Ebenezer Obadare On Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage

 



Editor’s note: Legalisation of same-sex marriage by the United States Supreme Court has spurred the latest global surge of interest in the topic. In Nigeria, the two most notable reactions trailing the news were ridicule and condemnation. Talking about this kind of approach, the Naij.com columnist Ebenezer Obadare says arguments against same-sex relationships are well-known and starting to wear out. Is there anything wrong at all with two consenting adults feeling mutual attraction?
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Naij.com.
Story highlights:
— “Should a society prevent an individual or a group of individuals from an act when there is no threat- real or apparent- to it, i.e. the society, from the pursuit of such an activity?”
— Same-sex marriage, as seen by Nigerian columnists 
— “It is difficult to find a cogent argument for the proscription of homosexuality”

Dissecting the “gay debate”

The extreme moral panic that the United States Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right has provoked in Nigeria is not exactly unexpected. After all, over the past decade or so, if there is one issue around which social agents who on all other matters remain at daggers drawn have forged common cause, it is that of homosexuality and gay rights. It is this appalling consensus, for instance, that sees ordinarily well-meaning and decent people on the same side of an argument as Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, two obnoxious symbols of repression who have turned the controversy over gay rights into a political slot machine.
Yet, while the ferocity of the condemnation could have been anticipated, the continued stagnation of what, for want of a better word, we must dignify with the term ‘debate’ is cause for profound regret. This is because, far from being a ‘simple’ matter of who is allowed to sleep with or love who, the gay debate, properly understood, goes right to the heart of the question of the natural rights of the individual, and what mandate, if any, society or its incarnation in the state is allowed to exercise over them. Should a society prevent an individual or a group of individuals from an act when there is no threat- real or apparent- to it, i.e. the society, from the pursuit of such an activity? That the issue is currently not being framed as such across Africa, and that many opinion leaders so-called are allowed to get away with shoddy thinking and, worse, rank bigotry, is a matter for deep concern.

Nigerians react in a typical, expected way

Two random examples from a more or less homogenous Nigerian commentariat will suffice. In his piece, ‘Come away, my brothers and sisters’, which appeared in the Vanguard of Friday, July 10, Owei Lakemfa regurgitates the standard libel against homosexuality without bothering to tell us exactly how homosexuality or same-sex marriage menaces us as a society. For example, he asks: “How are we expected to accept such culture as human rights when they (sic) assault our collective rights?” but then fails to describe the nature of the presumed assault and precisely how our rights are being assailed.
This pattern of flagging a presumed danger without specifying its source and substance is repeated throughout the rest of the article. Thus, when Mr. Lakemfa declares that “what we are witnessing is the collapse of the family system in their society,” he does not tell us how this is the fault of gays or those who advocate same-sex marriage. How can those who earnestly seek accommodation under the umbrella of marriage possibly be seen as a cause of its collapse?



In opposition to one ostensibly tolerant towards gays, Mr. Lakemfa expresses a fervent desire “to build a new human-centered society.” The question is: Why can’t this society of his dreams include gays? What exactly is the problem with homosexuality and what is it that makes the idea of having a homosexual as a compatriot so abhorrent?
Mr. Lakemfa would most likely retort that, first, homosexuality is contrary to “African culture,” and second, that it violates the injunction in the “good book.” The evident incoherence of this ‘argument’ has not deterred many of those who should know better from advancing it. First, to say something is ‘ours’ in the way ‘culture’ is naively mobilized by Mr. Lakemfa has nothing to do with its validity or tenability. For example, polygyny has been widely practiced in these parts since time immemorial, yet, no one defends it these days in the name of cultural authenticity. Accordingly, it seems to me that the proper question is not whether homosexuality is ‘African’ or ‘American’ or ‘European’, whatever that means, but whether it can be defended- or disqualified, as the case may be- on the grounds of human flourishing. The issue is not whether homosexuality is ‘imported’ (not that it would matter, and by the way, research clearly shows it isn’t) or extraneous, but whether it is something that increases the quantum of human happiness. Those, like Mr. Lakemfa, who casually dangle same-sex marriage as a threat to human survivability need to show how the union of two men or two women either prevents the rest of us from going about our daily business, or endangers heterosexual procreation between a man and a woman.
As for the argument that the “good book” forbids it, doesn’t an appeal to the presumed authority of a text of exogenous vintage undercut the case for cultural exceptionalism? In any case, what does it matter what any book, good nor not good, says about an issue? Isn’t the whole point of a public debate the opportunity to challenge and put texts under pressure by submitting them to the test of logic and rational scrutiny? If the “good book” is now to be made the basis of public morality in Africa, why don’t we just say so? And while we are at it, shouldn’t we make sure to reinstate the numerous ludicrous and barbarous injunctions in it?
The Nation’s editorial of Sunday, July 5, titled “Adam and Steve” echoes the same puerile banalities, raising the absurd fear that “if same-sex relation is acceptable, people may begin to ask what is wrong with polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia and other sexual deviations.” Pray, by what logic does any right thinking person equate an association between two consenting adults with pedophilia, which is the criminal abuse of a child by an adult? Where is the abuse in an affair between two freely consenting men or women? And really, come to think of it, what exactly is wrong with polygamy? Shouldn’t those who now speak glibly about our “time-tested values” be trumpeting it in defense of the same?

Is there anything “wrong” at all?

One thing is clear: the debate over homosexuality, having forced itself to the front burner in recent times, is not going to disappear anytime soon. The 5-4 ruling by the US Supreme Court suggests that, contrary to what has been circulating in the Nigerian media, and even though opinion polls track a growing increase in support among Americans, it remains a divisive issue even in that country. As we speak, evangelicals and other conservative groups, mobilizing arguments not particularly different from the ones critiqued here, continue to mobilize against it.
All of which raises the critical question: Why, despite the strength and intensity of the opposition to it, has same-sex marriage apparently won over a growing majority of Americans and Europeans? The answer is simple. Over decades, if not centuries, most people in these societies have come to recognize that, other than the argument that the Bible forbids it (so what?), or that it makes some people uncomfortable (deal with it), it is difficult to find a cogent argument for the proscription of homosexuality. That, and the fact that within the same period, science, in a still unfolding process, has illuminated hitherto unknown aspects of human sexuality. This is the reason why, whether in Europe or North America, the same society that once literally stoned gays now fetes them, and this is what I am calling here the triumph of an argument.
Among other things, the gay debate confronts us in Africa with fundamental questions regarding identity, sociality, and the width of the democratic assembly. Because it raises the essential question of who is welcome within the democratic assembly and what it means to live in a free society, it is a debate we ought to embrace using the tools of logic. The current refusal of our leading commentators to pick up the critical gauntlet is a cause for disappointment.



Ebenezer Obadare is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.