By Albert Amenya

A few weeks ago, a disgusting video of four boys engaging in sex popped up on the internet and elicited mixed reactions among internet users. Netizens from every nook and cranny were unsurprising and critical of the young men and they publicly chastised them for engaging in an unnatural act. The clip was so nauseating that I could not watch it to the end. To rub salt on fresh wounds, the clip emerged from my ancestral home Gusiiland.

That day I sat on my balcony with soda in one hand and popcorn on the other as I analyzed the pattern of mixed reactions in a court of public opinion. Almost everyone took exception to the boys’ behaviour though some defended them.

Many including myself are still naïve in matters of sexuality. Until recently, I did not believe that gays existed. When I first heard about gays, I thought it was one of those tales our grandmother used to tell us while growing up in the village. I was not interested to read about gays because I considered them obscene.

I came to countenance the existence of gays when a preacher referred me to Bible verses that prove their existence from prehistoric times. I came to learn that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of gays. Personally, I have never met anyone who confessed that he is gay or even lesbian. I only see them on foreign television channels.

My interest in the gay subject developed with the public debate that followed the nauseating Kisii footage. The demand for the rights of those young men by some netizens who defended them was significant.

I am among those who believed that gays are not human beings. I used to say gays don’t deserve even animal rights because even animals don’t do what they do but I came to realize I was wrong because gays are indeed humans. During those early days of the debate on gay rights across Africa, there were those who were of the opinion that gays should be executed. In countries like Uganda, they say gays are not human beings and deserve human rights. Maybe they are wrong.

Our constitution encourages marriage between members of the opposite sex only, please! Anything contrary to that is a contravention of the law of the land. In Kenya, you either divorce any weird sexual orientation or remain celibate for life.

Gays say they were created by God in his own image. Maybe God created them and for that reason, we should let them live and allow them to enjoy all the human rights that normal people enjoy.

According to reports, 5-7 per cent of Kenyans is gay. In other words, 2.5-3.5 million Kenyans are gays. I hear there are private clubs in Nairobi and Mombasa that are exclusive to them. I have no reason to believe what I hear. But I have no reason not to believe it as well.

I have a piece of advice for the gay community in Kenya. If indeed they have those numbers, they should find a political party with which they’ll use to seek power. They have enough numbers to maintain a powerful political party especially now that an opportunity beckons with the two current political coalitions Azimio and Kenya Kwanza wobbling and confused, your party may have ample chance to win the Presidential election.

They should start organizing themselves and form an association. I am not aware if they have one already that goes like “Kenya Association of Gays” (KAG) that they can transform into “Gays Party of Kenya” (GPK)Maybe when one of them is elected to the office of President of Kenya, he can use ‘his’ Members of Parliament reverse the law on marriage. But for now, the law reigns supreme.

If we encourage this disease called “Western civilization”, another set of funny people will come up with some other rights. They are going to tell us it is a right of a man to marry his mother if his father dies. They will say it is the right of siblings to have sex. Soon we might witness a marriage between a man and a camel, a woman and a he-goat.

We are not against gays but whatever business they do, let them do it in private and nobody will bother them. As Africans, we must uphold our traditional values despite external pressures.

(The writer sells bananas in the streets of Kisii town)