All things are subject to interpretation.
Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power not
truth. This saying credited to Friedrich Nietzsche, highlights what am about to confess to in this article.
My friend, Eric Gitari, the Executive
director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, has sued the
NGO coordination board and the Attorney General for the latter’s failure to
register his organization. Eric feels his freedom of association as guaranteed
in the constitution of Kenya has been infringed upon hence the legal redress.
The Replying Affidavit from the Kenyan
Attorney General demonstrates the truism of the power holder vis-à-vis the
content of interpretation. In a week that saw the election of Prof. Dinesh
Bhugra, as the President-Elect of the World Psychiatric Association becoming
the first ever “out” gay person to hold such a position. The Attorney General
of the Kenyan Republic says that “Gays
and Lesbians are persons who have made conscious
choices to be Gay or Lesbian and this is informed by the fact that
homosexual lifestyle is a learned behaviour that has absolutely nothing to do
with our genetic makeup.”
Prof. Bhugra acknowledges that psychiatry
is a medical specialty that deals with “the most complex and intellectually
demanding patients but has” had a history of abusing lesbian, gay and bisexual
patients. Bhugra leads an association
with over 200,000 psychiatrists worldwide, who like him know that being gay or
lesbian is not a conscious choice.
Of course the Attorney General would rather
pull the Moral card when he says that
“homosexuality is largely considered to
be a taboo and repugnant to the religious teachings, cultural values and
morality of the Kenyan people and the law…”But it is about time someone
called their moral and religious bluff. By calling on the AG’s moral bluff, we
are in essence turning the tables of power on him. Superior morality calls for
consistency and it abhors double standards.
It is great that he notes homosexuality is
criminalized in Kenya, and because of that homosexuals should not be allowed to
register an organization that advocates their basic human rights – which by the
way he considers to be “special rights.”
Since today happens to be the World AIDS Day, the same government that talks of
homosexuals making conscious choices, still spends enormous financial and human
resources reaching out to them [by euphemically calling them Men who have sex
with Men – MSM].
If they believe in the rule of law so much,
should they not be arresting them and jailing them for 14 years as the LAW
stipulates? Instead of sending out clinicians to reach out to the MSM in
discrete locations, should they not be posting police and religious leaders, to
arrest and/or preach to them? Why the double standards? More importantly, why
the hypocrisy for a country that is so deeply moral and religious (so much so
that registration of a gay and lesbian identified organization) would be
utterly repugnant?
Well, I do wish to give the Attorney General
and other morally duplicitous Kenyans an easy time. I wish to confess to having
had sex with other men severally during my adult life.
It is very tiresome for me, to work in the
area of HIV/AIDS in Kenya, where we know what needs to be done to roll back the
epidemic and improve public health outcomes for all Kenyans, have another
section of the government; aggressively and without pity do all they can to
delete our work! For them to attempt to claim moral superiority, while in fact
they are the very edifice of hypocrisy, cannot go unchallenged.
We know the bio-medical interventions, the
behavioural and in this case the structural reforms that need to be put in
place. We know that this law they so ferociously seek to protect increases
vulnerability of certain sections of our society, which in turn creates
negative externalities to public health outcomes for the entire Kenyan
population. In this day and age, no sane person with a modicum level of
understanding of social epidemiology can defend structural barriers that keep
one section of the society from accessing health services of a communicable
sexually transmitted disease like HIV – in the context of an epidemic.
At the very least what the Attorney General
should do is to undertake a study on the Social Return on Investments in Health
on these laws that he so fanatically supports. As an output of the study, he
may want to understand the impact and relationship these
structural/legal/policy barriers to health for Key Populations on public and
private morality. And indeed how such can be mitigated. I think there are
people who would be willing to support such a study – if only because it
promises better public health outcomes for all Kenyans.
Since I do not want to be on the side of
history that speaks from both sides of its mouth [hypocritical], I must admit
and publicly confess that on various dates in my adult life, I have had sex
with other consenting adult men. I admit that I have broken the Kenyan penal code
of 1930 (revised in 2006) section 162. I do not however understand what “against the order of nature” really
means because it seemed very natural to both of us.
I make this confession freely, willingly
and with full knowledge of my act. Indeed it is because of having had sex with
another consenting adult that I will later today (1st of December
2013) be heading for a HIV test. It’s over 6 months since my last test yet
government sanctioned guidelines for men like me who have sex with other men is
a HIV tests every 3 months.
Having made this confession, I believe, the
law should either be enforced and have me and others who likewise willingly
confess to this crime get arrested, or, we deem this piece of law to be of no
consequence and hence have it deleted from our books. Once deleted, the NGO
board would have no reason for denying gay and lesbian Kenyans registration for
organizations that they freely wish to form; and name, in ways that creates
least confusion to others who are not gay or would not wish to join gay themed
organizations.
