By Gab Oguda
I used to be a part-time untrained teacher at a certain school. It was during that two-year wait to join campus, and I thought my services were urgently needed to fill a desperate staffing crisis in a school that had children considered to be the dregs of society, but who were way cooler than the North Pole. Of course my stay there was shorter than Musalia Mudavadi’s stint as Vice President, remind me to write about that beautiful place someday.
I remember during one of our weekly staff meetings someone asked that we discuss the issue of homosexuality in schools. There had been media reports about this issue, and straight on two hard-line camps emerged in the staff room that day. There were those who were of the opinion that homosexuality isn’t an issue in our schools and that the media reports were being exaggerated, and, therefore, it was a waste of tea-time discussing it. The other camp had staff members clapping for the guy who brought the topic up, and who had been waiting for a signal to start off the debate. I raised my two hands up for the second tag-team. We won the toss, and elected to bat.
I will forever remember this member who refused to be part of the discussion and walked away saying gays and lesbians should be rounded up in a lorry and be handed over to the devil to use them as match sticks in hell. The member claimed that their morality didn’t allow them to share a room with heathens like us. They even suggested that if ever the Kenya Defense Forces ran out of equipment to use for target practice, those of us who entertained that debate should volunteer to get our bodies sprayed like a graffiti wall.
Guess what.
Two weeks down the line a call came through from our school’s telephone operator. It was the Deputy Principal of a certain secondary school, who wanted to speak to one of the staff in our school. Apparently a certain boy had been busted doing ungodly things with other boys in their dormitories at night, and the parents were being summoned to run over there to explain why the school shouldn’t send to hell the boys caught in that love rectangle. That parent who was being summoned by the telephone operator belonged to Camp One in our homosexuality debate I’ve told you up there, and we didn’t know how best to react to Karma finally finding her rightful address.
I hold the personal view that issues to do with morality can neither be legislated upon, nor forced down a people. It doesn’t matter to me who you choose to make love with and how, for as long as you are having consensual sex, and you aren’t sharing your nudes on my timeline, bwana, you can go ahead and enjoy yourselves. Sani Abacha was found dead in the presidential villa surrounded by Indian prostitutes. Bill Clinton used to have sex in the oval office despite Hillary monitoring female White House staffers like my village madman’s dog, Saddam. A recent survey found that 25% of Kenyan adults have sexual relations with multiple partners, and for the mathematicians on my wall that’s one-in-four of every adult you meet on the streets.
If homosexuality is a sin, then adultery is also a sin. If prostitutes deserve to burn in hell, then we also regret to announce the death of liars, thieves, fake gold dealers, flamboyant con-people, airheads who put William Ruto’s name in a gospel song, and all those who rob the innocent man night and day. The fact that you sin differently doesn’t make your sin less grave. There is no glamorous sin, same way there’s no honorable death. Sin is sin, and death is death.
If you’re going to judge people based on their sexual orientation, then you better clean your closet first, because the government is watching you and you never know when your immorality file will be declassified for our own consumption. That day we will order for a sack of popcorn and chew cud like an overfed ruminant. Because you lived your life minding other people’s business.
And it would be the turn of other people to mind yours.
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