Is this the New Dawn of LGBTQ+ Rights in Zambia?

By Charles Kachikoti

Given that you are the top two elected leaders of the Republic of Zambia, you need to openly and clearly explain why it is that under your watch, in the space of one week, two embassies in Lusaka hoisted LGBTQ+ flags on their premises, and NGOs that promote gay rights held a full conference in Siavonga to strategize on decriminalizing homosexuality in Zambia.

These are crucial matters, especially given that homosexuality is illegal in Zambia; that no previous Zambian government ever permitted organized homosexuality in any space; and that gay rights are a matter that has surrounded the UPND from its opposition days. Here are two reasons why you, President Hichilema and Vice-President Nalumango, need to come out with utmost clarity:

1) In October 2019, online media in Zambia reported that President Hichilema attended a meeting in the resort town of Lake Como in Italy of the Africa Liberal Network (ALN), an organisation which promotes liberal values, including homosexuality (as minority rights). ALN has in its corporate membership 47 political parties and 29 countries in Africa. The meeting is said to have taken place under the auspices of the South African-based Brenthurst Foundation.

2) On October 3, 2019, Colin Stewart, writing in 76crimes.com, reported a statement by UPND youth spokesperson Gilbert Liswaniso: “We as UPND youths we wish to state that despite President HH FULLY supporting gay rights, he remains an elder at the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) and therefore a Christian. President Hichilema is of the view that gays and lesbians are part of us and should be allowed to do what they want. Zambia does not belong to Christians only. We have Muslims, Hindus and many other religions so we should seek to respect people’s choices of what they want to be. As youths of UPND we endorse President Hichilema’s stance and ask well-meaning Zambians to fully respect rights of gays and lesbians people. We stand UNITED for gays and lesbians.”

So far, there is no time that the UPND as a member of ALN has convincingly explained its position on LGBTQ+ rights, and official disclaimers of public concerns have always been vague and roundabout. And there is no time when the UPND leadership ever categorically refuted what Gilbert Liswaniso stated.

It will therefore be proper, honest and sincere for you, President Hichilema and Vice-President Nalumango, to state in clear terms if the UPND supports and promotes gay rights. You need to state clearly whether, now that you are the ruling party, you will now pursue the decriminalization of homosexuality and legalization of gay marriages and all that goes with that. So far, the public evidence from the last one week is suggesting that you have opened the doors and it is a New Dawn for LGBTQ+ in Zambia.

I will present you only 10 questions to digest:

ARE YOU AWARE THAT IF YOU LEGALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY, YOU MUST DECRIMINALIZE PAEDOPHILIA (CHILD DEFILEMENT), CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, CHILD MARRIAGES AND CHILD SEX TOURISM?

Look at the North American Man and Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which was formed in 1978. It is a child-molesting homosexual group that works day and night to give gays legal access to children who are eight-years-old. This association’s motto is “sex before eight before it’s too late.” Apart from marching in most major homosexual parades across the United States, NAMBLA is working to change laws to allow gays sexual access to children. The name of this association comes from the historical reality that homosexuality is not man-on-man sex, but man-on-boy. Related entities worldwide have the very same goals, even if they fail to come out as categorically and openly as this.

If Zambia embraces gay rights, you must allow homosexuals access to children and decriminalize child defilement, child porn, child marriage and child sex tourism where tourists visit a country to have sex with children.

ARE YOU AWARE THAT ORGANIZED HOMOSEXUALITY IS ANTI-GOVERNMENT AND ANTI-SOCIETY, AND AIMS TO SUBVERT NATIONS?

Have you read the Gay Manifesto, published in the February 15-21, 1987 Gay Community News by Michael Swift. It states in part: “We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”

ARE YOU AWARE THAT SLAVE TRADERS BROKE THE AFRICAN MALE’S SPIRIT BY RAPING BLACK MEN ANALLY IN FRONT OF THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN WHEN THE SLAVES TRIED TO PROTEST?

The rape of men was prevalent in the southern parts of America, Cuba and Spain where it was a huge part of the slavery system and culture. While homosexual rape happened in secret locations and on slave plantations, ‘buck breaking’ or ‘bot bursting’ happened in front of the public or the entire plantation personnel to make the slave feel less of a man. This became standard treatment for botched slave rebellions. The men would first be stripped naked and whipped in the presence of a crowd, and after that, raped by the slave owners or merchants as a warning to other slaves.

The targets were mainly the brave men, leaders in the plantations. To make matters more gruesome and unbearable, the slave owners made the African slave fathers to have sex with each other in front of their families. Or they were raped in the presence of their sons. Many of the men killed themselves or ran away after this. Buck breaking started from ships and continued in plantations as a way of stripping male slaves of their pride and power to protect their families. It was also a way for slave owners to show dominance. Why should we African men now long for anal sex and announce our enslavement and humiliation all over again?

Credible research institutions have placed more information than this on the Internet.

ARE YOU AWARE THAT IF YOU LEGALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY, YOU WILL DESTROY MARRIAGE, FAMILY, FATHERHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD AS WE HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THEM?

Carl Wittman (1943-1986) is one of the early influences behind gay rights. In his 1969 write-up Refugees from Amerika, A Gay Manifesto, dismisses marriage (of males and females) and the family as tools of social oppression and sexual limitation. Under the subheading Alternatives to Marriage, he says: “We have to define for ourselves a new plurastic, role-free social structure for ourselves. It must contain both the freedom and physical space for people to live alone, live together for a while, live together for a long time, either as couples or in large numbers; and the ability to flow easily from one of these states as our needs change. In other words, people should be at liberty to flow into and out of sexual relationships of all kinds without obligation to anyone. At its core, Wittman’s ideology is the very definition of prostitution accepted by society.
If Zambia ends up promulgating gay rights, we will dethrone marriage and elevate prostitution as the ultimate expression of liberty.

In the US and Europe today, it is becoming very difficult for anyone to use the terms ‘man’, ‘woman, ‘boy, ‘girl’ or pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’. Men who have had no surgical operation have gone to court to be termed ‘woman’. When such males are imprisoned, they are placed with female inmates and pregnancies are happening. They are competing in women’s sports and they are winning. In such societies, women are husbands and fathers in lesbian relationships, and men are wives and mothers in homosexual relationships. Is this the kind of society you want Zambia to become?

ARE YOU AWARE THAT IF YOU LEGALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY, THEN YOU WILL BE ON THE WAY TO LEGALIZING BESTIALITY, NECROPHILIA AND ALL SEXUAL PERVERSIONS CURRENTLY CONSIDERED DISORDERS?

On October 5, 2011, the British newspaper The Telegraph said: “The gay rights movement has moved American society to a point where it at least has to consider legalizing things like polygamy and bestiality.” Because of vehement promotion of gay rights, bestiality (zoophilia) and necrophilia (sex with the dead) are hot topics in western parliaments and other platforms. That is an inevitable outcome of legalizing homosexuality.

ARE YOU AWARE THAT IN THE WEST HEMISPHERE WHERE HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS ARE RECOGNIZED, THE SOCIETIES THERE HAVE FAILED TO SETTLE WITH GAYS?

The LGBTQ+ movement would have Africans believe that permitting gay rights promotes social harmony and cohesion in society. Yet Forbes.com on November 11, 2021 reported that 375 transgender people were killed that year, the deadliest year for such persons since such matters began to be recorded. The annual global list is released November 20 each year for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The report, by Jamie Wareham, said the majority of the murders happened in Central and South America (70 per cent). “But like last few years, the most deaths in a single country occurred in Brazil, totalling 33 per cent of global deaths.” Cases from Greece, Kazakhstan, and Malawi were reported for the first time too.

Statista.com observed a consistent increase in transgender murders in the US, with 53 killed in 2021. The Human Rights Campaign reports that in the US at least 26 transgender people were killed in 2018, another 29 in 2017, a total 23 in 2016 and 22 in 2015. This is what has been happening: A man purposes to have sex with a woman he later discovers is actually a man—a number of male lovers have simply lost it and exploded. It is within this context that at least 129 bills against LGBTQ+ were introduced in numerous states across the US in 2017, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.

Simply put, introduce gay rights in Zambia and you increase this line of homicides.

ARE YOU AWARE OF AN INCREASED SUICIDE RATE AMONG GAYS IN THE WEST?

Writing in nbcnews.com on April 20, 2021, Dan Avery reported that suicide rates among young people had been on the rise in recent years, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, but gay and bisexual youths were almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide as their straight peers. If the gay lifestyle has raised suicide rates among youths of America in recent years, why should this be promoted to African youngsters who already face numerous personal pressures?

ARE YOU AWARE THAT IF YOU LEGALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY YOU WILL CREATE AN ETHICAL CRISIS AND DESTROY CLARITY OF MORAL THOUGHT IN ZAMBIA?

If we legalize homosexuality and recognize gay rights, our entire ethical sense will be thrown into an irredeemable crisis. When compared to natural heterosexual marriage, gay marriage is not sacred. It has no biblical—or for that matter any other religious—basis for existence as an exclusive and permanent companionship. The nature of homosexuality is that it does not require loyalty and faithfulness in and outside marriage because there is no moral or spiritual foundation for such commitment. Same-sex marriage has nothing to do with offspring, progeny, legacy and destiny. It is self-exclusion and self-expulsion from the normal and natural family tree and therefore from the normal ethics of life.

Homosexuality and lesbianism by nature have no ethics, and have no reason to follow any ethical standards. In their 1978 study, Homosexuality: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, published by Simon and Shuster in New York, Alan p. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg established that 28 per cent of homosexual men had more than 1000 partners in their lifetimes; 83 per cent estimated they had had sex with 500 or more partners.

CAN YOU NAME ONLY ONE TRIBE IN ZAMBIA WHICH HOLDS INITIATION CEREMONIES FOR HOMOSEXUALS AND LESBIANS, AND WHICH HOLDS MARRIAGE CEREMONIES FOR THEM AND PROTECTS HOMOSEXUAL MATRIMONY?

If you cannot, then you have no right to open the doors to foreign powers to pour in their ideas and dismember our cultural essence, and scatter our ethnic sensitivities and sensibilities.

ARE YOU AWARE THAT HOMOSEXUALITY IS TREATABLE?

It is not homophobic to state that homosexuality is a state of being that many gays do exit from and marry and have children. There exist scientific entities that serve to treat homosexuality. One is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, also known as the NARTH Institute, a US organization promoting conversion therapy, from its formation in 1992. NARTH considers homosexuality a disorder for which it offers therapy and other regimes that change sexual orientation of individuals who experience unwanted same-sex attraction. NARTH is dedicated to “affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality.” NARTH disagrees with the global scientific consensus, the position of the world’s major mental health organizations, and scientific research which show that homosexuality is not a disorder. NARTH has since joined the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity.

ARE YOU AWARE THAT HOMOSEXUALITY IN 2022 IS ABOUT A NATION’S SOVEREIGNTY?

In 2011, the US and the UK warned they would use foreign aid to push for homosexuality to be decriminalized in Africa. In March 2013, the European Union offered financial support for organizations that wish to promote rights of gay people in Zambia. The Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia (EFZ) strongly and flatly rejected the offer and warned the EU against interfering in the internal affairs of Zambia; going as far as demanding an apology from the union. Of course no apology came forth. Almost every time our courts have sentenced homosexuals to jail, western heads of state have phoned our sitting presidents to protest—questioning our sovereignty.

Do not imagine that homosexuality is merely about two men or two women in a room, impacting no one else. It is about subverting a nation and weakening its morality for greater nations to swoop in and control its land and natural resources.

The sovereignty and integral existence of the Republic of Zambia are at stake. I hope you are able to recognize this, our President Hichilema and Vice-President Nalumango.