Ain’t we all hypocrites? Let us not stress it too much, most times when people want to relate with hypocrisy, it is always about our faith- how as a Christian or Muslim, you have faulted in ways that prove you to be one who has flaws, but let’s take a shift from the whole story to a reality that we choose not to talk about in the mundane Nigerian society. “Gays and Lesbians are humans, and some of them happen to be Nigerians too, how is it that we don’t hear about them as we hear about the LGBTQ community in America?” We are hypocrites!
Just recently, it became a criminal act under section 214 of the Criminal Code, that people of the same sex be found indulging in love related kinds of relationships. This is little compared to the Sharia law on LGBTQ.
While this might seem typical and normal to most of us, we should also know that this doesn’t mean that there are no homosexuals in the country, we just choose not to recognize them because of some beliefs that we have accepted over time.
READ: “I love you, no homo”
One fundamental aspect of the constitution of the country is the right to freedom of expression. It is the freedom of expression that allows a person to be able to make a choice of his or her own partner. For crying out loud, Nigeria is regarded as a secular country, and by default, what I accept as the right shouldn’t in any way affect you because we are relative beings with relative minds.
Personally, I feel that we have gone too far by making homosexuality a criminal offense, and the 14 years sentence is just the height of it. Let us think about it logically, when a person commits a crime, it is often said that such a person contravenes the rights of the generality of humans residing in a locality- in this case, Nigeria. How does one person being a lesbian or gay, make him a criminal to be likened to a killer or an Armed robber? This is no doubt the height of our hypocrisy.
READ: Is Shame Always a Factor
When two people of the same sex agree to a date and love each other in sickness and in health, for better or worse, it becomes a union bound by consent. It becomes a typical marriage that was entered into by right-thinking minds who are able to make decisions for themselves and for their future. However, when we take a stance against these people just because they are of the same sex, what does it say about us? Ain’t we all hypocrites?
