The BBC reports that two men jailed in Cameroon for “looking” gay have been finally acquitted.
Apparently …
the way the men dressed… spoke and the fact that they drank Bailey’s Irish Cream proved they were gay
Wow, so everybody who has a Bailey’s Irish Cream is Gay, hence by implication drinking a Bailey’s results in a prison sentence in Cameroon. As, I’ve often said, just when you begin to think that nobody could be that stupid, up pops somebody to prove you quite wrong.
Well, the good news is that the insanity has been finally overturned ….
An appeals court in Cameroon has overturned the conviction of two men jailed in 2011 for homosexual acts, their lawyer has said.
Alice Nkom said she was pleased because the judge who convicted them had been influenced by “stereotypes”.
While this is indeed good news, the fact remains, being gay results in a jail sentence in Cameroon and so many who truly are gay are still locked up for no good moral or ethical reason, but simply because they were born that way. To our great shame this is perhaps a product of our legacy. In the early 1950s, the UK police actively enforced laws prohibiting sexual behaviour between men. This policy led to a number of high-profile arrests and trials, and as we all know, one of those involved was the noted scientist, mathematician, and war-time code-breaker Alan Turing. What happened to him was quite frankly appalling.
Well, times have moved on, we have finally worked out that doing this was wrong, but alas such superstitions still prevail in many other places, so it is important to shine a spotlight and expose it.
The reality is that some people are born gay, it is not a learned behaviour, so any form of discrimination is akin to discrimination of the basis of race or some other physical attribute such as gender or even height. If you are appalled at the very idea of jailing people because they are white, or tall, then you should also be equally appalled at the idea of jailing them for being gay … hopefully you are.
Once upon a time slavery was deemed a jolly good idea, but thankfully such thinking has passed. It was possible to point at religious texts such as the bible or Quran and use them to justify slavery, because both are essentially pro slavery books from cover to cover. The bible contains lots of instructions within the old testament telling you whom you could enslave and how you should beat your slaves, all they way through to the New Testament when Paul encourages slaves to obey their masters; not one hint exists that slavery is a rather bad idea. This of course is what you might expect if it was all simply the product of humans, it reflects the thinking of the time. If on the other had it was actually divinely inspired as is claimed you would expect some statement against slavery, but no, just a stunning silence.
So why the jump from gay to slavery, what is the connection? It is simple, many justify their homophobia on the sole basis that they are religious and the bible or Quran tells them it is wrong, they have no other justification. Well, today these same individuals would be completely appalled at the very idea of slavery and find the entire concept to be abhorrent, but how do they know this, what is the source of that view? Clearly it is not the bible because that is, as I explained, pro-slavery. Instead they have permitted reasons along with their natural empathy to prevail and so have labelled all the pro-slavery stuff in the bible as bullshit and happily ignore it.
In exactly the same manner, they now also need to permit their natural empathy for other humans who simply have a different sexual orientation to prevail, and to label the biblical homophobia as bullshit, just as they do so right now for all the pro-slavery biblical bullshit.