It is 2015, President Obama is in Kenya, his father’s birthplace, asking African leaders to embrace homosexuality. Gay marriage is now legal in the USA, so Africans are being commanded, like zombies in the late Fela Kuti’s song, to follow the lead and moral compass of the USA.

The argument being made for gay marriage is that what two people do in their bedroom is nobody’s business. Homosexuality is about two adults loving each other, love has to be celebrated and not criminalized. They say homosexuality has been with humanity since the dawn of time and it is just as natural as heterosexuality.

Furthermore, they say there are different kinds of sexual attractions or orientations and homosexuality is just one of them. They say it is discriminatory to prevent gay people from marrying.

Africans who disagree with gay marriage have been called narrow-minded, uncivilized, uneducated and backward. If the free, democratic, civilized western nations have accepted gayness how can backward, disease-ridden, poverty-stricken black Africans kick against it?

If the superior white people of Europe and America have accepted this, the lowly, mentally-challenged Africans have to swallow it hook, line and sinker.

Why can’t Africans and their leaders decide what is good for Africans? Africans don’t decide for the USA, so why the cultural dictatorship? The USA has the most prisoners in the world, and has the most gun deaths in the universe but Africans don’t tell the USA how to address these issues.

African culture accepts polygamy but the USA does not. Why is polygamy illegal and unacceptable in the USA? After all, the arguments made fluidly for gay marriage can be equally made for polygamy.

Let’s take a man and his two wives. Just like gays, what they do in their bedroom is nobody’s business. If the women love their man and want to be with him what is wrong with love? I thought they said love should be celebrated and appreciated.

Polygamy has been here since the dawn of life. Well, polygamists are persecuted and prosecuted in the USA. Can Africans tell the USA to accept polygamy? They get to decide what is normal, legal and wholesome for their society but Africans have to be dictated to? Do I smell racism and hypocrisy here? Persecuting and putting polygamists in jail in Obama’s America is civilized and honorable, but Africans not accepting gay marriage is barbaric, abnormal and discriminatory?

Some countries in the world have legalized prostitution. These nations believe it is the right of adult human beings to sell sexual services if they so choose. What two adults do behind closed doors should be nobody’s business.

Morally and legally, they see nothing wrong with prostitution. It is the human right of the prostitutes to sell their bodies since they hurt no one. In the USA, prostitution is illegal.

Are the pro-prostitution countries pressuring the USA to accept and legalize prostitution? Would the USA kowtow to any nation telling it that it is discriminating against prostitutes and infringing on their human rights? The USA decides for itself what is legally and morally right for it but Africans cannot? What kind of sick and warped logic is this?

My grandmother in the village is neither Christian nor Muslim, she still makes libation to our African gods, and she is shocked by the idea of a man marrying a man. It is not about some foreign religion, it is about the mores and beliefs of a people.

The reasons put forth for gay marriage can hold for any other union. What about two men and two women who love themselves, should they be allowed to marry? If love is the only criteria, what about a brother and sister who love each other? The ancient Egyptians and many other societies practiced that. The marriage of cousins is considered incestuous in some societies today, but other societies allow it. Love is not the only criteria for marriage, love alone is not enough.

As a child on my visits to Accra from my village, I remember seeing some effeminate men in the central market. They were called ‘Kojo Basia’, meaning a male-female. No one attacked or bothered them. They went about their hair care business with no problems. Their condition was viewed as a harmless gender disorder. It was not criminalized and it was not glamorized.

When a man is sexually attracted to a baby, it is not his sexual orientation, it is a sexual disorder. When a man is sexually attracted to a plastic doll or a corpse, it is a psycho-sexual disorder. There is some hormonal or biological dysfunction going on.

Equally, when a man is sexually attracted to another man or a woman to another woman, it is a sexual disorder. Some disorders, like attraction to a baby, are harmful, others are not. But they are disorders nonetheless. It is the African view of sexuality. It was the same in the west until gay activists incessantly pressured psychologists to change it.

I don’t support anyone physically attacking or abusing gay people, just as I won’t support the physical attack of two men and two women having group sex in the privacy of their home. Attacking gay people is criminal and evil. Even from a religious point of view, which is not the direction of this article, if gayness is sinful or haram, so is lying, fornication, bribery and greed. So if we leave other sinners alone for God to deal with, why physically attack gays?

If you believe Obama’s gay agenda in Africa is about human rights and freedom, then I have two plots of land on Jupiter to sell you. This is about political arrogance and cultural imperialism. It is about giving something back to the overwhelming support he got from the gay lobby in the elections.

Internationally, Africa is the easy target. Otherwise, why is America not pushing her gay agenda on their very good friends in the Middle East : Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Qatar? Don’t gays in these nations deserve human rights too?

Obama and the USA should leave Africa alone. They are trying to bully Africa because of the little aid we get from them. Whatever aid we get from them is wealth they stole from us anyway. They want us to legalize gay marriage, let them legalize polygamy first, and then maybe we can talk. What is good for gays is good for polygamists.

By Dr. Kofi Mensah