by Jaiye Gaskia

So sex between consenting adults of the same sex attracts 14 year jail term; while rape of an adult woman or minor attracts 7 years or less; and looting of the treasury attracts plea bargaining! What arrant nonsense and hypocrisy! How can any right thinking human being justify this nonsense?

Let us be clear sexual orientation, and in particular among consenting adults is neither a crime nor inhuman. To be sure variations in sexual orientation is as old as the human species; in fact as old as the history of sexual intercourse in the entire animal world [taking the division of living things into the broad categories of plants and animals into account].

And like all human practice some forms of sexual orientation have been more dominant in their occurrence than others; just as for example single birth pregnancies and deliveries have been a more dominant trait of the human species than multiple birth pregnancies and deliveries, that is why twins, triplets, quadruplets, sextuplets etc are less common than just the single birth deliveries in the human population. And although in the past twins, and other multiple births from one pregnancy were considered abnormal and even evil because of ignorance; no one in their right senses today will criminalise giving birth to twins, because it is abnormal, as it was part of our culture in the past to so do.

Coming back to sexual orientation; just as heterosexuality is the more predominant form of orientation, heterosexual rape, heterosexual abuse of children is also the more predominant forms of criminalities associated with this predominant form of sexual orientation. The sexual orientation of consenting adults should not be a ground for criminalisation; and it is in this sense that this hurriedly passed and hurriedly, as well as secretly signed law is an inhuman law, and a gross violation of the human rights of LGBTs. Because it criminalises, punishes, stigmatises some forms of sexual orientation, it dehumanises us all, regardless of whether we are aware of this dehumanisation, of even ignorantly complicit in this dehumanisation or not.

The other matter is that this act stems from the current desperation of the ruling class, who are desperately seeking to distract our collective attention from their collective failure, and their collective responsibility for our impoverisation and dehumanisation. So they seek to reach out to our base instincts, in order to take us away from the path of resisting and challenging the devastating impacts of their collective misrule and treasury looting spree on our lives and existence.

So sex between consenting adults of the same sex attracts 14 year jail term; while rape of an adult woman or minor attracts 7 years or less; and looting of the treasury attracts plea bargaining! What arrant nonsense and hypocrisy! How can any right thinking human being justify this nonsense?

People are directly responsible for the deaths through preventable and treatable illnesses; preventable road and air accidents; people who by their superintendence over the rabid looting of our treasury that has rendered our roads impassable, and our hospitals mortuaries, actually go scot free; while innocent, even very highly productive and talented persons go to jail for 14 years because they have engaged in same sex!

If we like we can continue to applaud this absurdity, until they also come for us and criminalise access to the internet, criticism of bad governance, and even daring to look them in the eye!

A word should be sufficient for the wise. This is one more injustice too many! We should resist rather than applaud them! An injustice and injury to one, is an injustice and injury to all.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.