As bad as things are in Uganda, they're about to get that way in Kenya. And - unsurprisingly - this latest disaster is being spurred on by a Prime Minister who's had a nice talking to from the usual suspects. Some of the pretzel logic displayed here is spellbinding in its idiocy:
He termed it "madness" for a man to fall in love with another man while there were "plenty of women" and added that there was no need for women to engage in lesbianism "yet they can bear children".
Uh huh. Kultur, Kucher, Kinder all over again, right? What Raila Odinga and his fellow boosters of "traditional culture" (or whatever the current favorite buzzword of people like Odinga is) don't seem to realize is that sexual preference is just not as simple as how many children can be popped out of one uterus in a woman's child-rearing years. I have no idea who gave him this funny idea, but my guess is that it was representatives from The Family. After all, they put a similar bug in the collective ear of Uganda parliamentarians, so why stop there?
In addition, I'll be a complete smartass and mention that if the idea of women having kids is seemingly the only one worth pursuing for African followers of this saintly thing called "tradition", why is it that women are brutally raped - and worse - in conflicts including Darfur, the Congo and Guinea? Why are some of them abducted by perpetrators of crimes like these and forced to live as bush wives after the rapes? Because of "tradition"?
The entire issue of using women as sexual playthings and tacit, domesticated baby factories dovetails nicely with misogyny and homophobia, doesn't it?
He termed it "madness" for a man to fall in love with another man while there were "plenty of women" and added that there was no need for women to engage in lesbianism "yet they can bear children".
Uh huh. Kultur, Kucher, Kinder all over again, right? What Raila Odinga and his fellow boosters of "traditional culture" (or whatever the current favorite buzzword of people like Odinga is) don't seem to realize is that sexual preference is just not as simple as how many children can be popped out of one uterus in a woman's child-rearing years. I have no idea who gave him this funny idea, but my guess is that it was representatives from The Family. After all, they put a similar bug in the collective ear of Uganda parliamentarians, so why stop there?
In addition, I'll be a complete smartass and mention that if the idea of women having kids is seemingly the only one worth pursuing for African followers of this saintly thing called "tradition", why is it that women are brutally raped - and worse - in conflicts including Darfur, the Congo and Guinea? Why are some of them abducted by perpetrators of crimes like these and forced to live as bush wives after the rapes? Because of "tradition"?
The entire issue of using women as sexual playthings and tacit, domesticated baby factories dovetails nicely with misogyny and homophobia, doesn't it?