PART TWO: MORAL AND CULTURAL UPHEAVALS
A specter is haunting Africa; the specter of LGBTQ. All the powers of Africa, have entered to ditch this specter. Bishops and clergymen, Kings and elders, journalists and legislators. Religious radicals and cultural critics. Heretofore, the traditions of the past moral and cultural negligence weigh like the alps on the Pan-African deities. Homosexual misery is in one mouth the expression of African misery, and in another is a protestation against her real culture. LGBTQ is the moan of a dying culture, the sensation of a cultureless world, as it is the spirit of the cultural destructors. It is the opium of the western culture. This is the moment that represents the limit of Africa’s civilization, at the same time points to new direction. Such is a typical cultural transition that if we so allow ourselves to be compelled, to consider the past and present with eagle eye of thought in order to come into realization of our actual position.
In reality, this is part of moral action. To introspectively look inside our previous cultural afflictions and compare to the present notorious advancement we have solely pursued. An inflicted civilization, however, becomes confused at such a moment, for every cultural change becomes a moral burden. To a new product of social justice and liberal concordat.
Yet we want to erect a memorial to our next generation, so that they may find again, in our struggle, the situations where we made wise and foolish decisions. And there could be no more a sacred venture for this memorial than the restoration of our own cultural and moral values.
This argument is independent of any religious sentiment. Heretofore, all moral codes have been addressed to only biblical credo. Nevertheless, some are still soul-searching on legal affinities. But there is nothing original in the content of morality and culture. For all are transcendence, in the realms of a pure mutual-organismic existence. Morality and culture are in themselves original, within their pure reasonable faculties. Legality on the other hand is a burnt document, with ashes that buffer our cultural soil. Thus, the imperative side of morality and culture stripped from all jurisprudence returns to it pristine source. The craze for legality on moral and cultural inceptions is a manifestation of colonial decadence, and the decadence of colonialism is the ascendency of imperialism.
Henceforth, will there be discussions of European thought and culture? The will-to-power and the painstaking politics. LGBTQ is an address to all Africans, and in particular to the culture-bearing stratums of Pan-Africanism. It summons the Sub-Saharans to a world-historical struggle of a century and half duration. Africa will partake in this struggle either as a participant or a booty for marauding powers from without. If it is to act, and not merely suffer in this series of homosexual and pansexual wars, it must be corporate.
The African culture is suffering from disease, and the prolongation of this disease is the prolongation of American conditions in Africa. Is either Africa will overcome this homosexual battle, or her culture would be wiped entirely out of the face of the earth. The conclusions, from either legal or moral maxim, therefore, must not be arbitrary, for it is not a subject for choosing or rejecting, but absolutely scratching the inflicted minds with sharp moral consciousness with which to take part in this final stages of civilization. The woes of homosexuality must be condemned. For equality doesn’t mean the craving for misery. Minority is not a natural phenomenon; it is the basic unit for progressive rhetoric and the manifestation of liberal insurgence. The integration of homosexuals in societies is not subject for plans, but for cultural distortions. It needs not to be recognized in the human faculty and the perpetuation of American liberal-progressive thinking is entirely incompatible here.
Not equality and social justice, not respect for minority and tolerance but brotherhood only can liberate those disintegrated souls for homosexuals. The physical inflictions and emotional imbalances must be enough to appeal to their indulgence. There is no history of sexual orientation; sexual orientation is in itself a menace to history. Homosexuality is not part of any culture, but in itself, a culture on its own. At first, it was immoral consciousness, drained from the shrines of barbaric deities. Now, it has been sensitized, with fashionable egoistic humane zeal, partly to aggrandize feeble laws, partly to bandwagon some pitiful minorities for political ambitions. The change of sex is not predetermined. The rules of genetics do not permit congenial alterations. The consciousness that sex is changeable is in itself an emotional development. Emotions whcih solely develop from one weakest faculty of personhood to deter the comfortable growth of one’s own superiority. In the process, one is convinced to undermine her genetic hierarchies by impeding the transitional hormones to obey some sets of mere pseudo-scientific theories.
Homosexuals are promised legal and health vicissitudes; vicissitudes from liberal conciliations. It is solely politicized; dumped in the bins of activism and quasi-social justice rhetoricians. For a lion will never roar in the jungle just because it wants to change its alimentary canal in order to be able to eat grass. The sentimental uproar to marry a dog is not as prudent as resenting to be allowed to go emotionally bankrupt. Those who have happily had their generation determined must tell us why they are fighting for those who don’t want their genes to successfully be passed on. Thus, this LGBTQ, in as much Africans are concerned is a renewal of war-declaration; a cultural war which will exhaust all the creams in their culture.
But there haven’t been any betrayers, knowing that you are Black is a betrayal on it own. And that is why we must blame those who borrow from our oppressors to feed us. Knowing very well that there is a huge price to be paid. Ask, also the traitors of our existence, the miserable part-politicians whose tenure of office depends upon their continued serviceability to the imperial forces. For they thought it was over. Now every professed politician will stake with his fate, look upon what is to come, to determine where to stand. The gravity of this makes it suspicious, for it goes beyond mere legalization of it. The contempt of it staggering, almost as if there would be cascading condescension.
Spengler was right when he wrote, “the individual life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wished to escape from history or give his life for it”. There wouldn’t be a time to reckon our lives as Africans much better than this. As to whether we are fully committed to ourselves or not. Or even have a role to play in this reverberating global world or not, depends on courage and strong convictions. When we shunned our culture to embrace that of the West, a new world began for us. Our history and culture were butchered and buried. Now, casting our eyes around, back and front, we’ve gotten nothing but mere religious fanaticism and domineering constitutions. That we have lost our identity, and will definitely lose this battle. Individualism was chosen over common family values which binds us together, human right was chosen over collective dignity, modernity was chosen over tradition, self-indulgence was chosen over self-respect; and now here comes the consequence.
The faculties of failed institutions like religion are what we think can appease the gods of homosexuality. For over two centuries, religious institutions, in Africa have constantly been part of our miseries. Mystical sentiments that strip us from our spiritual attachments, civil wars being fought for mere religious upheaval, and fundamentalisms that demonize our personhoods. We were swayed by Western luxuriously fashioned self-aggrandizing values which at its core, have torn their people apart. Journalists and academics, politicians, and media institutions have all done their part in selling to us the woes and flaws in western-cultures at a cheap price. The beautification of pornographic materials, which has prostitutionalize our women, the invasion of feminism and women empowerment, that ousted our women from homes, pushed our children into day-care frustrations, and surrendered our men to the mercies of misogynistic caricatures are the worse and the least we could get.
At this juncture, LGBTQ has become one out of many cancerous cells of culture which will destroy almost all our moral organisms. Current approaches and confrontations would definitely not be better enough to redeem ourselves. Lawyers and academics have stepped in to demand justice for them, Pastors and Bishops have come out seeking mercy for them. They have done/doing these not because they themselves are homosexuals (some, I assume are gays and lesbians), is because they didn’t create the structures being used to defend such a people call minorities. They are minorities, so because politicians say they are. They demand justice because every country is made to embrace social justice. They have gotten right because countries are proud to claim human rights institutions.
But we will still need sober reflections. Constitutions that immune thieves and corrupt government officials can be moralized to demonize homosexuals? Laws that protect pornographic programs can be used to criminalize homosexuality? Or constitution which protects rich criminals but puts poor innocent people behind the bars is good enough to illegalize LGBTQ? At heart, we will end up reading our own death sentence from our own jurisprudence. Clergymen, church officials, Imams, Ayatollahs, and the so respective dignitaries in our societies will disappoint their fanatics. Because they themselves are suffering from western paranoia. Sodomy, child abuse, rape, and killings within temples and mosques are still clandestine juggernaut taming the spiritless souls.
This is, of course, the moment of truth it is also the turning of yet another epoch. This time with full commitment and sacrifice. As to whether we can really much LGBTQ toe-to-toe would be left for history to decide. In the meantime, we as people will have to reflect on our civilization, culture, and traditional purities to see if they really fit for cultural battles like these. We’d be better off if we start preparing to face the consequence. For another reactionary approach will be painstaking beyond our limits.