Chris Mubiru (R) with one of the Cranes' former players
FIRST READ:
Brother of Pastor Grace Kitaka , Ugandan Football star ChrisMubiru’s Sodomy saga as a precursor for the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2009: Untold story of Chris Mubiru’s sexual troubles
When Satan’s Gay devils infiltrated Uganda’s Pentecostal prosperity Churches: Remembering the Sad story of Mr Julius Lukyamuzi who was sodomised by Pastor Grace Kitaka( Chris Mubiri’s brother): Up to now the Poor victim has not got an legal redress.
Chris Mubiru’s inadvertent gay allies
Sunday, 23 December 2012 10:00 By Andrew M. Mwenda
The more the Red
Pepper publishes his pornographic pictures, the more it brings gay sex out of
the closet
Since Chris Mubiru
became a mega celebrity in Uganda,
the pro-gay rights lobby has withdrawn into resigned silence – sensing a
reversal of “the cause”. Two current members of parliament and a former one who
had written articles opposing the hang-the-gays bill for The Independent
withdrew them before we went to press. They claimed the atmosphere was too
charged and they “did not want to be misunderstood”. It is funny how fear of
being “misunderstood” i.e. moral cowardice, governs our lives. At a point when
people need to stand up in defense of their beliefs and values, they bulk.
As Red Pepper continued
its publication of Mubiru’s pornographic pictures, the anti gay lobby was
ridding unprecedented momentum. With a tidal wave of public anger on their
side, the bill may now sail through parliament easily. Pastor Martin Ssempa
took the initiative to launch his foray against gays – again making no
distinction between sex acts between two consenting adults and those of adults
with minors. To many inside and outside Uganda, the cause for gay rights
seemed lost as the pictures incite the worst homophobia in years. Yet I think
the best thing to have happened to the cause of gay rights in Uganda was Red Pepper publication
of Mubiru pictures.
The best way to fight
bigotry and prejudice is to generate public debate about the issue under
contention. Constant conversation and debate about a contentious issue promotes
the spread of knowledge which in turn fosters tolerance leading to acceptance.
When any new idea is suggested, it is initially rejected, then debated, later
accommodated and, sometimes, finally accepted. This is what we learn from
Galileo, when he first suggested that the world is round; or from Charles
Darwin, when he published his theory of evolution. In both cases, their
findings produced condemnation with the church leading the attack. After heated
debate, people began to listen more, learn and understand. Today, most
enlightened people believe the world is round.
It is for this reason
that although the subjective motivation for MP David Bahati to introduce his
anti-gays bill was bad for the gays, the objective outcome of his action will
be good for gay rights in Uganda.
The Bahati bill has generated the most debate on gay rights. With time, it will
lead to tolerance and acceptance. Many people miss this critical part of the
democratic process i.e. that society’s beliefs do not change overnight.
There is a time lag between when debate begins and when society begins to
change its prejudices.
Yet the Western world
disregards this process and insists by using blackmail (threats to cut aid) and
intimidation (through diplomatic pressure), to arm twist our governments to
change their stance. This is one way the West undermines democracy even though
it is often driven by a desire to promote it. You cannot promote tolerance by
forceful means. You do that through persuasion, which takes time. Even a
tyranny cannot change people’s beliefs over night – however stupid they may
sound – except at extremely high human cost as in China’s Cultural Revolution.
For now, we can
speculate that the Mubiru pictures will achieve the opposite effect. Rather
than promote homophobia, they are most likely going to reduce it. The Red
Pepper with pictures of Mubiru in gay sex acts sold heavily. And they have been
printing them daily for two weeks now. And this is the paradox: If people in Uganda hate
homosexuality, why are they so excited to watch gay porn? A gay friend told me
that many Ugandans, including those who speak loudest against gays, are closet
homosexuals. He claims that their homophobia is one way of hiding their true
feelings.
I suspect most homosexuals
tend to claim their community is larger than it is perhaps to overcome a sense
of isolation they feel. And this self-deception, albeit subconscious, perhaps
helps them feel they are not minority after all. In Robert Trivers most recent
book, The Folly of Fools; The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception,
this Harvard-based evolutionary biologist and socialbiologist says that our
minds are wired to engage in “confirmation bias,” which makes us seize on facts
that bolster our preconceptions and overlook contradictory data. We wittingly
and unwittingly interpret or even manipulate facts to promote our biases and
agendas.
In here lies the
complexity of human sexual (or social) psychology. Once a society prohibits
something it makes it novel and therefore intriguing. This drives people’s
curiosity – an intense desire to find out. It is less likely that if the images
were of heterosexuals, they would have attracted as much public interest as
they have done. The urge to find out, to discover the unknown, the hidden is
actually a central fact in the human desire to learn. I even suspect that the
more Ugandan public opinion speaks loudest against homosexuality, the more
young people will be tempted to experiment with it. The most drunkards tend to
come from families where alcohol drinking is rigorously prohibited. This tends
to create curiosity and thereby experimentation.
Secondly, when many
people first saw the Mubiru pictures, they were appalled and felt he should be
banished from earth. If Red Pepper continues, as it is doing now, to publish
them, people will get used to seeing men having sex with men. Initially, they
may not accept it as normal. But many will begin to tolerate it as part of the
menu of the many happenings in our country. If more gay porn of the Mubiru type
keeps hitting the newsstands in Uganda
over the next two years, by 2015, many people in this country will have grown
to accept homosexuality as normal. The best immunization against homophobia is
to have gay porn as part of the daily news menu.
What is intriguing is
the failure of the pro gay lobby in Uganda to see the coup that Red
Pepper has handed them. Instead, most of them have focused on the subjective
motivations by Red Pepper to print the pictures i.e. its self acclaimed mission
to “expose the vice”. But Red Pepper is not just exposing “the vice”. The law
of unintended consequences will apply i.e. that they are making gays sex acts
normal and thereby making homosexuality tolerated – the step on the journey to
acceptance.
