Opinion | To Be Gay in a Country Where It’s Still Illegal

I’m touring in West Africa on my annual win-a-trip journey, a worldwide reporting expedition on which I take a college pupil to focus on points that deserve extra consideration. My winner this 12 months is Maddie Bender, a latest Yale graduate (the pandemic delayed our journey) — and with that, I’m handing the remainder of the column over to her.

By Maddie Bender

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — When Abdul was a youngster and coming to phrases with being homosexual, he was attacked by a bunch of males. They mocked him with homophobic slurs and assaulted him with damaged beer bottles, slicing his thumb open.

He reported the incident to the police and was informed that an arrest could possibly be made — of him, for homosexuality.

Sierra Leone is one among greater than 30 African nations (over half the continent) that criminalize same-sex relations. Whereas a lot of the homosexual individuals I spoke with there didn’t appear to worry being arrested, they stated discrimination in opposition to them was widespread in housing, employment and household life.

In the meantime, American Christian teams with information of preventing L.G.B.T.Q. rights have poured thousands and thousands of {dollars} into African nations, in keeping with a 2020 report. Some American evangelicals have been identified to encourage anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws in nations equivalent to Uganda.

Queer points are deeply private to me, since I’m bisexual. Whereas L.G.B.T.Q. individuals nonetheless undergo hazard and discrimination in America, touring with Nick in West Africa supplied a window into the immense adversity queer individuals expertise right here — and their resilience and braveness within the face of it.

However Africa just isn’t uniformly homophobic, and I discovered some bodily and digital house rising for L.G.B.T.Q. communities. In São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the west coast of Africa, homosexuality has been authorized since 2012. “Sexuality is free,” the nation’s prime minister, Patrice Trovoada, informed me, including that in his nation, “you don’t have this hate perspective” towards homosexual individuals.

Nonetheless, it’s difficult. Members of an affiliation for homosexual males in São Tomé say L.G.B.T.Q. individuals within the nation have skilled violence and been ostracized from their households. The group’s president, Kelve Borros, 28, informed me, “Nothing about life is simple.”

In Sierra Leone, I met two dozen queer individuals inside a neighborhood heart run by the Dignity Affiliation, an area advocacy group. The middle’s heat jogged my memory of a assist group I belonged to in highschool, the place I had my first kiss with a lady.

Outdoors, the ambiance is chillier. Though individuals had been blissful to speak about homosexuality once I requested, most stated they’d by no means encountered a homosexual particular person. However in 2013, the Sierra Leonean authorities estimated that round 20,000 (and presumably extra) males who’ve intercourse with males dwell within the nation. Statistics for queer ladies are fuzzier.

Spending time on-line could also be broadening some individuals’s worldviews. A 2020 overview of Africans’ attitudes towards homosexuality means that frequent web customers usually tend to be tolerant of homosexual individuals.

Two youngsters within the metropolis of Makeni in northern Sierra Leone, Fatmata Binta Jalloh, 17, and Marie Kamara, 16, informed me that whereas they imagine homosexuality doesn’t exist of their nation, they’ve seen loads of homosexual individuals on-line. They recalled watching a viral TikTok video of a lesbian couple celebrating after conceiving a baby by way of in vitro fertilization. The video, they stated, made them blissful for this couple, whose sexuality that they had been taught to worry.

For L.G.B.T.Q. youth like Abdul, on-line content material could be a sort of lifeline. He follows queer celebrities on Instagram, together with the musician Sam Smith and the rapper Rashad Spain (referred to as Saucy Santana), and aspires to a stage of success that may additionally partially insulate him from violence and homophobia.

When requested in regards to the queer illustration that Sierra Leone’s younger individuals may even see on-line, the nation’s president, Julius Maada Bio, in contrast exterior influences to the contagion of gun violence. Due to know-how, he stated, “‘copycatting’ turns into very simple,” and he frightened that outdoors data “poses a critical risk to our personal tradition and lifestyle.”

I’d prefer to see the USA use its affect to press for extra tolerance — sure types of assist, for instance, might require taking part organizations to not discriminate in opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. individuals — however after speaking to individuals like Fatmata and Marie, I think that our best instrument for making change is mushy energy.

We needs to be outraged at how far the Christian proper has gone to assist the persecution of homosexual individuals in African nations. These legal guidelines want to vary, however I doubt that equal and reverse meddling is the answer.

As a substitute, we will name upon our personal leaders to assist fund secure areas overseas and strengthen strains of communication with native organizations in Africa just like the Dignity Affiliation, and converse out when their members are threatened.

As for these of us within the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood, let’s embrace our energy on-line. Within the face of bigotry and restrictive laws at house and overseas, flaunting our pleasure will be an act of radical resistance. And all of us can converse with our wallets, making clear that tourism might be jeopardized in nations that punish same-sex love.

Attitudes aren’t shifting quick sufficient for younger individuals like Abdul, who was outed in 2019 and pushed from his house. Now 20, he imagines a unique life for himself due to the queer celebrities he follows on-line.

They’ve taught him that he has to attempt, he stated: “I do know it’s not going to be simple.”