Homosexuality is a very very controversial subject within the black community, something that causes a lot of anger on both sides of the argument.

Many in the community believe Homosexuality is a sin, by God’s law, and many theories fly around saying that white folks brought homosexuality to blacks to destroy communities, to stop black people having children amongst many other things.

It’s a long held belief that Africa was brought homosexuality by colonists and thus that was the start of black homosexuals. Indeed, today, whilst much of the black community in USA shun homosexuality, in Africa it can lead to the death penalty and worse!

But this wasn’t a white import, that’s simply not true and I challenge anyone to find a source of information that contradicts that? (yes, I am open for discussion).

Rather, homophobia was an import from White Christian missionaries, those seeking to turn Africans to the Bible and also by the spread of Islam. Both religions created hatred towards same-sex relationships.

I’d like to point an excerpt from an article in the UK’s Guardian, which reads:

Throughout history people everywhere have explored and experimented with their sexuality. The desire to do so has never been confined to particular geographical locations. Its reach is universal. Yet today the myth of a pre-colonial sexual innocence, or more fittingly, ignorance, is used to endorse anti-gay legislation and stir up homophobia and persecution in Africa. In my father’s country, Nigeria, a new law passed in January carries a 14-year prison sentence for same-sex marriage and up to 10 years for membership or promotion of gay groups. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act can impose life imprisonment. Latter-day evangelicals from the US are partly to blame for this continuing persecution, but so are Africa’s political leaders such as presidents Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who use rabble-rousing anti-gay rhetoric to increase their power base and popularity.

While much has been written about this dangerous turn of events, little has been written about its origins. Two trailblazing studies in the field – Boy Wives and Female Husbands edited by Stephen O Murray and Will Roscoe, and Heterosexual Africa? by Marc Epprecht – demolish the revisionist arguments about Africa’s sexual history. From the 16th century onwards, homosexuality has been recorded in Africa by European missionaries, adventurers and officials who used it to reinforce ideas of African societies in need of Christian cleansing.

The Portuguese were among the first Europeans to explore the continent. They noted the range of gender relations in African societies and referred to the “unnatural damnation” of male-to-male sex in Congo. Andrew Battell, an English traveller in the 1590s, wrote this of the Imbangala of Angola: “They are beastly in their living, for they have men in women’s apparel, whom they keep among their wives.”

Transvestism occurred in many different places, including Madagascar and Ethiopia. Among the Pangwe people of present-day Cameroon and Gabon, homosexual intercourse was practised between males of all ages. It was believed to be a way to transmit wealth. The Nzima of Ghana had a tradition of adult men marrying each other, usually with an age difference of about 10 years. Similar to the pederasty of ancient Greece, Sudan’s Zande tribe had a tradition of warriors marrying boys and paying a bride price, as they would for girl brides, to their parents. When the boy grew up, he too became a warrior and took a boy-wife.

In this same tribe lesbianism was practised in polygamous households. In the 18th century the Khoikhoi of South Africa used the word koetsire to describe men considered sexually receptive to other men, and soregus was the word they used for a friendship which involved same-sex masturbation.

Homosexuality is also recorded among the Siwa of Egypt.

It was considered a boy’s rite of passage in Benin, and woman-woman marriages involving a bride price existed in more than 30 African societies from Nigeria to Kenya to South Africa.

The full article can be read here.

Now, the point here is that homosexuality is not the result of one culture, one race or one people. It has been a part of human existence in various forms as far back as we can trace. Blaming and pointing fingers at the past, creating conspiracies around why it was introduced helps no one.

I’d love to see evidence that black gay men have caused a reduction in black families, or created the break down of communities. Surely the problems lie in drugs, mass incarceration and poverty rooted in institutional racism?

Not a few people having feelings for the same sex?

There are black homosexuals, it’s their business. To call them out as less of a black person, in my opinion, is not tolerant and is divisive to the greater cause of unity and overcoming the problems faced by the black community. Think of James Baldwin, an openly gay man in a time when being gay was not looked upon well at all, he did so much for the black community and his writings still stand strong today.

I would argue that although it has bound the community together and gotten people through very hard times, religion has also caused a lot of problems for the black community, and the hatred towards the black LGBT community has it’s roots there.

I would really appreciate your thoughts on this subject.