Abomination Against the Natural Law of Nature

First of all, let me thank all the participants who told us their personal episodes of embarrassment, and defied the consequences of exposure to participate in the performance of the play, Crossroads. Like it was noted during the post-performance discussion, the behaviour of the Police woman (Pearl) is understandable. Her Christian background and the Justice system force her to see homosexuality as wrong. But her bias in her treatment of a lesbian woman who had been raped was wrong. She should have handled the case as a regular one. The discussion afterwards, like the performance, was quite educational/enlightening. I learnt a lot from the workshop sessions to prepare for the performance as I got to understand the mindset of our participants. Like one of the post-performance discussants said “To be aware of the stigma attached to being homo or gay and still want to come out takes guts. I learnt a lot today. Thanks guys for the performance.”

The reason I am writing this post is not what our audience learnt, but to share an experience I had after the performance, and to underscore the recommendation from the post-performance discussion that there is a need to educate and enlighten our Law givers on sexual and gender based violence and abuse. Here I take discrimination on grounds of sexuality as abuse. Whereas Pearl finds the lady who was a victim of Conversion Rape as weird, she reacts normally to the man who raped her. I can imagine an officer with Pearl’s convictions abusing someone (in prison) that she considers ‘weird’ like she says in the play. Remember this is a true life story. Remember also the article, “BDF officers who forced Zimbabweans to have sex found guilty,” by Morula Morula that appeared in the Sunday Standard of October 26, 2008? If you don’t let me refresh your memory.

Morula had written then of a Serowe-based Magistrate, Monashe Ndlovu convicting five members of the Botswana Defence Force, Samuel Seshabo, Moagi Sampson, Koziba Balopi, Phetogo Gabanakobo and Thato Bogosi, along with some Special Constables, for indecently assaulting some Zimbabwean men and women by forcing them to have sex with each other in Ramotswa on November 25, 2005.

The crimes, conducted under the instructions, supervision and orchestration of Phetogo Gabanakobo and Thato Bogosi, included forcing the Zimbabwean women to undress and then have sex with their countrymen. Some of the men were reportedly forced to masturbate while Phetogo Gabanakobo and his colleagues watched. Those who refused to do as instructed were reportedly sjamboked.  In a particularly gruesome instance, a lady who informed the officers hat she was menstruating was forced to have sex with a male.

You may ask, what the links are between acts that were racially determined by a group of officers who took advantage of their positions to inflict pain and humiliation on people in their custody and the play Abomination? Well, Frantz Fanon writes in The Facts of Blackness that “At first thought it may seem strange that the anti-Semite’s outlook should be related to that of the Negro-phobe. It was my philosophy professor, a native of the Antilles, who recalled the fact to me one day: “Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking about you.” Fanon argues that anti-Semitic outlook is not based on religion or reason, but Otherness. Fanon notes that “It [color prejudice] is nothing more than the unreasoning hatred of one race for another … As colour is the is the most obvious outward manifestation of race it has been made the criterion by which men (sic) are judged.” This is the link I want to draw between a xenophobic act and the abuse of people of different sexuality – Otherness. Gays and Lesbians are considered as Others.

Otherness is usually nurtured by tradition because it is to tradition that most perpetrators of Otherness turn in order to ground the validity of their “point of view.” It is tradition that is invoked when the Gay or Lesbian is told, “There is no possibility of your finding a place in society.” According to Gaie and Mmolai (2007) in Setswana tradition, it is a historical fact that child molesters and those in incestuous relationships and homosexual activities were killed because it believed that they were committing “botlhodi”, a taboo act. However, the Penal Code of Botswana, Chapter 8:01, Section 164 states that: any person who (a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature;(b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or (c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature, is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years. “This section was amended in 1998 to substitute “any other” for the word “male”. But just what is “against the order of nature”? According to Unity Dow, when people consider this section of the Penal Code, “Some may argue that it is the “having sex against the order of nature” that is illegal, and that the sex police are being selective if they are looking in the bedrooms of gay couples only and assuming that all sex that happens in heterosexual home is in accordance with “the order of nature.” In a sense, the classification of a sexual act as “against the order of nature” is relative and usually based on on unreason.

That said, what are the links between the performance of Abomination and this story of the BDF officers? First, both performance and Morula’s story are real. Second, both performance and story contain officers who treat people in their custody with contempt due to personal biases. Third, the officers involved do not see their acts as wrong. Morula reports that “after their conviction, there was a little drama when one of the accused tried to refuse having leg-irons placed on him insisting that he was not a criminal.” Well, there is still a fourth link – the experience I mentioned above.

I had occasion to go to the UB security officer to ask them to open the main door on my floor on Sunday morning. While there, they had a suspect who had been caught while trying to break into one of the hostels. The suspect was cross-dressed and had applied eye-liner and lipstick. This episode reminded me of the scene from the play where the officers couldn’t determine the sex, and consequently couldn’t decide what cell to hold the gay man who had been accused of ‘tresspassing’ in Fred’s house. As the suspect was led away by one of the male officers, a certain elderly female officer remarked “What are kids becoming … painting his face and behaving like a woman … he needs a lesson.”

I close this post by paraphrasing Fanon’s statement: As make-up, cross-dressing and feminine gestures are the is the most obvious outward manifestation of sexual otherness it has been made the criterion by which men and women are judged,” and this is against THE NATURAL LAW OF NATURE since the right NOT to be discriminated against on the grounds of sexual orientation is recognized by Section 24(4) of the Employment Act of Botswana. So, our law givers need to be educated on the fact that it cannot be unlawful to exercise a right specifically recognized by the law.

F-K

 

I enjoyed watching the play, Crossroads, and would like to take this opportunity to thank the Scars’ team for a brilliant presentation of Precious’ story. The first part that stood out for me was when Fred lied that the gay guy had trespassed into his property instead of saying he went home with the ‘woman’ with the intention of having sex with ‘her’. What if the man’s attempt to become a woman had been complete and he did not know she was once a man? Funny how we react when we are aware or conscious of something. This is what drives prejudices and abuse – awareness. Imagine Brix raping Lesbians to correct them when he was engaged to an evolving wo/man. That’s why the part where he meets his arrested fiancee at the Police station is my second stand out scene in the play. What if he was not the hypocritical Christian that he is, and did not believe in waiting until marriage to have sex with his fiancee? Imagine, violating other women while preserving the purity of his wife-to-be. How do men like Brix live with themselves? Brix said he wanted to purify the girl as HIS Bible says. But does the Bible really condone rape?

Like one of the discussants said “The Bible should not be taken as the foundation of spirituality as it contains things that any right thinking society considers abuse and a violation of Human Rights. Take, for instance, the Passover, that was a clear sanctioning of genocide or ethnic cleansing.” A rather tough view on the Holy Book if I ever heard one. Anyway, Brix cites the Bible in justification of his act, he says homosexuality is wrong. Brix was probably referring to Leviticus 18: 19-23, which says “[A]nd you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor’s wife and so make yourself unclean with her … You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.” Even though, this verse does not directly speak of it, this verse considers Lesbianism a ‘perversion’. We need to bear in mind the Bible has a patriarchal orientation so, we can assume “lie with a male as with a woman,” works both ways. The other point is, this verse condemns rape “make yourself unclean with her,” is so because you would have ‘forcefully’ taken the woman. This is my impression, I know it can be interpreted severally, but for the sake of this post, let’s go with taking by force what is not yours, and this verse says it is ‘unclean’.

So, is there anywhere else in the Bible where Brix could have taken his cue that rape is justified? Here are a few verses from the Bible that I have selected that talks about rape. After you read them, you make up your mind:

2 Samuel 12: 11-14:

 Thus says the Lord: ‘I will bring evil upon you out of your own house.  I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor.  He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.  You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.’

Deuteronomy 20: 10-14:

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace.  If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor.  But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town.  When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town.  But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder.  You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14:

“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

Deuteronomy 22:23-24:

“If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Judges 5: 30:

‘Have they not found and divided the spoil?— A womb or two for every man; spoil of dyed materials for Sisera, spoil of dyed materials embroidered, two pieces of dyed work embroidered for the neck as spoil?’ 

Judges 21: 10- 24:

So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children.  “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.”  Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.

The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives.  But there were not enough women for all of them.  The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel.  So the Israelite leaders asked, “How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead?  There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever.  But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God’s curse.”

Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, “Go and hide in the vineyards.  When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife!  And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, ‘Please be understanding.  Let them have your daughters, for we didn’t find enough wives for them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.'”  So the men of Benjamin did as they were told.  They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land of their own inheritance.  Then they rebuilt their towns and lived in them.  So the assembly of Israel departed by tribes and families, and they returned to their own homes.

Numbers 31: 7-18:

They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men.  All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle.  They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword.  Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder.  They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived.  After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.

Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp.  But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle.  “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded.  “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor.  They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people.  Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man.  Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.

I close this post by returning to the point I made about consciousness and ask, when you consciously believe, through socialization, that something is bad, does violating the Human Rights of another to ‘correct’ it justify your crime? Socialization happens in many ways, and because this post has concentrated on the religious socialization of Brix, I’d like to close it by making reference to a comment by one of the participants, “We take everything from the Bible.” Should we?