Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

February 26, 2008

Photo: Flickr/Gino Ginelli

Scandal rocked the Senegalese capital earlier this month when a local gossip magazine published photos of happy men purportedly celebrating a gay wedding at a local restaurant. Several men pictured in the photo were rounded up and jailed. The principals have apparently gone into hiding since publication of the pictures, as homosexuality here can not only be punished with a jail sentence of between one and five years and payment of up to $3000 in fines, but they are considered to be behaving in a way that is ‘against nature’ and the laws of Islam.

Elsewhere in this column I discussed the plight of the hapless English teacher in the Sudan who insulted the Prophet by calling a teddy bear by his name, and no one reading this column can possibly be ignorant of the scandal involving the Danish cartoonist (who by the way is still the target of death threats). When I mentioned the incident in my class of 18 Muslim students, they were all of one accord: he should be killed.

Mind you, these are 17-year olds like 17-year olds all around the world, they love rap and reggae and dancing and the latest fashions. They are often lazy and irresponsible and prefer to watch films in class rather than analyze poetry – you know, typical adolescents that you might meet anywhere. Some have lost parents, or have had to adjust to a stepfather or stepmother; some are painfully shy when it comes to speaking in class, all have been trained to respect their elders.

My point: this is not a classroom full of bug-eyed fanatics waiting to board a plane with a Molotov cocktail in hand to destroy the infidel. On the contrary, these are kids who, when they are so inclined, can eloquently argue the pros and cons of abortion or the death penalty or any other controversial topic. Yet when the case moves from abstract discussion to the concrete in matters of religious belief, they brook no contradiction. Though students found it unobjectionable in theory that everyone should be allowed to love and marry whomever they please, the very idea of homosexuality is a profound insult which, to them, warrants severe sanctions.

We discussed gay marriage in the context of general human rights issues, as the UN Human Rights Committee does indeed consider sexual orientation to be a protected status. One well-intentioned student suggested a compromise of sorts: maybe all homosexuals could live in a particular part of town so that they could exercise their rights without offending ‘decent’ people.

“Oh, you mean like segregation?” I asked innocently. The word reverberated with them, as they had learned all about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the US (though apparently not the idea that “separate but equal is inherently unequal”). There was a bit of backpedaling, but not much, as the Senegalese as a whole do not tend to be libertarians, but rather strong believers in a) tradition and b) the mechanisms of social control: “You can’t let people just do whatever they want, or you’ll have anarchy,” as my students frequently tell me.

In the West, of course many LGBT groups have voiced concerns about this much-publicized incident, even suggesting that Senegal, with this evidence of intolerance and homophobia, is perhaps not the appropriate venue to host an important AIDS conference scheduled to take place in Dakar this December. Coming on the heels of the cancelled Dakar rally (see related article), this would be a big economic blow for the country. However, it would certainly send an unambiguous message to the Senegalese government, though I fear that it will take more than an economic sanction of sorts to get people to change their minds about what is a profoundly religious and moral issue for many.

This leads us to a subject we talk about very frequently in class, namely that of cultural relativism. The Senegalese are firmly convinced that THEIR way of making tea is the best, though the Moroccans and the Japanese might disagree most violently (see article on Attaya). If emotions run this high on a subject as straightforward as a beverage involving water and some leaves, how will we ever be able to reach international agreement on what ought to constitute a basic human right? Thoughts welcome: the Nobel Peace Prize brings in quite a hefty sum, I understand…

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com