BBC reports:
Two gay men arrested in Malawi after getting engaged are to be charged with gross public indecency, police say.
“We arrested them because they committed an offence; homosexuality in Malawi is illegal,” police spokesman Davie Chingwalu told the BBC.
This kind of nonsense will not stop without real pressure from the West. Meaning, if Obama and Brown do not act, it will continue. Culturally, black African lawmakers do not have the internal, cultural mechanisms that can transform their backward position on homosexuality; they are deficient in this regard. The agent of change must therefore come from outside, from the West. This is not cultural imperialism, this is the logic of the universal.
Malawian lawmakers do not exercise their vocation to interpret laws from the West, they function to implement and see that Malawian law is carried out effectively within the social structure of the nation of Malawi not the U.K and not from here. Once that basic governmental function of any nation that deems itself as such is dismantled or toyed with by outsiders the it is by is most simple definition cultural imperialism.
We must collectively make this our new cause. This is insanity that will multiply unless economic and political pressure is brought to bear.
Loveschild telling Charles about the ways of Africa.
Let me get the popcorn, this is better than good. This is great.
Shit, they should take this show on the road. They could probably make more money than Savage.
The anti-modernists (in Jamaica, in Uganda, in the Arab world, in the USA; today, it happens to be Malawi) are making their final stand. Stand firm.
I’m in, but I hate popcorn.
Only one problem, Charles is thoughtful, intelligent, able to see multiple sides of the issue, and has superior reading comprehension skills. His critic on the other hand …
Yes, this is insane and inhumane, and it needs to be stopped now.
I apologize if this is a naïve question, but if being gay in Malawi is illegal, why do gay people stay there? It’s one thing to be a gay American and to fight for the right to marry, it’s yet another to live somewhere where your very existence is deemed a jailable offense.
Cops always have the option of not enforcing a law; one could argue that most cops spend most of their time NOT enforcing the law, because otherwise 95% of the population would be incarcerated for one petty thing or another. I don’t know a thing about Malawi or Malawians (Malawites?), but if simply being gay is illegal there, it doesn’t sound like the kind of paradise on earth that’s difficult to give up. Just leave!
Send in MADONNA!
How is this Obama’s responsibility? If these people don’t listen to their own leaders, what’s to say they will listen to ours? Change needs to come from the bottom up there, not imposed from the top down by some leader who lives thousands of miles away and doesn’t know the situation on the ground from a hole in the wall.
Charles: “This is not cultural imperialism, this is the logic of the universal.”
You and I (and countless others) agree on that — that there are certain human rights and that these rights are universal — but people in other countries who want to maintain the status quo do see it as “cultural imperialism.” In fact, one of the ways in which extremist and conservative Muslims feel that Islam is being “attacked” is through our liberal ideas of equal rights for women and homosexuals, and separation of church and state.
@7- Not everyone has the means to simply move to another country. At best, you can hope to be a penniless refugee in a nation which will grant you asylum, where you will have no friends or family. Changing countries, particularly if you’re poor, isn’t like taking a trip to Whistler.
@7, Malawi has a nominal per capita GDP of $312. Does that answer your question?
If not, maybe the fact that if you attempt to leave Malawi and cross into a neighboring one, you’ll probably spend some number of years or decades in a refugee camp. Though almost all the refugees are going the other way, believe it or not.
@3 and @6 — You guys must like those formulaic old movies, you know— where the audience can predict every plot turn and even the ending.
B-O-R-I-N-G…………
@13: I like that movie where you take your meds and act like a real live normal boy-or-girl for once.
Welcome to the Internet, please don’t hurt yourself!
I lived in malawi for 11 years. as an out gay person it had never been a problem until one of our staff reported that two men lived together. pressure then became unbearable as police searched the house wanting to know sleeping arrangements and intimidation including threats (including some by gunpoint) and extortion became too much and we left the country. while we lost everything we had we were extremely fortunate to be able to go somewhere else. the ones i really feel sorry for are those who have no choice, they must stay and endure the threats, pay the extortionate bribes and and live a life hell. our thoughts go out to fellow gay people living in malawi and i wish them all the best in their difficult road to free and peaceful lives.
“This is not cultural imperialism, this is the logic of the universal.”
If there was an absolute, universal concept of Good that we could appeal to, maybe then we could call this ‘logic of the universal’, but that is not the case. If I say Good must be happiness for everybody, and another says Good should be happiness for me and those like me, I can disagree but I cannot call the other viewpoint false. How could I even call mine true? Because it is better for everyone? That is circular reasoning.
This is not a true or false matter, not a matter of logic, it is a matter of personal ideals that cannot be validated or measured. What we have then is our own cultural idea of what is allowable behavior in a society, and we wish to push that onto others. At the very least that’s cultural interference. Not that I think that is necessarily bad. I think it’s natural to want to correct the wrongness of others, that we all seek to defend our beliefs and to spread them to others. But let’s not put our liberal ideas on a false pedestal by calling them the ‘logic of the universal’.