Today’s post is duplicated on my general blog because, hopefully, it will be of real interest and concern to all readers. Here in the UK, it is bad enough that homophobia and hate crime against gay people, especially gay men, is alive and kicking, but in some parts of the world, and not only in the southern hemisphere either, it aspires to diabolical proportions.
Anyone who watched the Channel Four Dispatches programme ‘Africa: the last taboo’ in July 2010 will have a good idea what it is like to be gay in the greater part of Africa.
Now, evangelical pastors preaching homophobia and worse across the world have much to answer for, but it is perhaps the greater part of Africa that they aspire to their most diabolical; their influence is such that a newspaper editor in Uganda has called for the deaths of known gay people, and they must accept no small responsibility for anti-gay legislation in many if not most African countries.
OUT OF AFRICA
‘Kill the homosexuals!’
an evangelical pastor cried,
and true to his words
many gay men and women
have since died
‘Homosexuals are sinners!’
the impassioned pastor yelled
at a congregation
that took up the cry, would
see us killed
‘Homosexuality is an evil,’
the demon pastor screamed,
‘and no known cure
so kill, kill, or see its sinning
go unredeemed!’
‘Man shall with woman lie!’
The pastor furiously exhorted
his flock to heed verses
from Leviticus, Christ’s coming
conveniently aborted
Someone in the congregation
dared point out that Christ said
we should love
and help our neighbours, not
wish them dead
‘Blasphemer!” the pastor cried,
near hysterically refusing to relent
his demonising
of homosexuality undermining
New Testament
Africa, Africa, what are you doing,
even listening?
Copyright R. N. Taber 2012
[Note: This poem will appear in my new collection Tracking the Torchbearer to be published in the spring.]
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