Chibuikem.

Father, don’t consider this an attack but an avenue to learn too. Look at your environment. Look at your world. There are countries with stringent punishments for people identifying as queer. In some countries, lengthy jail terms. In others, death penalties. How has that prevented people in such regions from “copying the gay lifestyle from the Europeans”? Do you think someone will see both conditions — a condition to live safe and freely and another condition to live in fear of if not getting unalived on the streets with no sympathy even from the church, getting unalived thru the mandates of the legislation — and “choose” to be gay?? Like you think someone will rather choose rejection from family just to be with someone of the same sex? Look at Afghanistan. Look at Qatar. Look at Saudi Arabia. You think the gays there will risk it all just to be gay? What exactly is gay in these environments that we will say was the triggering factor or nurturing factor that made them gay in AFGHANISTAN? Saudi Arabia? I won’t mind getting answers to these questions i am asking, cos I genuinely want to know if you believe people will see both factors and choose the one that will put them in perpetual sadness and fear.

Homosexuality is NOT a “copied” culture. We can say that gays in Africa are having the courage to live authentically because it has been seen in Europe that you can be gay and have rights and privileges. That is totally different from copying something. People literally grew up watching “beauty and the beast”, “Prince Charming”, “sleeping beauty”, “Cinderella” and every other cartoons that portrayed heterosexual love. Not until lately, there have been no cartoon portraying gay love. Yet, some of these people who grew up soaked in heteronormativity still turned out gay. When next this conversation is gonna be had, if you are going to come from the point of religion and a religious scholar, stick to it. The moment you start referencing other factors outside your area of expertise, be open to receiving pushbacks especially from experts in that field.

Finally, Father, humans are not Labrats. I don’t know if I will be here in the next edition so let me just drop this. In many instances you gave, to proffer solutions to homosexuality, you said gay men should be given women. Let us accept that the feelings of these gays dont matter. It should never be taken into consideration because to consider them is to endorse them, fine. Haven’t you seen the trends from women lamenting how broken they were to discover their husbands for decades was secretly gay. No man or woman should be made into a Labrat just cos we want to ‘cure’ what our religions say is an anomaly. Will you as a priest give out your brother or sister, nephew or niece to a gay man or woman with the sole purpose of curing the gay and winning a soul for Christ? 🌚 This wasn’t just a space to come and say what I think, to me. This was an avenue to also learn and challenge these wrongs deeprooted in systematic oppressions. We should not water them down because we say we are catholics and as such mandated to keep the doctrine at any cost. Giving a woman to a gay man is “corrective rape” and we shouldn’t see it as good because we are doing it to defend a doctrine. Rape isnt just when clothes are torn, blows are launched and hairs are pulled. Thank you, Fr.