I don’t know who edited this picture but they did a good job
The ink isn’t even dry on the paper yet and the Nigerian Police Force have started rounding up suspected gay men. Allegedly some members of the police have signed up to some gay dating websites and begun luring men to meet up with them. When these men appear, the officers arrest force them to reveal names and numbers of other gay men in the area. Many people have been arrested and some are asked to pay bribes or risk being outed. In the North, 12 men were arrested according to the BBC and one of them was sentenced to receive 20 lashes and pay a fine in accordance with Muslim Sharia law. The lashes were meted out in a packed court room. A Christian who was also arrested will be handed over to the regular courts. Gay men in Nigeria have been warned to stay off the sites and not to meet any new people. Read the rest of this entry »
There was a time that I was very much involved with church and its many activities. Some of these churches literally take up every single day of the week with meetings, prayer sessions and so on. One of the churches I was attending at the time (I would often go to two churches at the same period and actively participate in both) had a very charismatic pastor who had just started a week-long series on sin and temptation. A major talking point in his message(s) was that to be holy and keep ourselves that way, we should cut out/off anything that may predispose us to sin and an important “doorway to sin” was music. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently at work, someone described me as a “people-pleaser”. Instead of becoming defensive like my coworker expected, I laughed. The truth is that I was a “yes man” and to some extent, I still am. The episode reminded reminded of some advice an old friend gave me which was that if she could teach me to learn (and live by) one word alone, it would be “NO“. I constantly found myself trying to satisfy everyone’s needs but my own, constantly putting others above myself, convinced that to put my own desires first was to be selfish. I now know that I became this person because I wanted people to like me and value me for I did not value myself. I pretended to be “happy to help” when all I wanted to do was toss some very nasty phrases at the people who made annoying requests especially the ones who knew that they really were asking too much. Read the rest of this entry »
Being gay is HARD make no mistake about it. Is there even anything good about being gay to begin with? Not much in my opinion. Which is why it still baffles me that in 2012 some people still believe anyone would ‘choose’ to be gay. Looking back on my relatively short life however, it seems my answer lies in how being gay has affected my life positively. Read the rest of this entry »
“I am totally okay with being gay; my only issue is that I cannot live and express myself the way I would want to.”
Often times when I meet new people, particularly other Africans, we discuss all sorts of issues relating to our common characteristic – being gay. Since it is mostly forbidden and outlawed, we share similar experiences with regards to our gay lives but it is the differences that I’m most interested in. One of the questions that invariably yields the same answer is: given the choice of being gay or not, would you choose to be gay?
Purple Gloves 