to live in Africa, where they belong, by birth and by right.

*[The 80 million figure is an estimate of possibly 8% of the total population not being heterosexual. More references appear below the blog.]

Worst examples of leadership

The purpose of leadership in the face of vulnerable minorities is not to accentuate the differences amongst the people they lead that would persecute the few, but to demonstrate the magnanimous virtues of maturity, to offer all the protections of the law possible and to moderate all their expressed views and actions to minorities amongst them.

This is the failure of leadership we have witnessed in politics and governance being demonstrated in pandering to populist demagoguery, for the truth is that homosexuals have always been amongst us in Africa until someone found some political gain in pointing fingers at them.

The almost 80 million African homosexuals are not going to disappear overnight because some law has been promulgated to the glee and satisfaction of the majority.

What are you doing?

The lynching of homosexuals in streets near you, where you have given your support to depriving your own fellow citizen and countryman of life by your words, your actions or your silence would not eliminate them.

By God, if sexuality were a matter of choice like one could change clothes, homosexuals would definitely wear different clothes from what they wear now to conform and be assimilated into your norm.

For all those that debate and contend that homosexuality is a choice and a lifestyle, if you walked a long hard mile in the shoes of a homosexual, your choice and lifestyle would be that of a heterosexual but we have enough science to prove that homosexuality is as set as the colour of your skin – you can tone or tan your skin, but you cannot change your race.

Address your humanity

As we acquiesce to the 21^st Century extermination of the African homosexual, each one of almost 80 million of them, the lives lost in World War I which we celebrate the centenary of this year and those lost in World War II combined, along with the gruesome evil of the Holocaust, would not begin to number close to the task of ridding ourselves of this homosexual menace.

This is not about the West, this is about our own, our own people, fellow human beings, their lives, their livelihoods, their existence, their pursuit of happiness, all quietly seeking to fulfil their potential in their own countries, provinces, states and communities, like any other person born into this world desires, given the opportunity.

If you for a moment were homosexual, what would you do?

Address your humanity and with that see the humanity in others.

Thank you.

Other readings

Blog - Human Rights Day 2011: Gay Rights are Human Rights

Blog - Nigeria: Arrest Him! He's Homosexual!

LGBT rights in Africa - Wikipedia

Gay Men in Africa & HIV/AIDS – AVERT

What Percentage of the Population Is Gay? - Gallup

Populations of Africa - Wikipedia

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: At church with Sy Rogers

Not finding a place

I have over time grown averse to Christian preachers that portend to speak about matters that concern gender, sexuality and relationships because they have not seemed to have a message that resonates, informs my humanity or leave me edified in any way apart from highlight my apparent inadequacies.

In fact, I could give time to many of those issues, sexual abuse in childhood, sexuality, identity and a state of elderly bachelorhood that is not prospective of getting hitched for all sorts of reasons and in particular, that of health where the dangers loom and problems are not in the purview of natural solutions.

It is so difficult to find relevance within the church community when you are in your mid-forties, never married, without kids and not in the “risk category” of the bliss of walking down the aisle.

They are not addressing my kind of single

The singles meetings and events are usually geared towards those planning on becoming couples, the participants would rarely be above 35 and all seem to be looking for cues to finding that perfect match and needing help to deal with the issues that surround the preparation for marriage

At least, I have not seen or heard programmes for spinsters or bachelors of a certain age, we are the anomaly, the minority and for convenience we attempt to be invisible.

Invisibility helps avoid questions which have no easy answers, it protects from the avalanche of scripture to conform to the typical church-type – the seeking the wife, the courtship, the marriage, the children and everything that it entails.

An unusual man with a resonating message

So, as I got to church today, I was in for a surprise that I took second helpings of the offering, the preacher was introduced to a standing ovation, I had never heard him speak before.

His mannerisms were familiar long before he spoke and by the time he did, I thought, this would be interesting as my mind wondered about the many opportunities I have rejected to participate in church leadership, even at the lowest level.

This man has been on a journey, a long one at that - 30 years of ministry, with vivid pictures of a past that would crash the careers of motivational speakers talk less of a minister of the gospel but he had walked in some really tight shoes, through thorny thickets, sometimes bruised, sometimes battered but unbowed with a message that connected to the humanity of all.

The matter of sexuality is a broader topic beyond homosexuality, it is about struggles, identity, relationships, abuse and addictions; it is about love, lust, loneliness, trust, character and more – we all have a weakness that we have allowed ourselves to be defined by.

He had an amazing Christian message that I have never heard from other preachers of note who seemed to have a binary view of things where you were either in or out, right or wrong, on the road to perdition or to paradise – on the contemporary issues of the day the savvy preachers sit on the fence, but he directed his concepts of religion to our humanity.

Seeking relevance in the religions we follow

I have always been of the view that the function of religion is to serve humanity, where it appears to fail or sacrifice humanity on the altar of custom, tradition, creed, code, rule or method; it becomes like salt that has lost its savour and that is the Genesis of cultism.

I see too many trends and fads within church organisations that leave me less affiliated than is necessary to be called having a membership, where things begin to coalesce around leaders or as it were personalities, mannerisms take hold – I have never been an organisation man per se, my life experiences in many ways inform my need for independence and great latitude at maintaining that.

However, the church I have attended sporadically is probably the one I have felt most comfortable in, if I were to attend another it would probably be a return to High-Church Anglicanism than seek out another charismatic denomination.

Life happens and never suddenly

The speaker’s life experiences were the template of his message, how his encounters with God brought him through an early life of parental estrangement, bereavement, sexual abuse, homosexuality, transsexuality at the point of undergoing a sex change through the moment that he got a revelation of love to forming new relationships, courtship, marriage, parenthood and now he is about to be a grandfather.

There were no moments of the suddenly or instant but a process, the humour and his way with words made very difficult subjects accessible and the delivery allowed for everyone to find a way to relate in different ways.

His message was not an ex-gay message, he did not repudiate the past but gave relevance to how the past could help appreciate the present and guide in times of challenges.

Knowledge and revelation

I liked his example of the difference between knowledge and revelation – If one were in a dark room and were told it contained amazing works of art on the walls, you could believe the story and probably be convinced by the narrator but that is knowledge, when the light is switched on in that room – knowledge becomes an experience, a revelation, an encounter.

We all need encounters with God in our Christian life; it would help that we journal these encounters to keep us in remembrance of how we have been touched because we have as part of our humanity the inability to imprint well those encounters to maintain our confidence in being able to meet ever increasing challenges in the Christian walk.

Between loving and using

These encounters are should be clearly differentiated from the typical, in his words; “I’m sorry, forgive me, give me, hurry up” relationships; created on what one pastor so succinctly put up on Facebook the other day – Love God and Use Money, not the other way round.

That interchange of “Love” and “Use” is what determines the success that one makes of their religion and the ability to meet challenges with the power that is on offer to live wholesome victorious lives.

By the time he came to end of his message, I walked away with an impartation, the kind he hoped to offer which was hoping that something from his life would in some way add to our lives to help us understand our humanity and core message of Christianity.

My takeaways

It is part of human nature to have appetites but we can chose to fulfil them our way but God offers the best means for satisfying those appetites; if we find ourselves running from God rather than running to Him, we are on the wrong path.

Obviously, each individual who heard him would have to take from his message what helps them, but I can say that I am glad for hearing Sy Rogers [1] tell his story and it was one that gave me a kind of hope I have never before thought within grasp.

However, he had some quotes [2] that would keep the message in our consciousness long after the encounter and I found a list of them that I heard during his talk.

“God would rather have you messy than not have you at all.”

“Sure, God will take you like you are, but He will take you further.”

“There’s a big difference between what you think you know about God versus an experience with Him.”

“Change is not your goal—that’s an inevitable byproduct of growth. Growing in God is your great goal. As you grow things can change.”

I was blessed. Thank you.

Postscript

There is every possibility and in fact, reality, that Sy Rogers is dogged with controversy, some will choose to define him by his past but it does not make his story any less relevant to those who search for knowledge and truth of how someone has gained a fulfilling life experience in the midst of difficult choices, circumstances and situations.

I will not call Sy Rogers ex-gay, former gay or any other label, in Christianity everyone is a former something, the question is what are you now, in spite of your past?

So, I have referenced his biography [3] from this site and it is incumbent on the individual to use knowledge with a sense of wisdom and discernment.

Reference

[1] Sy Rogers Communications - International Communicator and Minister

[2] Sy Rogers - Quotes

[3] Sy Rogers | Ex-gayTruth.com