Emmanuel Sadi: The Gays are not to blame

The blame game has been a function of society since the dawn of civilization and its intended use was to hold wrongdoers accountable for their actions. But there is a common use for the blame that has been weaponized to keep people controlled and in a state of oppression. Every gay person who grew up in a religious setting can totally relate to the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ narrative; echoes of HIV/AIDS, never making heaven, being the cause of hardship in the family and ultimately being the reason the world would come to an end. I remember being taught this narrative as a kid in bible stories and sermons that overemphasize how gay people/disobedient people are to blame for sickness and destruction. Basically, if you shape young Emmanuel’s mind with the horrors that inevitably plague gay men before his emotions mature, he will never want to be gay and fight his feelings as if it is a fight for his very life. Religion has basically weaponized blame to make gay people hate themselves before they even start manifesting emotion and attraction for the same sex. This concept continues to strengthen a theory of mind-control and a policing of feelings that can easily be capitalized on to gain more power.

No one in the right frame of mind should question what wrong is. Causing harm, inflicting pain, exploiting people and actions rooted in corruption/hate are all fundamental situations that basically establish what it means to do wrong. There is nothing wrong about being in love with someone, there is nothing wrong about having sex in the diverse ways mutually consenting adults make possible, there is nothing wrong with having feelings, there is nothing wrong with dressing, speaking, walking, looking and being your true, chosen and authentic self. Not one thing is wrong about being Queer but religion has constantly rewarded queer affection and expression with more hatred than it allocates to rape, racism, slavery, child sexual abuse and many other fundamentally wrong sins in society. This is the major reason why religion is singlehandedly responsible for more queer related suicides and honour killings/violence around the world.

Let us give religion a break and talk about society as a pretentious function of free will and the myth of independent thought. Humanity prides itself in the complexity of its species, beings of higher knowledge that somehow think people should be tortured/killed/jailed for being intimate, their choice of clothing and chosen identity. This way of thinking is entirely relative but it thrives on the fabric of principles and values that claim ownership of intimacy and expression, branding them a sacred right reserved only for select groups. Even though there is literally no way to stop a person from feeling and expressing their true nature, society’s homophobes justify their prejudice by trivializing queerness with sickness, mental illness, paedophilia, sexual assault and perversion.

As scary as society and religion makes being queer sound, nothing paints a dark picture like the puzzled heart of a young queer person growing up in the shadow of homophobia. The pain that comes from hating oneself stains their entire existence, hopes and dreams. I cannot count how times I begged for the breath to leave my body, how many times I thought my tears would count for something; a sign, a sorry, a hug at least or anything to ease the pain of feeling like every second I spent on earth was a mistake. I hated myself so much, I felt that every smile was undeserved and should be punished. There are millions of queer people living with this blame today, blaming themselves for happy moments, feelings of love and affection, the joys of unfiltered expression and desperately hating everything that makes them naturally human.

The world needs to start doing better to queer people, the world needs to stop planting seeds of hatred and suicide in young queer people. HIV/AIDS affects the general population and yes gay men are more susceptible when they have unprotected sex but do we blame West-Africans for always having malaria because they have more mosquitoes than some other regions? No. More importantly, this is 2019 and we shouldn’t be telling tales that enforce violence and discrimination for others considering the wars and dysfunction we have narrowly survived in the past. The world is diverse with religion and culture but love is a constant that exists at the core of our humanity and it is pure evil to deny people the right to express love and show emotions. Fundamentally, nothing can change the fact that love is love and no false narrative will change that.