ARE OUR DIFFERENCES NOT ENOUGH ALREADY? (A Response to Chimamanda Adichie’s “Why Can’t He just be like Everyone Else”)

I read Chimamanda Adichie’s article, titled “Why Can’t He just be like Everyone Else”, wherein she made a case for homosexuality and condemned the law prohibiting it on the basis that we are different. I read the said article with that painful smile on my face. 

Painful because ...
I realise how weak man is especially when the foundation of his ideologies are standing solely on his intellect rather than guidance. Smile because I marvelled at the beauty of truth; truth is so beautiful falsehood cannot be truly beautiful no matter how beautifully presented.

Let me begin by telling you how different I am; I prefer heat to cold, I find “how are you” disrespectful, I admire naive people, and I think News is overrated, yet I am normal and if you knew me you’ll agree. I also know a normal person who asked if he will be allowed to farm in heaven, and another normal person who is left handed when he writes and right handed when he eats and left handed again when he has to lift an object only to be right handed one more time when what he is lifting is money. Even in physical preference I know the mass of normal women who speak of 6 packs as what they wish for in their husbands and I also know one normal lady who says a man has to have pot belle to be appealing; no kidding! Indeed we are a people so different.

Now consider the case of Armin Meiwes. One day in 2001 he was so different he posted an advert online saying he was "looking for a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed". And you will think the world will say who is this psycho but Bernd Jürgen, an Engineer from Berlin, was interested because he was “different”, he was so different he wanted to be eaten, to him that was the peak of sexual gratification. Now this kind of different is really really different and it opens our eyes to the fact that the “different” we accept should 

have limits. But let us conclude this oddly interesting story later.

Firstly, Adichie spoke of how it was unfair and unjust to outlaw homosexuality because it is 

not a crime. She hinged her submission that homosexuality is not a crime on her own premise 

that a crime must have victim or harm society and when two adults who so happen to be same 

sex choose to love each other there is no crime because there is no victim. We hope to 

respectfully ask our dear writer; by your ‘no victim no crime’ premise does it follow that if a 

man of 45 decides that he is in love with his daughter of 25 and she loves him too 

romantically then there is no crime in their having sex? If there is please who is the victim?

Furthermore we want to ask, again very respectfully, how about when a man drives a car 

heavily drunk but he drives it properly and there was no accident, no victim. No crime? How 

about a couple, and we have seen such, who say they are in an “open relationship” in other 

words the husband says ok my wife is allowed to have sex with whoever she likes and the 

wife says my husband is also free to have sex with whoever he likes; no victim; no crime? 

How about a superbly skilled fellow who does Surgery without qualification but meanwhile 

all his patients are healthy and all operations he has carried out so far were successful; no 

victim, no crime? 

What a world it would be. There is indeed need for us to broaden our horizon on what a 

crime is. Man commits crime against others, some other crime he commits against himself, 

and some other against God. Homosexuality is a crime against society because it threatens 

our existence and shuts the door on the face of the next generation, it is a crime against self 

because it harms the body from Human Papillomavirus (HPV) to Anal cancer among other 

diseases and you can see this people practically falling apart, and it is a crime against God 

because He has prohibited it in all of His scriptures

Secondly, in the article, we are told that Nigeria has “real problems” and homosexuality is not one of them. Things like electricity, illiterate graduate, healthcare and violence crimes were listed. You see, real problem is when you don’t know what real problem is; 

It is because we have life that we need health care, enjoy electricity, and hope to be safe from harm. So how come that which threatens our existence is not a real problem? There is this error of assuming moral issues are non-issues whereas for every “real” issue you produce there is a moral issue fueling it. 

Those who stole your billions did not do so because they have paper fetish or the faces of Alvan Ikoku, Murtala Muhammad and the others on the naira notes were irresistibly handsome, they did so because of the same cravings we asked you not to create, not to fuel and not to defend but you called us “religious” like it was a bad thing and told us these were not the “real” issues. There is almost no single youth from among the crazed modernists we are raising who does not aspire to be rich, almost none will be satisfied with being able to provide food that will stretch the backs of his family, no, he is raised to always want more courtesy of songs and movies that promote this materialism but then it is not a “real problem” so if I say for example that laws should be made to stop people from glorifying wealth and promoting illicit sex via entertainment, I will be told these are not the “real problems” forgetting that the “real problems” would not be there if these matters were properly handled; the politician who imports girls from all over the world with the money meant to build schools would have been satisfied with his wife if not for the promotion of pornography both raw and subtle, the contractor who inflates prices and absconds with contract money still would have been satisfied with the little he is making if not for our glorification of riches and the Minister lady will not drive a car worth 255 million if there were no cars produced for that amount of money. We must know the real issues; our sanity, honour, and morals are some of them and even an homosexual person agrees homosexuality is immoral only he attempts to relegate morality!

Thirdly, the idea that a law against homosexuality will promote violence against homosexuals is a tiring cliché. In today’s world when people want to lobby for things they either threaten violence or use violence as an excuse. It seems to me that violence is used more of an excuse than it actually exists. For the fear of violence the American government will tap phones, read your mails, incarcerate innocent people, violate the constitution, video tape you and invade countries and the violence gets worse. For the fear of violence honest talk about my Islam and your Christianity is almost completely ‘haram’ed in the media and the result is that we do not understand ourselves which has led to more violence. Now for the fear of violence you ask us to permit that which threatens our very existence and we ask you; what then is the essence of this fear and what will we do next for it? Will we also say all laws against stealing be removed because people kill thieves or suspected thieves in the market places? No, we deal with that issue separately. I was surprised that an article which said don’t blame homosexuals for the violent sexual crimes of homosexuals, including the rape of little boys, will also attempt to blame anti-homosexual laws for mob action against homosexual people. Perhaps you didn’t notice the double standard there our dear!

Fourthly, there was this talk about how people were created to have natural craving for people of the same sex and we say in reply that we were all created with different challenges as human beings. As a man I can say I am created to be attracted to almost every naked woman I see, does that justify my acting on such attraction and approaching another man’s wife or looking at her nakedness? Having the cravings is one thing, acting on it is another, telling people to “be themselves”, in a manner that it means whatever you desire you do, is calling them animals. Unfortunately, confused modernists (not referring to the writer) have taken self-control to be hypocrisy whereas self-control is part of life. Some people have narrated how they felt like laughing in the wrong places sometimes where another person is being mourned and they had to hold back, why they felt like laughing they didn’t know but they knew man does not have to do what he feels like doing this is why we are not animals.

Finally, we must know that there are acceptable differences, which are even too much among the people of today’s world, and we don’t need to accept whatever new differences perversions throw our way in the name of live and let’s live. If we do then we have to also accept Apotemnophilia which is sexual arousal caused by the idea of having one of your limbs cut off, or being made to look like an amputee, we will also accept Ursusagalmatophilia so that it is normal for people to be sexually aroused by teddy bears, and we will also accept Dacryphilia as normal so that a person is only sexually aroused by seeing people cry which leads him to violent behaviour, and we will also consider pornography normal provided both the actors and the watcher are matured and “consenting adults”. After all these what will be left of us?

I’ll tell you what was left of Bernd Jürgen who responded to Armin Meiwes’ advert for “…a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed". He got to meet Armins on 9 March 2001 and they both cut off hispenis and ate it together after which he begged Armin to cut him up and eat him as he has always desired to be eaten. This was their idea of sexual enjoyment, plus there was no victim and it has a nice name: Necrophilia i.e sexual attraction to corpses .

We say, consenting or not, this kind of “different” we will not accept, let a man and a woman get married and raise children honourably with love and respect. Perversions should not be given new names. It is really this simple!

Eseoghene Al-Faruq Ohwojeheri
(Director, Moral Project)