Yes, we have a long way to go.

I was passing through the Monitor’s SMS page. They ask readers to send text messages on their opinions on certain topics in the news. This is about homosexuality and rights in Uganda. Well, we have a long way to go, just to convince our country mates that we are human beings.

Yet, because we are human beings, that is the edge that we have. Someone once told me that we shall win. Just because our demands are right. And they are demands. Not requests. To be left in peace. The dignity of human beings. The recognition that we are, that we are different, but also that we are human beings.

It is so basic. It is so simple. And it is so radical.

A part of humanity that is persecuted by the rest of humanity, the rest of our communities. But in us is the seed of salvation for the world. Because it is when we recognise that being different does not take away from our basic humanity that we learn the very essence of being human.

I muse that there must be some evolutionary need for my sexuality. Why is it so consistent? Why has it been around since time immemorial? Why does it persist despite the social condemnation? Because there is a Darwinian selection advantage. There must be.

Paraphrasing ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), when all possible reasons are eliminated, then the impossible must be the reason. We know a lot, but we do not know enough about certain things. Despite the explosion of our knowledge.

We put faith before knowledge,

lead knowledge with faith,

doubting knowledge when faith, knowledge contradicts.

Faith-

it can and will be a prison,

worse than granite walls, steel bars

when very essence of knowledge

faith doubts, contradicts;

pulling knowledge apart,

ridiculing very intelligence

in the Name of God.

Worse is when

faith leads us be

less than human,

animal in cruelty, merciless in punishment,

in the Name of God.

Faith is, can be, a boon and bane,

freedom and prison.

©GayUganda 04/09/07