Submitted as a comment by Junior Burchall in response to a commenter
There’s so much that I could take apart in your response (the false equating of homosexuality with paedophilia; the focus on anal sex, which effectively erases the reality of women who love and have sex with women; the pseudo-fact that ‘most homosexuals in the first world belong to the upper social and economic strata’ in their home nations – I’d love to see the data on that!), but I think I’ll narrow my focus a bit and deal with, as you say, ‘our ancestral experience’.
Allow me to take you on a quick tour of what our family was into on the continent…..well before the first European landed there. Your whole ‘it’s against nature’ argument is at best, intellectually dishonest. I mean, nature has ingenious ways of allocating the limited resources found on the planet in ways that will ensure optimal species balance, infertility and same-gender interactions are but two of the built-in mechanisms that allow the ecological balance to be maintained, …and, let’s be real: we humans have always used our body parts for the achievement of multiple aims – hands for masturbation, mouths for cunnilingus and fellatio, etc etc, etc –, so are we to conclude that these pleasurable practices should be done away with simply because the body part in question was not primarily designed for this purpose?
Afrocentric homophobes (an oxymoron if there ever was one!) are fond of claiming that homosexuality was the result of an alien cultural incursion and that, prior to the arrival of the whites and Arabs, nary a batty bwoy could be found…seen, seen…..yet, among the Maale of southern Ethiopia, men who took on female roles and had sexual relationships were called ASHTIME. Among the Meru (of Kenya), same-gender loving [SGL] relationships were seen as normal. indeed, some Meru who occupied positions of religious leadership (they were known as MUGAWE) often wore women’s clothes and hairstyles. they were also sometimes married to men. These PRECOLONIAL expressions of sexuality and gender-identity fly in the face of impassioned pronouncements within the ‘conscious’ community that SGL is un-Afrikan.
Prior to the invasions – first by the Arabs and then by the whites – our Ancestors understood that Spirit is in all things and manifests itself in ways too numerous to mention. as such, they saw sexual expression as fluid, rather than fixed, and were not disturbed in the slightest by SGL spiritual manifestation. A similar worldview can be seen among the Red Earth Peoples (so-called ‘native Americans’).
Ironically, the ‘either/or’ essentialist dichotomies that are presently being misapplied as logical arguments by some Black folks were actually the gifts of the lesser minds with bigger weapons of destruction against whom they – the ‘conscious’ – CLAIM to stand in defiance.
A point of disagreement, Brother Daniels: since gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people are most definitely to be counted amongst those who would self-identify as Black – and have been a part of OUR continental and Diasporan community from the beginning – there is no separation whatsoever between the Black struggle and the recognition of gay and lesbian humanity/ equality, the struggle is one and the same….and to embrace any other view is to put paid to any genuine aspirations for the creation of a revolutionary, liberatory pan-African movement.
I await your reply, Brother.
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