#GAY MEN MAKING LOVE AND ONE DECIDES TO EAT HIS SHIT TV#
Newspapers, TV and radio often fan the flames. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time on the continent is likely to encounter a warm, friendly, decent human being who will stop them short with an outburst of homophobic prejudice. They make such statements because they know they will strike a popular chord in swaths of Africa. This is not, however, merely the hate-filled bile of politicians. Last week Gambian president Yahya Jammeh declared: "We will fight these vermins called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively." In January, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill criminalising same-sex "amorous relationships" and membership of LGBT rights groups. Same-sex relations are illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries, according to Amnesty International, and punishable by death in some states. Western liberals eager to see the best in Africa must face an inconvenient truth: this is the most homophobic continent on Earth. But it is also a measure of conservatives' anxiety that every day more and more African homosexuals are coming out and losing their fear.
It is a war marked by political opportunism, biblical fundamentalism and a clash between cultural relativism and universal human rights. In 140 characters, Roth encapsulated a broad sweep of history and geography and one of the central paradoxes of Africa's new war on gay and lesbian people.