ANOTHER RWANDA

Nearly 20 years after the Rwandan massacre of 800,000 people, 1/32th of their population, a few days ago another African country, Nigeria, has done the unthinkable by signing an anti-LGBT bill into law – a law that has already taken numerous lives through mob violence, invasion of privacy and arrests  by police and governmental officials, lashings and future judgments of sharia courts to stone LGBT Nigerians, while giving governmental support and religious justification to Christians and Muslims and tribal groups seeking retribution towards those who are least able to protect themselves or receive the help of their families and friends.

Reports are coming in each day with photos to substantiate the horrors that are being played out in Nigeria, people have become the victims of mob justice.  Reports of a person having been burned to death, 10 or more people are waiting stoning through an Islamic court in the Northern region. Even tribal people are able to join in while seeking retribution for harms they had no legal recourse. In this battle, it’s a winning lottery for Christians, Muslims and tribal leaders – for the prize is the lives of LGBT Nigerians - and everyone gets to quench their blood lust and feel good about themselves being good Christians, Muslims and Africans.  The only thing missing are the cheerleaders and the pom-poms.  Nigeria scores, millions dead.

What is apparent, if you understand human history well, religious fanaticism is being stocked through ancient religious and tribal histories of hatred to lay the groundwork for their “life” improvements in modern times at the expense of millions of LGBT Nigerians.  Of course, we can presume, a significant number of them will die at the hands of religious fanatics – whether it is a form of evangelical Western Christianity, or a form of Saudi-based Wahhabism from Islam, or centuries old tribal wars – and Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan with a flick of the wrist, turned Nigerians’ attention away from his political failures of his administration on to easy scapegoats.

Of course, the typical religious response to the question of human rights for all people, including their LGBT relatives, friends and neighbors, is a moral one, but those morals lack the substance of historical wisdom and truth. President Jonathan’s political and moral stance supports a rendering of socio-religious laws based upon social conditions, rather than moral wisdom and truth that supports human rights law. None of it has to do with religious faith – but I’m certain you can find the seven deadly sins snugly entrenched in his government’s thinking.

But, as we see in other lands like Russia, India, and other African states, political leaders funnel the souls of LGBT people into the hands of common murderers, justified by their faith, to quench their blood thirst, and they really think hell is worse. Religious leaders who provide these mobs justification for religious fanaticism must always look to their perceived “pristine” past to find “resolutions” for their modern lives. Not thinking that such logic is the supremacy of foolishness.  Not unlike paying attention to where you step, when you seek solutions for the future by adhering to the distant past without review of your recent past, you will not find an answer to your needs. What you get is the dry bones of the human proclivity to kill another human being because they are different, a source of strength of social and religious practices of the dead.  There’s no life nor living in the dust-dry and hallowed recesses of the dead.

If we are to believe the Kinsey Report, about 17 million Nigerians are gay. So, the Bill that has been signed into Law by President Goodluck Jonathan seeks to persecute a population larger than Belgium's or three times the size of Norway's population. It's a population the size of the Jewish population around the world put together. These are millions of people whose sexual orientation, love, and lives are being denied. Just think about that.