Chimamanda Adichie writes on the anti-gay law

Article written by award winning writer
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie titled 'Why can’t he
just be like everyone else?' Find it below...
I will call him Sochukwuma. A thin, smiling
boy who liked to play with us girls at the
university primary school in Nsukka. We
were young. We knew he was different, we
said, ‘he’s not like the other boys.’ But his
was a benign and unquestioned difference;
it was simply what it was. We did not have
a name for him. We did not know the word
‘gay.’ He was Sochukwuma and he was
friendly and he played oga so well that his
side always won.
In secondary school, some boys in his
class tried to throw Sochukwuma off a
second floor balcony. They were strapping
teenagers who had learned to notice, and
fear, difference. They had a name for him.
Homo. They mocked him because his hips
swayed when he walked and his hands
fluttered when he spoke. He brushed away
their taunts, silently, sometimes grinning an
uncomfortable grin. He must have wished
that he could be what they wanted him to
be. I imagine now how helplessly lonely he
must have felt. The boys often asked, “Why
can’t he just be like everyone else?”
Possible answers to that question include
‘because he is abnormal,’ ‘because he is a
sinner, ‘because he chose the lifestyle.’ But the
truest answer is ‘We don’t know.’ There is
humility and humanity in accepting that there
are things we simply don’t know. At the age of
8, Sochukwuma was obviously different. It was
not about sex, because it could not possibly
have been – his hormones were of course not
yet fully formed – but it was an awareness of
himself, and other children’s awareness of him,
as different. He could not have ‘chosen the
lifestyle’ because he was too young to do so.
And why would he – or anybody – choose to be
homosexual in a world that makes life so
difficult for homosexuals?
The new law that criminalizes homosexuality is
popular among Nigerians. But it shows a failure
of our democracy, because the mark of a true
democracy is not in the rule of its majority but
in the protection of its minority – otherwise mob
justice would be considered democratic. The law
is also unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a
strange priority in a country with so many real
problems. Above all else, however, it is unjust.
Even if this was not a country of abysmal
electricity supply where university graduates are
barely literate and people die of easily-treatable
causes and Boko Haram commits casual mass
murders, this law would still be unjust. We
cannot be a just society unless we are able to
accommodate benign difference, accept benign
difference, live and let live. We may not
understand homosexuality, we may find it
personally abhorrent but our response cannot be
to criminalize it.
A crime is a crime for a reason. A crime has
victims. A crime harms society. On what basis is
homosexuality a crime? Adults do no harm to
society in how they love and whom they love.
This is a law that will not prevent crime, but
will, instead, lead to crimes of violence: there are
already, in different parts of Nigeria, attacks on
people ‘suspected’ of being gay. Ours is a
society where men are openly affectionate with
one another. Men hold hands. Men hug each
other. Shall we now arrest friends who share a
hotel room, or who walk side by side? How do
we determine the clunky expressions in the law
– ‘mutually beneficial,’ ‘directly or indirectly?’
Many Nigerians support the law because they
believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. The
Bible can be a basis for how we choose to live
our personal lives, but it cannot be a basis for
the laws we pass, not only because the holy
books of different religions do not have equal
significance for all Nigerians but also because
the holy books are read differently by different
people. The Bible, for example, also condemns
fornication and adultery and divorce, but they
are not crimes.
For supporters of the law, there seems to be
something about homosexuality that sets it
apart. A sense that it is not ‘normal.’ If we are
part of a majority group, we tend to think others
in minority groups are abnormal, not because
they have done anything wrong, but because we
have defined normal to be what we are and
since they are not like us, then they are
abnormal. Supporters of the law want a certain
semblance of human homogeneity. But we
cannot legislate into existence a world that does
not exist: the truth of our human condition is
that we are a diverse, multi-faceted species. The
measure of our humanity lies, in part, in how we
think of those different from us. We cannot –
should not – have empathy only for people who
are like us.
Some supporters of the law have asked – what
is next, a marriage between a man and a dog?’
Or ‘have you seen animals being gay?’ (Actually,
studies show that there is homosexual behavior
in many species of animals.) But, quite simply,
people are not dogs, and to accept the premise
– that a homosexual is comparable to an animal
– is inhumane. We cannot reduce the humanity
of our fellow men and women because of how
and who they love. Some animals eat their own
kind, others desert their young. Shall we follow
those examples, too?
Other supporters suggest that gay men sexually
abuse little boys. But pedophilia and
homosexuality are two very different things.
There are men who abuse little girls, and women
who abuse little boys, and we do not presume
that they do it because they are heterosexuals.
Child molestation is an ugly crime that is
committed by both straight and gay adults (this
is why it is a crime: children, by virtue of being
non-adults, require protection and are unable to
give sexual consent).
There has also been some nationalist posturing
among supporters of the law. Homosexuality is
‘unafrican,’ they say, and we will not become
like the west. The west is not exactly a
homosexual haven; acts of discrimination
against homosexuals are not uncommon in the
US and Europe. But it is the idea of
‘unafricanness’ that is truly insidious.
Sochukwuma was born of Igbo parents and had
Igbo grandparents and Igbo great-grandparents.
He was born a person who would romantically
love other men. Many Nigerians know somebody
like him. The boy who behaved like a girl. The
girl who behaved like a boy. The effeminate
man. The unusual woman. These were people
we knew, people like us, born and raised on
African soil. How then are they ‘unafrican?’
If anything, it is the passage of the law itself
that is ‘unafrican.’ It goes against the values of
tolerance and ‘live and let live’ that are part of
many African cultures. (In 1970s Igboland, Area
Scatter was a popular musician, a man who
dressed like a woman, wore makeup, plaited his
hair. We don’t know if he was gay – I think he
was – but if he performed today, he could
conceivably be sentenced to fourteen years in
prison. For being who he is.) And it is informed
not by a home-grown debate but by a cynically
borrowed one: we turned on CNN and heard
western countries debating ‘same sex marriage’
and we decided that we, too, would pass a law
banning same sex marriage. Where, in Nigeria,
whose constitution defines marriage as being
between a man and a woman, has any
homosexual asked for same-sex marriage?
This is an unjust law. It should be repealed.
Throughout history, many inhumane laws have
been passed, and have subsequently been
repealed. Barack Obama, for example, would not
be here today had his parents obeyed American
laws that criminalized marriage between blacks
and whites.
An acquaintance recently asked me, ‘if you
support gays, how would you have been born?’
Of course, there were gay Nigerians when I was
conceived. Gay people have existed as long as
humans have existed. They have always been a
small percentage of the human population. We
don’t know why. What matters is this:
Sochukwuma is a Nigerian and his existence is
not a crime.