Uganda’s ban on homosexuality is playing out in the private sector, with a local branch of the U.K.-based Standard Chartered Bank denying account access to a trans activist                                                  

By Frankie Edozien

Imagine walking into any major commercial bank, opening a checking or savings account, and then days later being told that your account has been frozen. And oh, by the way, since you’re gay and you work for a gay organization, our bank has a problem with you, and you will not be getting your paychecks deposited into that account.

An unlikely scenario? For most people in the West, yes, but that’s exactly what Juliet Victor Mukasa, a female-to-male transgender activist, says happened to him at a Kampala, Uganda, bank in March.

For all its breathtaking natural beauty and delightfully hospitable and charming citizenry, Uganda is still a place where being openly gay can turn this East African equator nation from paradise into a nightmare.

Homosexuality is criminal in this pearl of Africa. It’s been on the books for ages, with the penal code stipulating that “any person who has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” to being hauled into prison. It dates back to the penal provisions imposed during the era of British colonialism and was strengthened in 1990 to increase the penalty from 14 years to life.

Yet while these laws remain in force, Uganda has introduced democratic reforms and improved its human rights record since Yoweri Museveni became president in 1986.

Mukasa, 32, a research and policy analyst for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, was born female but now identifies and expresses himself as a male, routinely eschewing skirts for pants. He is cofounder and first chairperson of the Sexual Minorities Uganda group.

In 2005 his home was raided and he went into hiding. Then he did an about-face and sued the government for trampling on his rights by raiding his home without a search warrant and arresting his guests. A judgment is expected in that case soon.

But years after the incident, Mukasa went to Standard Chartered Bank — an international bank based in London but with branches and subsidiaries all over Africa and Asia — to open an account.

As at most banks, staff members greeted him courteously and said there would be no problems when he told them where he worked. The account application required him to mention both his current and previous employers.

“I work for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Could I still have an account here?” Mukasa recounted to The Advocate. “‘Of course, this is an international bank and we don’t discriminate. Just write it,’ was the bank’s officials response.”

Mukasa said he wrote his current employer, IGLHRC, in the blank space and for the question that required his previous employer followed, he wrote, “Sexual Minorities Uganda.”

The adviser made a copy of Mukasa’s passport, took photographs, and asked him to sign a document, then told him to return the following day, a Saturday, with passport photos and the money to be deposited.

The next day, Mukasa recalled, “The adviser took my photos and told me to go pick a deposit slip, fill it and deposit the money that I had. At the top of my completed slip he wrote something like ‘Account open…’ and signed it.”

An elated Mukasa skipped out of the Kampala branch, located in one of the city center skyscrapers, dancing for joy.

The following day he went back and deposited 500,000 Ugandan shillings (about $302) and was asked to come back the following week to apply for a Visa debit/ATM card.

“I told a couple of friends about it, how great SCB is, and I even showed them the deposit slip. They were all happy for me,” he recalls.

But the joy was short-lived. When Mukasa went in to complete the Visa application process, a bank officer took him aside with the original officer who helped open the account and told him there was a problem.

He recalls an official saying, “The account opening process goes through so many hands. Your application form got to some bosses who were not OK with it.” Mukasa asked what was wrong with his application and at first the official failed to explain. “I helped him by asking, ‘Is it because of the fact that I work with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and am a gay person myself?’ He answered in the affirmative.”

Mukasa took his case up the chain even asking for a meeting with the local CEO but the account remained closed.

SCB Uganda’s corporate affairs manager, Herbert Zake, in an April interview in his sky-high office overlooking the Kampala metropolis, stressed the bank’s community involvement over the past year: schools built in rural areas; the commitment to ending blindness by paying for cataract surgeries at $277 a pop; drilling boreholes for rural communities at a cost of $80,000 — some people have to walk 10-15 kilometers to get water and it may still be contaminated; and large-scale refurbishments of high school facilities in the capital city.

The company is even leading an effort to end stigma among those affected by HIV or AIDS by offering complimentary voluntary testing and providing a supportive environment to HIV positive employees.

But when asked about why a company that was such an outstanding corporate citizen in many ways for Ugandans and Africans at large, was denying an account to a lesbian, Zake appeared stunned by the question for a moment.

And then says, “She indicated that the money was coming from a gay and lesbian human rights organization … it [homosexuality] is illegal here.”

When pressed on whether national statute against gay actions affected whether gays could have bank accounts, Zake’s response was that the matter “is open to interpretation.” The executive then insisted that he would get clarity on the matter and forward a response to this reporter.

In May, when The Advocate contacted SCB’s parent company, officials in the United Kingdom declined to speak publicly about that one case, but insiders pointed out that the bank has a history of opening in culturally challenging locations.

While the mammoth $50 billion bank has branches in 13 African countries, it also operates in the Middle East, including Iraq, and in Afghanistan. In Middle Eastern locations where it might be difficult for both sexes to mingle openly, it has had to open banks primarily for women.

“We have a very strong ethos of diversity and inclusion in the bank and do not discriminate against customers on the grounds of sexual orientation, or gender or race, for that matter,” insists Tim Baxter, Standard Chartered’s London-based head of external communications.

The problem wasn’t SCB’s, but local law that officials feel they must comply with. Since IGLHRC promotes equality for sexual minorities, and activities of such minorities are illegal in Uganda, that puts SCB in an untenable position, insiders say.

“We operate in more than 70 countries with many different cultures and fully comply with all local laws and regulations,” Baxter says.

SCB officials say they have many senior gay and lesbian employees and try to work within the restrictions of local governments to provide retail financial services for all.

In the meantime, Mukasa has to make do with having friends who can lend a hand — or a bank account.

“IGLHRC wires my salary to a friend’s account. This is not comfortable for me. This makes me feel horrible … I am very frustrated. This place is becoming a stranger land for me every day.”

The Advocate.com. May 17, 2008

 

As the dust settles on the California Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, the question arises: Are we about to re-live the divisive political battles of the 2004 election?

The Massachusetts court ruling came down in late 2003, and by Valentine’s Day 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had opened City Hall to LGBT couples, giving marriage licenses until they were halted a month later by the same court that Thursday determined gays have the right to marry. That was all it took for President Bush and the GOP to make gay marriage a wedge issue, sparking passions on both sides of the issue, and driving conservatives to the polls. Remember the push for a federal marriage amendment?

Past is prologue. So far a million-plus signatures have been gathered to put a ballot amendment before California voters this fall to overturn the marriage-equality decision. And if the pending marriage-equality case before Connecticut’s highest court is resolved in favor of marriage equality — a decision is expected soon — there’s little doubt that gay marriage will become a factor in November’s election.

Republicans, says Ken Sherrill, a political science professor at New York City’s Hunter College, “have to do something to energize their base. The economy is in the toilet; the war is generally believed not to be going well.” However, he cautions, if Republicans turn marriage equality into a political football, they might not get any play. “The fact that a campaign or campaign supporters push certain buttons doesn’t mean that they are going to resonate with the voters,” he says, pointing to the special House election in Mississippi, which was won by a Democrat this week. “They ran these Obama–Reverend Wright ads, and it went over like a lead ball.”

As the marriage ruling made news, both the Obama and Clinton campaigns issued careful, nearly identical statements of support and respect for the decision — but also restated their commitment to civil unions, saying matrimony should be left up to individual states to decide. Republican presidential nominee John McCain, however, has yet to make a statement on the ruling.

According to Patrick Sammon, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, America is in a far different place now than it was four years ago. He notes that many jurisdictions have enacted partnership rights in the intervening years, and “voters have seen the sky hasn’t fallen,” he says. “They have gotten wise to the fact that some politicians tried to use divisive social issues to get votes,” adding he doesn’t believe gay marriage will figure as prominently in the current presidential contest. The evidence? Five GOP senators who highlighted the issue in their campaigns were booted from office in 2006, Pennsylvania’s relentlessly anti-gay Rick Santorum among them. Voters simply have other concerns at this moment in our country’s history, Sammon says, especially given that McCain is seeking to be competitive in states not traditionally Republican. That means coaxing votes from independents and some Democrats who may be alienated by too stern a tone on marriage equality.

As Sherrill says, if McCain or fellow Republicans bring the issue up, “you can expect the Democrats to run a campaign that says ‘don’t get distracted by this issue when the real issue is putting food on your table.’ ” (Frankie Edozien, The Advocate)

Fighting AIDS face to face: the nation’s most successful blacks gays get together to battle the number 1 killer in their community - Our health: depression aids activism and men of color health books

Frankie Edozien

When Doug Spearman left Los Angeles to be part of a group of 38 guys from around the country for a week-end on a Florida beach, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d signed up for. All he knew what he’d been invited to particpate in a treatment with other black gay professionals.

“It was like 10 Indians being invited to a country home for dinner and not knowing what they each had in common,” says Spearman, a 40-year-old actor whosee film and TV credits include parts in The Mask, Cradle 2 the Grave and Girlfriends.

But it wasn’t long after Spearman strolled into a restaurant in South Beach’s Abbey Hotel that he realized what he and the 37 other men gathered that sultry April had in comnon–intellects, razor-sharp intellects, successful careers, and one unanswered question: Why are black people more than nine times more likely than white people to to become infected with HIV?

The men were brought together for the three-day retreat by Emil Wilbelkin, the openly gay editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, with the help of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.

The idea, Wilbekin says, was to shake prominent black men from their complacency around AIDS and to mobilize a movement that can help save African-Americans from the scourge.

“I just believed in the mission,” Wilbekin says, “which was to bring together black men in the top of their fields, educate them about the state of HIV/AIDS, and find a way to mobilize them in their companies to make a difference.”

It was immediately clear to those gathered that one of the yet-unnamed coalition’s biggest priorities would have to be gaining acceptance of homosexuality. Because being gay is considered such a taboo in so many black communities, many black men who have sex with men chose to live their lives in the closet or “on the down-low.” Consequently, AIDS is still not a front-burner topic in most black households, churches, or bars, despite the toll it’s taking in all these establishments.

First, though, these men had to grapple with their own issues about HIV and AIDS and being gay.

For Spearman, who was raised in a middle-class home in Hyattsville, Md., there’s never been an issue with being openly gay. The son of liberal parents, he says one of his early book reports in school was on Patricia Nell Warren’s gay classic The Front Runner.

He’s had more trouble coming to terms with HIV’s role in his life. “Five out of my last seven boyfriends have been HIV-positive, and my best friend in the world is HIV-positive,” Spearman says. Yet “it always surprises me when I find out a black person’s HIV-positive.”

That the black community hasn’t really opened up to talk about AIDS is unfortunate, says Stuart Burden, 41, a San Francisco-based Levi Strauss executive who was at the Florida meeting. “It just seemed like HIV was yet another burden; there was not the immediacy of losing your house, or your job.”

Burden adds that he is among the cognoscenti who scratch their heads wondering why the virus is the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 25 and 34 and for black men between the ages of 35 and 44, and why black men represent 49% of all new AIDS cases in the United States.

San Francisco–based photographer Duane Cramer says he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the coalition when his invitation arrived. “My initial reaction was that I wasn’t going to go,” the 40-year-old says. “But then, I know that part of my life’s purpose is to look at ways to bring an end to AIDS.”

When he was 23, Cromer lost his dad to the disease. Today, Cramer too lives with the virus and often photographs other people living with HIV and AIDS.

“Once I saw the list of participants, I knew I had to be there,” says Cramer, adding that he dived into the dawn-to-dusk workshops with gusto.

Eventually, the men emerged from their hotel with high hopes and a plan of attack, albeit a loose one. First, they want to increase acceptance of homosexuality and AIDS awareness, primarily by speaking out–everywhre from dining tables to city hall. They also want to create a public service campaign to destigmatize HIV infection among African Americans as well as lobby Congress for federal dollars to fight the disease.

All of this they hope to do on a grassroots level, pushing first for change in each of their homecities and the companies where they work. They plan to gather again after one year to see what they’ve accomplished and to set new goals.

A Cornelius Baker, the the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Clinic, said the men should be commended and noted that AIDS activism has historically come first from artists and socialites, not necessarily medical experts. “We’ve been fighting AIDS for 22 years, and we’re still going to have many more year to go,” he said. “It’s never too late to make a difference.”

Coalition members, though, are the first to say there will be hiccups in their activism. Some are wrestling with the group’s priority of visibility. Being out among friends and family is one thing some say, but being a black gay man about at work and to the world is another.

Nevertheless, others have already seen positive results as a result of their efforts. Since returning to Los Angeles, Spearman say he can’t stop talking about AIDS. “I go up to people and start the conversation. ‘Did you know …?’”

Burden says the coalition helped him realize that he’d been preaching to the choir. “I just can’t keep talking to the same public health–type people. We need to be talking to people who influence pop culture. Those people are not well represented in my Rolodex.”

And David Malebranche, a 34-year-old Atlanta physician, says, “It just gave me optimism about black men and black same-gender-loving people. I really found reason to celebrate. There’s a niche we all have–and if we utilize each other’s strength, we’ll succeed.”

Edozien is a reporter at the New York Post.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

Seeking “straight”: as many gay men know, “straight” men can be had. But straight-chasers warn that novelty isn’t likely to lead to a stable relationship.

Frankie Edozien

Bill Roundy is a handsome guy with a shaved head. Quite the masculine ideal, the 32-year-old New York City cartoonist wears dark fingernail polish and is described by friends as “rather goth.” He is secure in being gay, but that doesn’t mean he’s dating other gay guys.

“Straight guys are more nonchalant about things,” Roundy says. “When you are in an all-gay environment there is sexual tension. People are wondering if you are looking at them. But if I’m in a room with 10 guys and one is straight, that’s the one I would go for. I think that’s my cosmic pattern.”

What were once isolated incidents of sex with “straight” men in Roundy’s life have become regular liaisons. “It’s like I’ve got this invisible sign on my head that says EXPERIMENTAL ZONE. I’ve been with a ton of guys who are straight,” he says.

One man became a close long-term friend and is now happily married to a woman. Before his wedding there were years of hookups with Roundy each time the man–who identifies as straight, not bisexual–was between girlfriends. “We were really good friends,” Roundy says. “I had a huge crush on him, and one night I asked him out. He said, ‘Thank you, but no.’”

They remained friends, and months later Roundy was at his house when things evolved. “I put my arm around him, and I wound up going down on him,” he says. “We didn’t talk about it a lot. His thing was that I loved him, and he loved me, and I wanted to go down on him. And it felt really good. He made it clear that he was not going to reciprocate.”

Their relationship continued. “He was like a passive participant,” Roundy says. “It was like, ‘Hey, I’m going down on you,’ and he would say, ‘OK.’”

In 2006 you might think gay guys going for straight men would be a thing of the past. As gays and lesbians are more widely accepted in the mainstream, forming same-sex relationships has become a lot easier. But the longstanding phenomenon of “gay seeking straight” is as strong as ever, if for different reasons than in the past.

These days there are numerous Web sites such as www.straightcollegemen.com that sell the straight-boy fantasy to gay men. There are pages of postings on the “men seeking men” section of Web sites like Craigslist containing the words “straight-acting” or “seeking straight.”

Falling for straight men used to be-and for some still is–all about internalized homophobia, says Danny Garza, a psychiatrist and founder of the Open Door Clinic, an LGBT mental health facility in New York City. “They are attracted to more masculine men than they are themselves,” he says. “They dislike how they see themselves as gay feminine people.”

But in today’s more tolerant society a lot of gay men simply may be exploring a fantasy, and a lot of “straight” men seem to be playing along, Garza adds. “There is greater acceptance of pansexual behavior among straight men,” he says. “Men who are self-identified as straight are more willing to explore their homosexual side. It’s less of a taboo today. Sexuality is more accepted in all of its forms.”

“James Clover,” who asked The Advocate not to use his real name, spent years going to gay bars and searching among openly gay men to form a relationship. But he didn’t like the types of people he was meeting, so the 46-yearold public relations professional from Miami started dating “straight” men. His last boyfriend was married with two children. Their trysts consisted of early morning meetings, lunches, and occasional weekends away. Like many a mistress waiting for their lovers to leave their wives, Clover was crushed when his boyfriend announced to him the impending birth of a new addition to his family.

The two met online, and at first Clover didn’t know his man was married. “He was such a breath of fresh air compared to the kind of game players I knew and was so disenchanted with,” Clover says. “He was something different, and I projected my hopes and desires that this was going to work out better than with people I had met on the [gay] scene.”

Blinded by love, Clover believed his boyfriend when he promised he would eventually leave his wife and come to live with him. “As time went on, it became even more apparent that it wasn’t going to happen,” Clover says. “I wanted to believe it was going to happen. I realized it wasn’t, so I stopped it.”

Michel Ng, a 33-year-old health care administrator in New York, says he has pursued and slept with many “straight” men. “It began as a fantasy because it was a challenge,” he says. “You want something unique, something different. You want something that’s not gay because you feel there is something more.”

Ng is originally from Hong Kong and grew up in Hawaii. He describes himself as an “androgyne,” a gender-nonconformist gay boy who enjoys dressing up in ladies’ attire. “There was a time when I pursued tranny chasers,” Ng says. “I went soliciting men by dressing up. They assume you are submissive and vulnerable because you’re Asian.”

But one experience went terribly wrong. Ng chatted online with a man who made it clear that he was straight but wanted to get to know him. “He was nice. We talked about my dressing up, but he was very comfortable,” Ng says. “Very few straight guys are comfortable and say, ‘Let me take you out.’ Then he said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you–I haven’t really been out much; in fact, I’ve been in jail.’”

Despite learning that the adorable young Greek guy had served time on kidnapping and drug charges, Ng says he pursued a friendship even though the guy said he still had female companions in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., where he lived. “We ended up spending a lot of time together and then dating,” Ng says. “He realized that his feelings got more intense.”

What followed was jealousy and possessiveness unlike anything from his former boyfriends. Straight guys “treat you like women: ‘Where are you?’ ‘What are you doing?’ It’s that straight-boy thing where you are like an object,” Ng recalls. “It’s hot in the beginning. Then it’s annoying. It got too intense in the end.”

When he tried to break it off, the man threatened violence. Fortunately, Ng soon took a job in Thailand and that put some distance between them. He only recently returned to the United States.

“No more. I’ve had it,” says Ng. “Gay boys that want straight convict boys, beware. That’s my advice. That’s the meat of it. I don’t want to end up as some tranny statistic.”

Clover also says he’s done with straight guys: “People say they love you, and the next week they don’t return your calls or acknowledge you on the street. Who needs that?”

Edozien is a New York City-based journalist.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Liberation Publications, Inc.

The power of mayors: Republican or Democrat, man or woman, gay mayors are making a difference at city halls across the nation
Frankie Edozien

In the thick of the 2004 presidential campaign, Gina Genovese and her partner, Wendy McCahill, threw a fund-raising soiree for Democratic contender Howard Dean in their affluent and mostly Republican suburb of Long Hill Township, N.J. At the time Genovese, now 47, was just a successful businesswoman, out in her community and only indirectly involved in politics. A former pro tennis player–once ranked 150th in the world–she has owned Gina’s Tennis World in nearby Berkeley Heights for 23 years.
But that evening she was moved to do more. As Dean and her guests mingled in the high-ceilinged living room of her home atop a winding lane overlooking the surrounding woods, Genovese had an aha! moment.
It’s not enough for LGBT families to keep trying to help progressive politicians win elections, Genovese thought. “At some point we have to fight for our own rights,” she says. “It’s not fair to say to someone else, ‘Stick up for me.’”
So Genovese decided to run as a Democrat for a spot on the local township committee. And she didn’t try to hide her personal life. “Everyone knows us,” she says of herself and McCahill. “I have four or five hundred clients in the area, and I did a lot of fund-raising.”
By fall 2004 she’d won her seat, beating a four-time incumbent by just 10 votes in the town of 9,000, where there are few Democrats and even fewer gay people. Suddenly, she was being touted by the media as the first out LGBT person ever to be elected a mayor in the Garden State. Her crowning glory came January of this year, when the township committee selected her as mayor.
As to whether homophobia is an issue for her: Last year Genovese received flowers at her home and got numerous letters of support after dozens of leaflets, from an anonymous source, accusing her of sexual misconduct were circulated in May. Then in September an antigay sticker was placed on Genovese’s car; the culprit was found quickly and prosecuted. The townspeople might as well have said, “Don’t mess with our mayor.” “People realized this kind of thing doesn’t happen to straight people,” she says.
It validated what she believed all along: that LGBT people must seize control of their own destiny politically, especially at the local level. We need to get involved, Genovese says, or risk being continually marginalized. “I think it’s so important,” she says. “I know there are a lot of people that might never have known they were talking to a gay person.”
As openly gay state and federal lawmakers grab the headlines in the fight for gay equality, a quiet revolution has been taking place at the local level. From Utah to Florida, Massachusetts to California, openly gay mayors are increasingly visible. Some are getting elected as out candidates, while others–like California mayors Christopher Cabaldon of West Sacramento and Stephen Padilla of Chula Vista–have recently found the courage to come out while in office. To date, 22 municipalities have gays at the helm, three of whom are women.
This increased gay presence at the mayoral level was bound to happen, says Scott Widmeyer, a board member for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based group that raises money for select openly gay candidates. “As we get more people elected, we see it spread out and all of that bubbles up,” Widmeyer says.
Perhaps no current U.S. officeholder has done more to raise the profile of gay mayors than David Cicilline, a dashing criminal defense attorney who was elected mayor of Providence, R.I., in 2002. Today, the 44-year-old bachelor, a Brown University graduate, is the only openly gay mayor of a state capital.
Providence, with an estimated population of 178,000, “is really a city-state,” says Cicilline, who had been an out state lawmaker when he beat three contenders in the primary to be the city’s mayor, then later won the race with a mandate–84% of the vote–to bring change to the city’s corrupt government. For Providence voters, Cicilline’s competency outweighed any issues surrounding his sexual orientation.
Cicilline, whose predecessor, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr., left a scandal-plagued bureaucracy with a $59 million deficit when he was jailed on corruption charges, has cleaned house since taking office four years ago. He’s fired tainted workers, settled stalled labor contract negotiations, ended the secret taping of phone conversations at municipal buildings, and restored integrity and a sense of trust to his city. And “crime is down,” Cicilline points out. Even Hollywood has come calling, as the mayor works overtime to put the renaissance back in the Renaissance City. “CBS just shot a pilot [here] called Waterfront,” Cicilline says.
Once Cicilline was sworn in, Providence’s “old boys’ network” was shattered. Women and minorities were added to the employment mix. “Government should be representative of the people it serves,” says Cicilline. Indeed, his swearing-in ceremony was attended by a diverse crowd, including Roberto Salcedo, mayor of the Dominican Republic’s capital city of Santo Domingo, a nod to the city’s large Dominican population.
Cicilline has done a lot to break down barriers in Providence, something Palm Springs, Calif., mayor Ron Oden is proud to have done in his own city. In 2003, after being an out councilman since 1995, Oden headed to City Hall as the nation’s first gay black man to be elected mayor by popular vote.
In a town of roughly 46,000, only 4% of whom are black but at least 30% of whom are gay, Oden’s victory wasn’t attributable to any one group. Palm Springs simply chose the best candidate for the job. The 56-year-old grandfather stepped forward to take the helm partly because there was a move to curtail–or worse, eliminate–the annual gay White Party and popular biker weekends. “I ran for mayor because I saw a very clear agenda that I didn’t believe was progressive,” Oden says. “I felt that they were unnecessarily targeting the gay community.”
Oden points out that those gatherings, along with the annual Dinah Shore Weekend lesbian events, pump at least $3 million per year into the local coffers. Big business supports him because of his economic development sensibilities. “I wanted to revamp our planning department. I also knew that we needed to really create an atmosphere that is business-friendly. We now have a Hard Rock [Cafe] coming in; we have a W [Hotel] coming in; the Hyatt is doing a $40 million renovation,” Oden says.
Even though he had nearly a decade’s experience in government, Oden says people were still skeptical of his agenda, so he promised to serve only one term. During his time in office the city’s big gay events have thrived, but so has Palm Springs itself.
Being an out gay mayor has been rewarding, Oden says, but he’s keeping his promise to leave the job; in March he announced his candidacy for the California assembly. “I believe the only way you develop new leadership is when people get out of the way,” he says.
Like Oden, Cicilline, and Genovese, Mike Gin, 43, also was completely out when he ran for mayor of Redondo Beach, Calif., last summer. Gin, a Chinese-American, is now the first minority mayor in that city since its incorporation in 1892.
But unlike his contemporaries, Gin, a Republican, had to endure a smear campaign from within his own party: A mailer sent by a conservative group in the final weeks of his campaign attacked Gin for accepting contributions from “national liberal gay rights groups.” “It was meant to be a negative, but it backfired,” says Gin, who’s been with his partner, Christopher Kreidel, for 11 years. His relationships in the community helped, as he served on the city council from 1995 to 2003. Like Oden, Gin put a high priority on economic development, but he is proud to help advance the cause of equality from within the GOP. “We need to be able to reach out to both sides of the aisle, not just work with one side,” Gin says.
And that’s something that can be done well from the mayor’s office, Gin adds. “You have the ability to see changes really take place in a timely fashion,” he says. “This level of government is pretty rewarding.”
Edozien is a journalist based in New York City.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group

Out of Africa, out in America: with the help of a group called Uhuru-Wazobia, gay men and lesbians from Africa have built new lives in New York City after leaving their native countries
Frankie Edozien
On a balmy Saturday night in New York City last spring, some 200 partygoers were drinking, dancing, and flirting in a dim Harlem ballroom. Every so often the pulsating rhythms were interrupted and the gyrating bodies would turn their attention to a lip-synching diva-female impersonator decked out in head-to-toe African regalia.
At first glance it looked like any other party, but what was extraordinary was that half of the revelers were gay men and lesbians from Africa. They hailed from Kenya, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Mali, and many now lived in the New York City area. Others had driven in from as far away as Washington, D.C. All had paid $10 each to Uhuru-Wazobia, the organization that put together the bash.
In many African countries being gay is not just seen as taboo but is illegal. Denounced as un-African by politicians–including the leaders of Kenya, Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe–it can bring more jail time than heterosexual rape or murder. In Uganda engaging in same-sex sexual relations carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment, in Somalia armed gangs brutally harass gays, and Islamic Sharia courts in Nigeria can punish gay sexual activity by sentencing participants to death by stoning.
Africans on the continent often live dangerously closeted lives and those in relationships seldom identify as gay. While these folks at the party had escaped that, many didn’t jump into a full-fledged queer life upon arriving in the United States. “I think we still have issues with labels,” says Lawrence Abayomi Harding, Uhuru-Wazobia’s backbone and founding member.
Harding, 42, is a Sierra Leonean physiotherapy professor. He says that LGBT Africans are trying to determine what to call themselves but that many times the right word isn’t available.
“There are terms that are ethnically specific for a particular group, and if we dug deep enough we’d find one for each member. What works and what is describable in one context cannot translate to another context,” Harding says. For example, he cites the Senegalese expression goorjigen, which is from the Wolof language and translates as “man-woman.” “It doesn’t translate into ‘gay,’ and it can’t; it doesn’t translate into any other term.”
But at least one alleged Malian goorjigen was dancing the night away that evening. His name is Boukari, and he grew up in Ivory Coast, where he loved going to the markets with his stepmother and sisters. But his uncle, afraid he’d become an effeminate man, would drag him forcefully to the soccer fields. “I hated it,” the 39-year-old remembers. “I just wanted to be clean, play house, and cook, and I knew something was different. I always wanted to be around my sisters while my brothers were playing soccer.”
Boukari would have secret trysts and relationships with men in Lakota, a town considerably smaller than Abidjan, the country’s major city and seat of government. By age 25 he’d fled to the Big Apple. He mixed with New York City’s African population–first getting work in a car wash and later moving on to floor treatments–but kept his sexuality tucked away. It was a chance Times Square meeting with a boisterous Kenyan that awoke that side of him again. After chatting for a bit, he was invited to an Uhuru-Wazobia meeting. “I was so excited. I went there and I saw all those guys. I was so relieved,” says the soft-spoken Boukari. “That was such a boost for me to know I wasn’t alone.”
Uhuru-Wazobia began in 1994 with just a few gay Africans who had moved to New York City. It was first known as Wazobia. The words wa, zo, and bia translate as “come” respectively in Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa, three prominent West African languages. The first participants got together to bond. Defining who they were and what they were about almost split the group, and for a time Wazobia disbanded. But the members kept getting together and doing things informally, including raising money to help resettle persecuted gay Africans who’d fled Uganda in 1999, as well as simply gathering for holidays. The momentum to become organized again picked up, and the forceful word uhuru, Swahili for “freedom,” was added.
These days the group works to create a safe space for sexual-minority Africans. It appears to work. Uhuru-Wazobia’s members run the gamut socially and educationally and include all kinds of LGBT and questioning people.
“Uhuru validates me and my experience. I had never really felt validated as a gender-queer African person in any other city,” says Doyin Ola. Biologically female, the 29-year-old sports shoulder-length dreadlocks and lives as a gender-nonconforming individual. “I was always searching for my people. There are Africans and Nigerians everywhere, but I never felt comfortable among heterosexual Nigerians because it was always about, ‘Why do you look like a man? Why do you have your hair like that? Why aren’t you wearing a dress?’”
Growing up in a country where homophobia is spewed from the pulpit, Ola, who even attended an all-girls boarding school, never fit in. “I remember dealing with gender confusion. When I was younger my morn would always say, ‘No, she’s a girl,’ to people who thought I was a boy.”
The University of North Carolina alum says there have always been those who had different identities that didn’t necessarily correspond to their genitals. “I think the term people use now is ‘gender-queer.’ I see myself as more androgynous,” Ola says.
He remembers the tacit acceptance of lesbians in Nigeria’s Delta region: “It didn’t seem out of the ordinary. It just seemed that women were being sexual with other women, and I saw the same people married with husbands.”
Uhuru-Wazobia’s links and support of African queer groups are a priority for Nguru Karugu, a Kenyan activist and public health worker. “Sexual minorities are already doing amazing work in Africa, trying to organize and create space for themselves,” the 40-year-old says. An international AIDS program manager who works in the United States as well as in Africa, Karugu oozes confidence, but that wasn’t always so. The son of diplomats, he suffered for years dealing with his homosexuality. “My image of gay [in Kenya] was white men. I remember thinking this was something for the expatriates,” Karugu recalls, despite kissing boys in his adolescent years at a Nairobi prep school.
Even while at Montclair State University in New Jersey, it seemed his attraction for men was alien. Not until Karugu returned to Africa to work in health care in rural Kenya and ran into gay men in the now-shuttered tearooms did he have a eureka moment: He was meeting gay men who’d never left Africa.
“Oh, my God. There are others like me,” Karugu recalls realizing. “I used to say, ‘All I need is to find the right girl, and I’ll be OK’ But then I [changed] the conversation of ‘I’m crazy and bi’ and all that to ‘I’m gay, and I’m OK’”
“I felt so strong, and I could see my ancestors saying, ‘When are you going to get it? Now let’s move on; get away from your drama.’ There must have been a gay ancestor out there saying, ‘Let’s move on.’” Karugu returned to the United States and dove headfirst into his activism work.
It was Karugu who spotted Boukari in Times Square and started the conversation that brought Boukari to Uhuru-Wazobia. Boukari recalls telling his new pal, “‘I’m different, and I don’t know anybody, and I like boys.’ He said, ‘You should come to this meeting. There are African men who like men.’”
On its agenda Uhuru-Wazobia has plans to help with health information, which is not easily available to immigrants; assist with housing; and provide that ever-available ear. Its members established the Web site Voices Abroad to allow dialogue to flow freely and anonymously. All this has instilled in members a desire to take bold steps in the public domain. “We want people to acknowledge our existence,” Harding says.
During New York City’s gay pride parade in June, Uhuru members marched under their own banner as gay Africans–a first in the parade’s 30-plus-year history. With music blaring from a car decorated with African cloth, the men and women danced in the heat down Fifth Avenue, smiling and proud. “People would go by and say, ‘Oh, Africans. Really nice, cool.’ It was really good to be out there, not in a party situation and not in a conference,” Harding says.
But immigrating to the United States does not resolve the cultural complications many LGBT Africans face. For example, “There are people in the group who are having the pressure of being told, ‘We’ll ship you a wife,’” Karugu notes.
Boukari is one of those. “My family is working hard to get me a wife,” he says, adding, “I cannot go on the rest of my adult life without kids.” As for marrying a woman and loving other men, he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Uhuru passes no judgment on its members, whatever their personal choices. “All we do is create a safe space for everyone,” Karugu says.
Edozien is a New York City–based writer.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group