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LETTER TO THE EDITOR, NEW VISION 12/02/2003
Muniini is not convincing about homosexuality!
SIR� In his letter �Homosexuality is as African as the baobab tree� in The Monitor on February 10, Dr Muniini K. Mulera of Toronto listed a number of �towering giants of Western thought and civilisation� he alleges were homosexual.
Unfortunately, all of them are dead: We will never know how many of them would have taken issue with him for stating categorically that they were homosexual had they been living. I wonder why he was careful not to choose examples of the living who would come out to corroborate his statements.
If Muniini�s allegation about those men is true, it only shows that homosexuality is normal in many respects. This, of course, is as true as saying that the practice of, for example, adultery is normal, which would not be worth writing about. I hope Muniini is not going to urge us to respect adultery, untruthfulness, stealing and many other similar forms of human behaviour merely because they are normal in the sense of being as old as the human race.
That homosexuality has been in Africa for a long time is true. If it had not, we would not have names for it in our African languages. But how extensive and how respectable and acceptable it is, is another matter. In Africa, it is not true that homosexuality has at any time been extensive or respectable. There must be good reasons why African traditions despise it and find it unacceptable; and some of these reasons are not hard to find. But Dr Muniini and such other learned people like Dr Sylvia Tamale (The New Vision Wednesday, February 5) are now saying it is time the practice was respected. Beyond saying that some great men have practised it (Muniini) or that the West recognises it (Tamale), they have not given reasons to persuade us to their position. For so long as they give us no convincing reason, their pleas ought to be ignored as passions of people who believe and are overwhelmed that everything Western is right or is automatically applicable in a context such as ours.
In my view, homosexuality is a symptom of a so!
cial dis
ease that is afflicting Western society. Human interest in sex is related to the amount of discovery that can be made in it. Prolonged exposure of the normal sex ritual in pornography and commercial advertising has exhausted all potential areas for actual sexual discovery in the West. Consequently many in those countries can no longer be thrilled by normal sex. They are desperately experimenting with so many other things including sexual objects, homosexuality and even sex with animals. We do not need to follow the West in such blunders.
Y. Mpairwe
Naguru Medical Laboratory
Published on: Wednesday, 12th February, 2003 |
