Misplaced priorities of the black community

| Friday May 8, 2009 00:00

Recently there have been reports that 128 men are on death row in Iraq, many of which are gay. The Iraqi government plans to execute them in batches of 20 per week. When did human life become that cheap?

About a month ago six gay men were cold-bloodedly murdered allegedly because of their sexual orientation. About a week after those cold-blooded murders two men were killed after a prominent cleric issued anti-gay remarks [Associated Press reports].The men were believed to have been killed by relatives who did not tolerate their sexual orientation. In another incident, bodies of four men were found buried on March 26 with the words 'pervert' and 'puppies' written on their chests. 'Puppy' is a derogatory local word for gay people in Iraq. Through all these horrendous and direful executions the world goes on without even as much as a cough. In a sad contrast to that silence, everyone suddenly turns chatty when asked for their opinion in same-sex relationships, making it very clear that all these dire executions of innocent souls don't bother them a bit. Even beauty queens endorse such inhumane actions. Case in point, the recent anti-gay remarks by the newly crowned Miss Botswana Sumaiyah Marope and Miss USA runner Carrie Prejean.

Just recently a dead gay man was dug up twice from a Muslim cemetery in Senegal because, well, he was gay [BBC reports].A year ago a gay man in Cameroon was imprisoned for two years without trial and he could have remained there for the rest of his life if it wasn't for the noted human rights attorney Alice Nkom.There were no files on his arrest and prosecutors had no evidence to present. Basically he was lost in a bigoted system.

Another recent charge at homosexuals came from Zambian Vice President George Kunda.

Addressing the parliament the vice president believes 'homosexuality is a bad thing and we should all come together and fight it[homosexuality.]' This coming from a vice president of a country where life expectancy is an average of 40 years and the HIV/AIDS rate is 16 percent. What's more sad is that Kunda and parliament know these grim statistics very well and instead of addressing them they go into a meaningless anti-gay witch hunt in hopes of distracting the rural, impoverished nation from the issues that really matter.

Nigeria recently passed a bill that's purported to imprison 'anyone who witnesses, abet and aids the solemnisation of a same gender relationship'. I do not have to mention all the more pressing issues that Nigeria should be focusing on.

Just yesterday the Washington DC City Council voted 12-1 to approve a bill that allows the city to recognise same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries. The lone vote against the bill came from a four times married, ex-convict, longtime crack addict, and former DC Mayor Marion Barry. If you guessed Barry is black you are right.

Washington D.C is a mostly black state and its HIV/AIDS rates are reportedly higher than Western Africa. Nearly 3,000 out of 100,000 residents have the disease or virus [NBC reports]. Most of the residents live in poverty, they are hardly educated, and crime rates hit the roof, mainly because of the high drug use. In the wake of all this madness and disturbing statistics, the black pastors who are supposedly community leaders are declaring Marion Barry a 'moral leader'. Seriously? Yes, the supposed moral leader has been married and divorced FOUR times, he is an ex-convict and a longtime crack addict.

If that's not hypocrisy then I don't know what is.

These are only a few sad cases from the black community that has its priorities in all the wrong places. We continue to go into an anti-gay hysteria, pushing aside more pressing issues such as poverty, AIDS, political unrests, to name just a few. Not to mention it's hypocritical. Now, is this really the list of countries and states that Botswana aspires to be mentioned amongst?

From a 21st-Century-Motswana.