n January 7, 2014, President Goodluck Jonathan has signed the
Nigerian Same-sex Marriage Prohibition Bill into a law. Since the
enactment of that Act, some Nigerians and nationals from Western
countries have expressed their displeasure and opposition to the
President and Nigerian National Assembly.
Some of these opponents of the new law have described the statute as
draconian and obnoxious while others among them, including the American
and British Foreign Secretaries, John Kerry and William Hague
respectively, see it as a direct encroachment upon the fundamental
rights of Nigerian gay community and a contradiction to the provisions
of Nigerian 1999 constitution and international conventions.
To some of these opponents, the new law is repressive because,
according to them, nobody is supposed to suffer any discrimination on
the grounds of his/her sexual orientation and they have even expressed
fear that the Act will cause untold violence, persecution, and prejudice
in Nigeria. Others among them have even described millions of
Nigerians who support the criminalization of homosexuality and same-sex
marriage in Nigeria as barbaric and slaves to tradition, religion, and
morality.
Without mincing words, these negative reactions against the new Act,
at best, represent obvious naivety, ignorance, western hypocrisy,
enslaved western mentality, wool-pulling defence mechanism, and agnostic
philosophical chicaneries on the part of the critics. In the first
place, these opponents, who usually proclaim themselves as gay-rights
activists or defenders of the civil liberties of homosexuals, must be
re-educated on the following truisms: In 1795, a legendary Anglo-Irish
political philosopher and theorist, Edmund Burke, who was also the
father of modern liberal conservatism and representative democracy,
taught the whole world a remarkable socio-political lesson to this
effect, “THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR GOOD
MEN TO DO NOTHING.”
The lesson Nigerian self-made gay-rights defenders and their western
backers should learn from Edmund Burke is that the prevalence or
luxuriant growth of an evil, an immorality, a behavioural disorder, an
illegality in any nation is an indication of the dormancy and inaction
of good men and women in that country. Burke’s teaching equally means
that if good people in a country do something, any societal evil or
disorder that crops up in that nation will abate, but if they do
nothing, it will increase and continue to multiply in enormity. It
further implies that it takes the failure of good, honest, God-fearing
country men and women to take positive and purposeful actions for
political, social, moral, and behavioural corruption to thrive in any
country. It also means that anything done by good men and women in a
society to eradicate a particular societal malady or moral corruption
which fails to curb or uproot it, is futile and as good as nothing. This
eloquent and world-widely accepted wisdom of Edmund Burke was given an
added stamp of authority and endorsement by Albert Einstein, a Jewish
great scientist and a superlative mind in intellectual philosophy who
won the 1921 Nobel laurel in physics, in the following words, “THE WORLD
IS A DANGEROUS PLACE TO LIVE, NOT BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE EVIL,
BUT BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE WHO DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.”
In simple analysis, these two great men of history wanted the world
to know that it does not take thieves, homosexuals, gays, paedophiles,
public property looters, or fraudsters, murderers, prostitutes etc. to
mitigate the rampancy of stealing, homosexuality, same-sex marriage,
paedophilia, prostitution, murder and corruption in a society; it rather
takes the practical interventions, passionate actions, and conscious
vigilance of honest, good people to keep such evils, such behavioural
disorders, such social anomalies at bay.
Another great wisdom handed down to humanity in the 19th century is
the classical teachings of James Anthony Froude, a quintessential
English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor, who in 1849 advised
human persons and societies in this manner, “ACTIONS ARE GOVERNED BY
MOTIVES. THE POWER OF MOTIVES DEPENDS ON CHARACTER AND CHARACTER ON THE
ORIGINAL FACULTIES AND TRAINING RECEIVED FROM THE MEN OR THINGS AMONG
WHICH A PERSON IS BRED” According to this teaching, those who commit
evils, immoralities, or illegalities do so as a result of the nature of
their mental breeding, learning, nurture, and/or environmental
influences.
Froude continued, “OPINIONS ALTER, MANNERS CHANGE, CREEDS RISE AND
FALL, BUT THE MORAL LAW IS WRITTEN ON THE TABLETS OF ETERNITY.”
According to this message, the bedrock, the anchor, the engine, power,
the meat and marrow of human life, any society, and any legal rules is
the moral rules. This further implies that human life which is devoid of
moral scruples has no essence and no meaning. By necessary extension,
it means societal development or civilization is no development or
civilization without morality.
Continuing, Froude mused, “OUR FAILURES ARE ERRORS, NOT CRIMES –
NATURE’S DISCIPLINE WITH WHICH GOD TEACHES US; AND AS LITTLE VIOLATIONS
OF HIS LAW, OR RENDERING US GUILTY IN HIS EYES, AS THE ARTIST’S EARLY
BLUNDERS, OR EVEN ULTIMATE AND ENTIRE FAILURES, ARE LAYING STORE OF
GUILT ON HIM.” The understanding in this teaching is that what fails or
ruins a man, a woman, a society, a nation is lack of nature’s
discipline. This further means that disobedience to natural/moral rules
of life and conduct is more destructive to a nation than crimes. It also
means that crimes are the essential by-products of lack of natural
discipline or control. It further implies that for a nation to survive
and grow, it must instil natural/moral discipline in its citizens.
I must equally take recourse to Confucius, a legendary Chinese
philosopher whose wise teachings more monumentally influenced modern
Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and many western countries’
thought than any other sage of the old. In 479 B.C. and in his approach
to social harmony, prosperity, and defined moral obligations between
individuals and social systems, Confucius said, “TO PUT THE WORLD IN
ORDER, WE MUST FIRST PUT THE NATION IN ORDER; TO PUT THE NATION IN
ORDER, WE MUST PUT THE FAMILY IN ORDER; TO PUT THE FAMILY IN ORDER, WE
MUST CULTIVATE OUR PERSONAL LIFE, AND TO CULTIVATE OUR PERSONAL LIFE, WE
MUST FIRST SET OUR HEART RIGHT.”
According to Confucius, to effect a positive change in a nation, the
citizens of that country must start at its bottom or basis, which is the
individual persons living in families governed by natural rules of
life. He taught that the citizens must organize and tame their
individual lives well and set their hearts in order. This means that
once the bottom of a country (the persons in individual families) is
well organized and tamed in morality, the top of that country ( the
government) will automatically be well tamed in natural discipline
without which there will be no legal, political, economic etc.
discipline in the society. This further means that if the families in a
nation are made up of thieves, paedophiles, gays, prostitutes, lesbians,
those who have sex with animals, with their children, with their
sisters, brothers etc., the civil leadership of that society will be
constituted by thieves, homosexuals, paedophiles, prostitutes, bestial
and incestuous human beings and the country will be drowned in
immorality and illegality.
This therefore means that what people do (whether adults or
non-adults) in their private lives, homes, bedrooms should be a source
of interest and concern to a right-thinking human society because
people’s private breeding/life determines their public/official or
communal behaviour. I don’t know of any Nigerian, any American or
British today whose intellectual and philosophical teachings and
thoughts are as legendary, as world-widely respected, honoured, as
world-widely accepted and embraced as those of Confucius.
In the light of the aforementioned teachings and lessons, one may now
ask: What gain can humanity derive from homosexuality and same-sex
marriages? Are homosexuality and same-sex marriage breaches of Nature’s
discipline? If yes, should Nigerians condone or acquiesce to their
practice in Nigeria? Can human right enure or exist in acts which are
violations of Nature’s discipline or in illegality? Are homosexuality
and same-sex marriage threats to human procreation? Is human race in
danger of extinction if all nations decide to adopt same-sex marriages?
Who actually is to blame for the criminalization of homosexuality in
Nigeria? Is sodomy not a homosexual act?
By Alphonsus Nwadike
Note: the views expressed in the article are author’s own and
may not necessarily represent the editorial policy of TALKOFNAIJA.com.
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