Obama’s African Trip and Gay Marriage ….

Once again the visit of the most powerful president of the most powerful nation on earth to Africa as expected has elicited both excitement and resentment in equal measure. If you are from Kenya this is read as a contempt card to the people of Kenya and the leadership of this beautiful country. Kenyans feel their son owes them a visit especially after key economic sectors like tourism have taken a beating since the post election violence in 2007/08. However, many have also been quick to dismiss the whole visit and its significance either to the countries visited or the general economic wellbeing of the African continent as a whole, the jury is still out there.

Perhaps, what most people are likely going to remember is this statement reported in some Kenyan Media and attributed to President Obama, “My basic view is that regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, when it comes to the law, people should be treated equally,” Mr Obama said in Senegal (http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Cardinal-Njue-criticises-Obama-gay-stance/-/1056/1897702/-/lxexc0/-/index.html). Mark the word regardless of sexual orientation. This may as well have been taken out of context and the emphasis may have been elsewhere. But these has been seen by many and rightly so as a veiled attempt to push and arm-twist the African countries to legalize gay marriages. The first and perhaps the most vocal voice from this, is the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Kenya Cardinal John Njue and his advise to the good president “forget”.

For most Africans whether Christians or non-Christians the debate on gay issues raises very varied reactions with those in support being in the minority or even never heard. Obviously, I am not going to voice their concerns in this platform. However, for me this call by President Obama, raises a very fundamental question to us as Africans. We can all rise up in arms and claim how African we are and how immoral this is, but as in many other issues when it comes to the West and standing up against Western influences we are poor students of history, remember the Anti-terrorism bill and subsequently Anti-terrorism Act?  

Cardinal John Njue may have called it as it is, but we really need to rise and stand for our African culture and what is morally right whether religious or otherwise. There are many other moral issues that Africa has fallen short and leaves a lot to be desired but gay marriage and gay unions is just not one of those that we need to accept just because it is a norm in the West. Obama’s father may have hailed from Kenya and as he has stated his opinion may have evolved over time, but we cannot let our guards down just for the sake of promised financial aid.

As a Christian, however, I have to be moved by love and compassion for the sickness of the human soul and the more need for human redemption. I have to fervently pray for these individuals whether they be my brothers or sisters, friends or neighbours or even my children. But my human weakness does not reduce me to an emotional moving robot, which has to do what is politically correct at the expense of my own faith and culture. I believe in a real faith and in a real God and that is what I have to teach and preach, despite my shortcomings in articulating or in living the same.

Respect for my friends and neigbours despite their sexual orientations does not mean running away from what since the beginning of human race has been held to be the law of nature and of course the will of God, the source of All things. For me those who embrace and practice homosexuality are sinners, and like all of us sinners they need love and prayers but also their inhuman tendencies that goes against the human nature, public decorum and African morals need to be condemned in the strongest terms possible, irrespective of whether they are perpetuated by the most powerful president on earth or any other western forces. If in future we turn and throw our morals through the window like we have done in many other instances, it will be of our own volition and not from push from the societies that wi