Rev Jide Macaulay
The House of Rainbow is Nigeria’s first LGBT church and was founded by gay pastor the Rev Jide Macaulay. However his father who also ordained him is founder of the Bible University and President of the Nigeria Association of Christian Theologians and one of the main supporters of the proposed Same Sex Marriage Law that will criminalise the Nigerian LGBTI community and anyone who supports or advocates on their behalf.
Rev Jide has not only had to face the homophobic wrath of his father by coming out as a gay man and opening his ministry to the LGBT community, his own 14 year old son has disowned him as has the rest of his family and many in his community.
Many Nigerians say they would disown a gay child. But Prof. Macaulay, who comes from a family so prominent that a street in Lagos is named after one of his uncles, tries to take a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin approach. In a letter to his son shortly after discovering his son’s homosexuality, he wrote, “People in Nigeria here love you and rate you high in their lives.” But in that same letter he warned that his son’s homosexuality “is not only ABOMINABLE but a great DISGRACE to our family.”
To the extent that his son’s church affirms homosexuality, it is “of Satan,” the father says.
So, despite protests from his wife, Prof. Macaulay supports the anti-gay legislation. He says he “won’t feel very bad” if his son winds up in prison, which he even sees as a possible means of turning his son straight.
The conflict between the older and younger Macaulay is a mirror of the conflict between many families and within the society as a whole. More and more Nigerians are coming out which is one of the reasons why the bill is moving closer to being legislated as the Christian and Muslim communities stand in opposition to human rights, the right to define and live our own sexualities.
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Thanks for this. I’m reading it on Sunday and it is a good reminder to thank the Rev. for his bravery and to thank my parents for never disowning me.
I still don’t understand why a lot of people think their way of thinking is right and everyone has to go along with it.
We pretend to be very moral but when it comes down to matters concerning basic universal rules like honesty and helping others, fall far short.
It is my submission that for thousands of years, most ancestral African people lived in harmony with their homosexual brethren. Even if homosexual practices were not embraced, they must surely have been tolerated at the very least. This is why there are hardly any stories within African tradition of homosexual houndings, indeed, of homophobia of any kind. Homosexuality is a part of nature, and has always been. It is not reasonable to assume that only now in our times that homosexuality has come into being.
What I think has happened is that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, they brought with them their religious beliefs and moral values as baggage. On their arrival there were numerous accounts of homosexual practices amongst the ‘natives’, but because these reports were filtered through the eyes of prudish, (for want of a better word), colonialists and/or missionaries, the true extent and colour of it was lost. The African has always been close to nature, and homosexuality is a part of nature.
Homophobia was part of the package that our ancestors acquired from the Europeans. In my view, Africans have too readily accepted the ideas and idiosyncrasies of the Western world. The same can be said of our Islamic brothers and sisters in relation to the Arab world. The result is a confusion, an uncertainty and a disunity among Africans that belies resolution. It is perhaps the main reason why Africa remains stalled in underdevelopment.
Today the Western world had seen the light. They have now reached the place where ancestral Africans were hundreds of years ago. In the West, it has been recognised that in Mother Nature’s diversity, it is inevitable that there would be some members of society whose sexual proclivity would differ from that of the majority. They have taken the appropriate steps to correct the mistake of homophobia, and introduced appropriate legislation to protect homosexual people from discrimination.
What I find hard to understand is why the African is failing to come to his senses, and accept that homophobia is wrong. It saddens me that a person like Prof. MaCaulay is still steeped in prejudice, because homophobia is prejudice just like racism.
Archbishop Akinola says that I have acquired my sexual orientation from the Westeren world. What he needs to understand is that, it is his homophobia that came from Europe. Homosexuality comes from nature.
I think AFRICANS have a long way to go in terms of justice. We AFRICANS have been plagued with our so called tradition and culture.