“All things that are in the constitution, here they don’t mean anything, they don’t translate to our daily lives. People are being killed,” a married black lesbian activist in a Cape Town township says.
When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe’s ZimEye.org declared, “History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding.” The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu ceremony in the South African town of KwaDukuza.
Of course, these were neither the first nor second same-sex weddings in Africa. Many couples have married in South Africa since the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2006. But because South Africa has sizeable white and Asian minorities, its same-sex marriages are dismissed by many opponents of LGBTI rights as a foreign import on a continent where 38 governments still criminalize homosexuality. (In South Africa and many other parts of the world, the preferred acronym is LGBTI—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex.) These weddings may take place in Africa, but they are not “African” weddings.
Mr. Gay Namibia, whose name is Ricardo Raymond Amunjera, and his husband, Marc Omphemetse Themba, have vivid memories of when South Africa passed its same-sex marriage law. So they were surprised when news of the private ceremony in a Johannesburg office of the Department of Home Affairs started making headlines around the globe.
“I’m proud that my union to Ricardo and … the wedding itself [have] actually made a bold statement … to the world out there that we are here, we are authentic, and we exist,” Themba said. “Homosexuality has never been ‘un-African.’”
Themba and Amunjera are lucky. Though homosexuality is illegal in both their countries, they have not been arrested. Nor have they been attacked or forced to leave their home, unlike other couples that have attempted to celebrate their unions on the continent. Both of their families even came to the wedding reception at the Hilton Hotel in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.
“Marc’s family accepted me; my family loves him. It was every gay man’s dream come true,” said Amunjera.
Even still, they are making plans to move to South Africa, which they speak of as a promised land where they can live together with full rights.
“As much as I love my country, I want to be able to live in a country where my marriage is legitimate,” Amunjera said.
You can find the full article here http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/same-sex-marriage-is-south-africas-law-but-stories-differ
No comments:
Post a Comment