By Sonnie Ekwowusi
With the official pronouncement of the Vatican last week that a union between a man and a man or between a woman and a woman in the name of “marriage” is a sin against God and therefore does not receive the blessing of the Catholic church, the Lesbianism, Gay, Bi-sexualism, Trangenderism, Queer behaviour, Intersex and others (LGBTQI+) ideological barbarism has suffered another major irreversible defeat. From time immemorial the teaching of Catholic church that marriage, as ordained by God and in consonance with the civil laws of many nations of the world, can only be contracted between a man and a woman, has remained unchanged and irrevocable. But prior to the pronouncement of the Vatican last week, there had been some quibbling in some quarters to the effect that with the emergence of Pope Francis coupled with the pressure from some left-wing Catholic clergy, journalists, and church reformers, the Catholic Church had somehow relaxed her Orthodoxy and doctrinal eloquence on marriage and therefore had reserved a place for LGBTQI+ people in the church.
But the Catholic Church has not relaxed her teaching on LGBTQ1+. Last week the Vatican came out strongly to unequivocally unambiguously reaffirm that it is illicit to impart blessings on sinful unions between persons of same sex because “God does not and cannot bless sin”. By finally hitting the nail on the head on the matter last week, the Catholic Church has reaffirmed her two-millennia teaching which is anchored on the teaching of Jesus Christ -“But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder”
But in their defence last week, the LGBTQI+ community expressed its anger against the Catholic Church for outlawing LGBTQ1+. It alleges that the aforesaid Vatican pronouncement outlawing LGBTQI+ is homophobic, anti-Christian, a violation of gay right and therefore null and void. Speaking to the media last week, one of the gay persons said, “the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it can’t be put back inside’, meaning that, despite the Vatican sledge hammer, the LGBTQI+ people are undeterred in their irreversible resolve to imbibe and live out their LGBTQI+ lifestyle no matter whose ox is gored. In rebutting the said defence, a certain spokesman of the Catholic Church was heard to say, “There will be no recognition of homosexual unions or marriages by the Catholic church. It is non-negotiable. End of story”. It will be recalled that within the first three days of his inauguration as the President of the United States, Biden wasted no time in opening the floodgates for all sorts of lesbians, homosexuals, beasts, queers, animals, transgenderists, beast-genderists and beast-sexualists, who had been banished by former President Trump, to come out from their banishment and start agitating for what they consider as their lost rights. At the moment President Biden has made LGBTQI+ the centre-piece of American foreign policy. He has threatened that Nigeria and other countries which are yet to legalize LGBTQI+ must hurry up and do so otherwise they will incur the wrath of the United State. Biden has also swiftly revoked the Trump-Pence administration policy and reinstated the corruptive Obama bathroom policy which states that male students who claim to be females, notwithstanding that they had not undergone any gender-reassignment surgery, should compulsorily shower together with girls in the same bathroom.
Since Biden issued the aforesaid threat, many Nigerians have been faulting him on that. For instance, two weeks ago, a group of NGOs and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) based in Lagos described Biden’s open threat as a violation of Nigeria’s territorial integrity. In their words, “Nigeria is a sovereign nation. We have a right as a sovereign nation to decide for ourselves the kind of laws we can enact for ourselves and for our own good. We should reject anything which compromises our territorial sovereignty. No foreign country has a right to interfere in the way we run our country or enact our laws. If the U.S. or any other country is bent on stopping to give us financial assistance simply because we have declared LGBTQ1+ illegal in Nigeria, that country can go ahead and do so. LGBTQ1+ is against our culture and tradition and against our beliefs. Only marriage contracted between a man and a woman either under Islamic law, Customary law and Marriage Act is recognized as valid in Nigeria”.
Having carefully evaluated the forgoing arguments as well as weighed them on the scale of justice, I think the first thing to say is that the LGBTQ1+ people are human beings created by God. By virtue of this, they are ontologically good human beings. We should love them as ontologically good human beings but we shall not love the LGBTQ1+ ailment they are suffering from. In this context, we must not ostracize them or discriminate against LGBTQ1+ people. Rather than ostracize or discriminate against them, we should volunteer to take them to the hospital for therapy and rehabilitation. Nobody is born a lesbian or a homosexual. There is no gay trait in any human gene. Neither is LGBTQ1+ inherited from one’s parents. To date, there is no empirical medical study that proves that LGBTQ1+ is inherent in some people let alone in all peoples. Even animals in the bush do not indulge in same-sex copulation. The simple ultimate truth is that LGBTQ1+ is an acquired barbaric aberration. Being an acquired barbaric habit, it can be given up some day. Some LGBTQ1+ people have been recovered through therapy and rehabilitation to start living normal lives. As U.S President, Obama decreed June as gay Pride Month. Can you imagine? Pride in what? Pride in being queer?. In many cultures, including my village, queer people are sick people who are under medication. LGBTQ1+ is incompatible with Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also incompatible with African regional instruments such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights domesticated in Nigeria and applied by the Nigerian Supreme Court in the case of Abacha V Fawehinmi.
Therefore, outlawing of LGBTQ1+ is not a derogation from international legal obligation because there is no known domestic or international law which obliges nations of the world to refrain from enacting laws against LGBTQ1+. Even though some nations have legalized LGBTQ1+, other nations are not obliged to join in their madness. No “international Supreme Court” can force a sovereign State to legalize LGBTQ1+. The binding nature of international law is a matter of consent of sovereign States. In other words, international law binds upon consent not by imposition. As far back as June 29 2016 the prestigious European Court of Human Rights sitting in Strasbourg, France delivered a historic and unimpeachable judgment that LGBTQ1+ is not a human right. The court, which is the highest court in Europe, held that “marriages” entered into by people of same-sex cannot be considered as marriage. As important as this judgment is, the liberal media such as pro-gay CNN or pro-gay BBC and others refused to report it.
It is obvious that the new Western Cultural Revolution has turned right into a dynamic and subjective process of change that allows for contradictory choice. Hence choice or license has become an absolute principle and a new point of reference of human rights. This has resulted, according to Marguerite A. Peeters in her seminal work: The Globalization of the Western Cultural Revolution, in the deconstruction of the anthropological structure of man and woman leading to the negation of reality and LGBTQ1+ barbarism. (Thisdaylive)
