HOMOSEXUALITY: A return to our roots?

“What Catholicism and most other modern Christian churches vigorously deny is just how much homosexuality was not tolerated, although practiced by many of its founding fathers and the degree of toleration- if not veneration, that it received.”

Yuki Choe, writer for Reflections Asia.

Homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation, along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, within the heterosexual-homosexual continuum (with asexuality sometimes considered a fourth).

Homosexuality and Bisexuality are ubiquitous throughout the world. They exist in all cultures, and at all times in history. Relics of our evolutionary history, homosexuality and bisexuality are very commonly practiced nearly in every culture, whether tolerated or not. The differences among cultures are the openness with which it is practiced.

Some degree of bisexuality, in the absence of cultural taboos, is not only extremely common in men, but is probably the rule! “Homosexuality of convenience” which occurs in the absence of available female partners (such as is commonly seen in prisons) is widespread even in cultures that frown homosexuality. Most men, at some time in their lives experience homoerotic feelings towards other men-whether they admit it or not.

According to Masters and Johnson, the percentage of men who have had a homoerotic experience to orgasm is amazingly high in America. By the age of 49, 60% of American men have had such an experience.

The argument here though, was, and has always been, that homosexuality is un-African and that it has never existed in any prominent way in African societies. Most Africans today argue that Western nations, whilst they denigrate certain African sexualities like polygamy, are the ones responsible for past and current attempts to foist acceptance of homosexuality on African countries and their peoples, a practice many believe to be “Western” or “European”.

History of homosexuality in Africa

Along with the moralisms of Traditional African religions, Christianity and Islam –which were brought to Africa by European missionaries and Arab traders respectively– facilitated homophobia because they regard homosexuality as sin. Today religion shapes many African social and political designs. Churches in Africa are major players in the production of homophobia. According to an article; African Myths about homosexuality, churches here are the most dominant homophobic institutions. Not all African and African-American churches, however, are intolerant to homosexuals.

In pre-colonial Africa, gender variance and sexual inversion included ritual incest and celibacy, such as the Mbonga, a female guardian whose celibacy protected the Shona chief, and the chibanda, a caste of male diviners possessed by female spirits and referred to in early European sources as “passive sodomies”. Among the Lovedu people, the gender inversion involved women. The “rain queen” kept her virginity, but married other girls. In the nineteenth century, Ndebele and Ngoni warriors introduced the practice of ritual male-male sexuality as part of war preparations.

In pre-modern African states, Africans did not conform to the idealized heterosexuality that contemporary African leaders, like Mugabe, prefer to claim as “African Tradition”.

Homosexuality in modern day Africa

From Uganda, where homosexuality is punishable by life imprisonment, to Sierra Leone, where a lesbian activist was raped and stabbed to death on her desk last year. In Kenya, sadly, homosexuals are exposed to both extremes; charged to imprisonment, as well as beaten up in public. Homophobia has long trapped gays in a dangerous, closeted life. With no places to meet openly, no groups to join, it seems sometimes that gay men and lesbians in Africa don't exist at all.

“The only answer is education,” said Linda Baumann, 21, who grew up in a tribal community and was expelled from it when she revealed she was a lesbian. She now lives in Windhoek and hosts a radio program about gay issues. “We have to have courage and stick up for ourselves.”

It is important to appreciate the real roots of our current homophobia. There is little connection between the revulsion we have towards homosexuality with our pre-colonial ancestors who, despite having strict rules that governed all sexualities, did not really see homosexuality as ‘evil’ or deride gays as “worse than dogs and pigs”, as wrote one respondent.

In fact, the roots of our homophobia can actually be traced, paradoxically, to the influence of European colonial rule! If we want to argue that homosexuality is ‘un-African’, it is better not to use “tradition” as a justification for our homophobia because it was actually European colonists who introduced homophobic sentiments in colonial Africa.