Icarus @ 59 # 157

Thinking about life the right way up. I now know this piece (left) should be hung, thus - glad that is straightened out. Then again straightened out is the wrong word here because if it could speak it might say, 'I am in my elements and hanging as I feel is right for me,' for today is International LGBT Day and the right to be straight, curly, topsy-turvy, upside-down, inside out and any damn well you please is just and right among consenting adults. But of course, saying this in a free country like ours is easy, or at least it has become so through time. Others in other parts of the world are less fortunate - Africa has a particular problem. The annual International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) celebration began in 2004 to mark the 1990 decision by the World Health Organization to remove homosexuality from its rosters of disorders (goodness - a disorder). The acclaimed Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie rebutted the claim that homosexuality is "un-African." Commenting on the passage of the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act in Nigeria in January 2014, she said: "If anything, it is the passage of the law itself that is ‘un-African.’ It goes against the values of tolerance and ‘live and let live’ that are part of many African cultures." At the very heart of this is the African philosophy of the self, ubuntu, the ideal that can be loosely translated as, ‘a person is only a person in relation to others’. Prejudices of any kind hinder potential in those persons and hinder basic human rights. So, in the spirit of these things, Happy IDAHOT. Labi Siffre wrote this in 1984, inspired by film footage of young Africans being shot in the head by white policemen, but also from his own experience of being homosexual, something inside so strong... We're gonna do it anyway...