The rise of the modern-day “gay rights movement” has fostered increased discussion within the African community of what has been termed “the effeminization of the black man” or the “gay agenda.”
This wave of “homophobia” is a direct reaction to imperialism in deep crisis. The white nation, in order to save itself from this crisis, seeks to consolidate itself with historically oppressed sectors. This is the case with the gay rights movement. With the help of traitorous agents in the African nation, the white nation is able to fracture the African nation by attacking oppressed sectors like same-gender-loving people within our community.
In all societies, the family structure has always been an economic unit. With the development of capitalism, the nuclear family was the economic unit, and anything that challenged the nuclear family’s underpinnings of capitalism, including homosexuality, matriarchy or patriarchy, had to be challenged ideologically and physically as all institutions of the bourgeoisie must be defended.
For example, feminism seeking to end patriarchy sparked a movement in the 60s in which white women could gain their equality with white men if they got out of the homes and worked (there has never been a time where African women did not have to work). This would give them the economic independence that would help ensure equality in the family structure. It was a means for the bourgeoisie to further consolidate white women into the white nation, which led to the rise of someone like Hillary Clinton.
This struggle did not undermine the nuclear family as an economic unit, but strengthened it and the white nation.
Likewise, the gay rights movement has centered its struggle on marriage equality. Their struggle isn’t against the nuclear family contractions, which is rooted in capitalism. In fact, their struggle simply seeks to expand what the nuclear family can be and legitimizes the institution. Backward forces within the African nation do not understand this contradiction and perpetuate bourgeois ideology to oppress our same-gender-loving brothers and sisters.
Africans have always been democratic and anti-imperialist!
Africa birthed humanity. We have always been open, tolerant and communal societies. Even in the midst of the worst colonial assault and enslavement the world has ever seen, we have kept our humanity. This is historically true, even in many African societies of the past, in regards to same-gender-loving people.
To those who claim homosexuality is not African and a product of colonialism, YES there was homosexuality in Africa, which is outlined in books like “Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities.” This is not to take the same line as many “ancient African historians” that broadly proclaim what Africa as a whole was or was not, but to show its existence and tolerance of homosexuality.
The struggle waged by Africans in the Black Revolution of the 1960s is clear example of the African struggle as democratic and anti-imperialist, and shows we have no stakes in the oppression of any sector except the bourgeoisie. Africans not only kept American society safe from what has been characterized as “fascism” during the McCarthy Era, but also opened up the doors to the anti-war, disability rights, women’s rights and sparked the Gay Rights Movement with an African trans woman leading the historic Stonewall Rebellion.
Imperialism in deep crisis and the white man’s gender roles!
There is a direct correlation between the current rise of homophobia within the “conscious” community to the deep crisis of imperialism. The struggle of people around the world to take back our resources from colonial bondage has led the white nation to unite otherwise marginalized sectors of the white community—like gay individuals.
The Africans that espouse the “gay agenda” base their criticisms of the same-gender-loving community on bourgeois notions that being gay represents femininity and is weak, while masculinity is represented by being heterosexual and strong. More specifically, there is an assumption that it is an attack on the black family, meaning the black nuclear family.
For one, African society has always been matriarchal. By definition, imperialism must denounce anything African and have us adopt the ideology of the oppressor. The effeminization myth is also an attack on African women and society.
It is said that the media helps to spread effeminization; however, masculinity is defined by the oppressor nation. The common representation of masculinity has always been the State’s most oppressive agents: soldiers, police officers and even depictions of superheroes.
Femininity is defined by meekness and deference to power. Historically, in the white ruling class society, women were treated like children or pets; they were oppressed and forced to take on roles that made them weak in society.
These traitors would not dare attack Harriet Tubman, who many times dressed as a man and carried a gun when freeing enslaved Africans, at a time when white women could not leave their homes without permission. Was Harriet too masculine to fight for our freedom?
Or take Kuwasi Balagoon, one of the legendary Panther 21 and a member of the Black Liberation Army that was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the famous Brink’s robbery. As an African man who was bisexual, was he too effeminizing the Black Liberation Movement? These arguments are ridiculous!
Traitorous agents in our midst
We can say simply that the forces within the African community that seek to oppress same-gender-loving Africans are traitors to the African nation and agents of imperialism.
These attacks against Africans who are same-gender-loving pushes these Africans into unity with the gay rights movement or the LBGTQ movement led by the white oppressor nation that use them as cannon fodder to further assault the African nation and also lend legitimacy to their struggle for further acceptance into the white nation.
Many of these agents use religious idealism, both Christian and Islamic, to attack the same-gender-loving Africans, but cannot attack colonialism, the material reality that is responsible for the oppression of our people.
Neocolonial stooges in Africa, from Nigeria to Uganda to Zimbabwe, imprison and even kill same-gender-loving people, but refuse to challenge imperialism to end the poverty rampant in their countries. This is cowardice!
Here in the U.S., one of the most famous traitors to the African nation is the so-called Irritated Genie. He has made a name in the “conscious community” for his oppressive attacks on same-gender-loving people, openly calling for them to be murdered. He has even attacked and denounced the Uhuru Movement for our stance to protect and defend everyone in the African Nation, including same-gender-loving people.
The Irritated Genie was literally a State agent (a homeland security contractor) who bought guns and military accessories to be given to Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). He helped the State continue its occupation of Indigenous land by gun point, the same borders that former U.S. President Barack Obama used to deport nearly 3 million people and the same border Trump wants to use deport another 3 million people. Who knows how many people were deported or killed from the military equipment ICE agents attained courtesy of the Irritated Genie.
When Africans confronted him for his history, he said that he joined Homeland Security because he was selling his lectures on CD, but Africans were bootlegging them and making it impossible for him to make a living. Even here, he attacks the African community instead of the system itself for his unemployment. Further, out of all of the jobs he could of selected, he chose to sell guns to ICE agents, pulling in a six figure salary.
Some of his ridiculous arguments are that homosexuality destroys the black family because they do not produce children. This stance legitimizes the capitalist nuclear family structure within black community and undermines how African nation has historically functioned as a family. Historically, even under capitalist assault, we have been communal people like raising children collectively where no child would be left an “orphan”.
Further, genocidal murders in Congo where millions of Africans have been killed by white power and mass incarceration of Africans in the U.S. destroy the African family, but he does not give a blistering assault against these imperialist attacks.
Unity in all sectors of imperialism
It is clear that white power imperialism is getting unity from all sectors to include the gay community––it has done so historically.
Sexual orientation has no political significance in and of itself. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela explains, similar to there being no such thing as “women in general,” there is no such thing as being “homosexual in general.” The real question is a person’s national and class interests.
Cecil Rhodes is the white colonial settler who is responsible for countless deaths of African people in Southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe (formerly his namesake Rhodesia). He also cornered the diamond marketm and to reward his treachery, they named the most prestigious academic award in the world after him, the Rhodes Scholarship. Rhodes was gay.
J. Edgar Hoover, who made his bones destroying the Garvey Movement and later through COINTELPRO when he militarily defeated the Black Revolution of the 1960s, was gay and a cross-dresser. Roy Cohn, a prosecutor in the Mccarthy hearings and later mentor and attorney to Donald Trump, was gay. This did not stop imperialism from embracing them all because they furthered the aims of imperialism, and their individual sexuality did not disrupt capitalist exploitation of oppressed nations.
Protect and defend everyone in the nation
In the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), some of the most courageous and cadre-minded comrades are same-gender-loving. Their stance needs to be emulated, “effeminization” and all.
As an African “straight” man, I have deep disdain for anyone who attempts to fracture the nation, and once the African nation reaches its full stature, we shall deal with these traitors as any other nation deals with someone guilty of treason.
Put plainly, the question is whether an African, regardless of sex or sexual orientation is committed to overturn the 600 years of terror reigned on African people by white power colonialism, period! Anything else is treason!
One Africa, One Nation!
Uhuru!
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