Nigeria, U.S. others on collision course over gay rights

ObamaClerics back Senate’s stance on homosexuality

NIGERIA and the United States (U.S.) may be heading for a significant diplomatic confrontation regarding the issue of homosexuality and lesbianism, which the Nigerian Senate recently criminalised in line with the country’s primordial values, beliefs and Nigerians’ deep-rooted resentment of unorthodox sexual practices.

Both President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have taken critical steps to serve notice to countries like Nigeria where homosexuality is a crime, indicating the readiness of the U.S. government to diplomatically fight such countries on the matter, as a human rights issue.

One immediate area that this fight may emerge is in a new U.S. global funding from which Nigerian civil society groups could benefit. U.S. government sources said yesterday that in countries like Nigeria where homosexuality has become a crime eventually, the U.S. would fund civil society groups to defend the “rights” of the homosexuals.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishop Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) has lauded the Nigerian Senate on its decision to criminalise same sex marriage in the country.

A statement issued at the end of the administrative board meeting of the CBCN in Abuja by Most Rev. Felix Alaba-Job, said that the church was emphatic in its condemnation of same sex union, stressing that it is against the Bible and the Nigerian people’s culture.

Also, Vicar and Archdeacon of Ikoyi, Diocese of Lagos (Anglican Communion), Ven. Samuel Igein Isemede, has described homosexuals and lesbians as troubled people problem, who need both physical and spiritual healing.

Isemede said the church had the responsibility of providing spiritual healing to homosexuals and lesbians.

The CBCN wrote: “We note that the Senate took this courageous and hope-inducing decision in the face of considerable internal and international pressure to do the exact opposite. Nigeria has in fact since then been directly asked by some Western countries to reverse this decision or forfeit certain aids and support.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Neither Catholicism nor Islam originated in Nigeria. The west, and the Anglican and Catholic churches took Nigerians into slavery, then imposed Catholicism, and now fundamentalistic Catholicism is what your elites adhere to, those Nigerians, with money, education and political clout. That is all cultural rape and all very sad, the legacy of British religious inhumanity in past centuries. But no human being deserves persecution for their sexual nature or who they want to love.

    Nigeria is wrong to persecute, even to kill minorities. There is nothing Christian or admirable in that. Learn to live and let live, and then thrive.

    The world is changed. Religious fanatics are on a power trip, arrogant and utterly wrong whether in US or Nigeria or elsewhere. Think again. God doesn’t want this. Jesus doesn’t want this. Thou shalt not kill. Old Testament! Love one another New Testament. If you are a believer then believe in love, not in the persecutions your catholic priest or bishop preaches with his human feet of clay and his arrogant disobedience to god’s love.

  2. I guess my point, Olujasmine, is that both the clerics and the Senate are engaging in oppressing a minority group through a combination of bigotry and hatefulness. Also just because a law is enacted does not make it legitimate in terms of universal human rights. The new law is an evil law.

    I realise as well that it takes extraordinary courage for those Nigerians who are opposed to these measures to speak out against them, as they may be punished for so doing.

    Quite sad.

    I am not at all versed in Nigerian pre-colonial history and culture, but I seriously doubt that the previous tribal cultures were nearly as bad as the religious hypocrisy that the Colonial oppressors brought along and saddled your peoples with. Same goes for Islam, and again I don’t know the exact story of how it came with the Arabs to your northern regions.

    What Hilary Clinton was affirming to the UN is that human rights are held to be universal, and they trump what governments or churches want to put into place.

    Majorities who oppress their minorities do not exemplify an enlightened form of democracy, but rather they put the chill of fear into the entire society.

    And such enforced conformity is deadly for any society, stamping out creativity, innovation, freedom within the mind, and leads in the end to a very stagnant and non-progressive society. Also that would also be very sad.

    Despite a horrible colonial past, and the religious indoctrination that went along with that, I would hope that Nigeria will be able to eventually rise above those handicaps.

    If you are personally a Christian who follows the example of Jesus that is well and good, provided that you are able to be non judgemental of those different from yourself. Otherwise it boils down to “Christian in name only”.
    But to follow the true example of Jesus is very very difficult and most professed Christians do not have the courage to live that example, preferring in their hypocrisy to judge others with the mote still in their own eye, so to speak.

    Christian fundamentalism, or for that matter any of the religions that operate with fundamentalist fanaticism against others unlike themselves are a major evil force on this planet. We should all be speaking for. tolerance, diversity and respect for the individual and his or her dignity, and basic human rights.

    I hope my “point”, further argued here, will be of some help to you in putting your own private personal perspective, whatever it may be, into a larger global context. And thanks for asking! All the best!