by
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
I grew up in a very normal family of a father, mother, 3 brothers and 6 sisters. This was in the social environments of rural villages of the Eastern Province of Zambia and urban areas in Southern Africa since sixty-five years ago in 1960. I played normally with both girls and boys as a child. I attended church and went to school. Although I had known them all those many years, one day something happened that was sudden as it was also stunning that changed my life forever: I discovered girls.
At the time I was living at Chalumbe School north of Chipata where my older sister and brother-in-law were teaching. Suddenly I noticed attractive girls everywhere I went. I began to think, talk with my friends, fantasize, and dream about them. I wanted to talk, hold, kiss, dance, have sex with them, and be in their company. These beautiful girls were 13 or 14 years old. When I sometimes met them walking along the bush path, I would nervously greet them. They would shyly smile while responding and then they would giggle and run off laughing.
This was in 1968 and I was 14 years old at the beginning of my wonderful, exciting, powerful, and gratifying heterosexual adventure that was to last the rest of my life. After years of searching, meeting my wife at my age of 24, while both of us were in college at Michigan State University, was the most significant event in our lives. We got married at St Ignatius Catholic Church by a gay priest and we had 3 children. Both our families anticipated, celebrated, have enjoyed, and were supportive of our marriage. Do we give the same support to those in same sex marriages?
The biggest impact my parents had on my life is that they taught us to have empathy toward others. This empathy has compelled me to ask questions during the 57 years in which I have greatly enjoyed the deep and emotional pleasure and privilege of enjoying my heterosexual orientation. I have always wondered about the emotional pain and misery the people who have other forms of sexual orientations endure about being denied the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientations. Many religions call these orientations sinful.
Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queer people (LGBTQ) include homosexuals, gays or lesbians who have the sexual attraction to someone of the same sex. Intersexual are people whose bodies (including genitals) have both female and male characteristics; Hermaphrodites is the original Greek term refers to intersexual people who have both female ovary and male testis; Transsexuals or Transgender are people who feel they are one sex even though biologically they are the other sex; Bisexuality is sexual attraction to people of both sexes. All of these millions of people have the same deep overwhelming sexual desire that heterosexual males who have sexual attraction to someone of the female sex and heterosexual female have the sexual attraction to someone of the male sex.
Why are all these people who are as human as we heterosexuals prevented from experiencing the joy, the sexually gratifying experiences that I and other heterosexuals have and take for granted? Many people believe there is a God who banished LGBTQ human beings, especially those who are homosexual, to this lifelong cruel perpetual misery of being ostracized and hated by society all their lives. Many experience depression, suicide, fear, anger, frustration, and anxiety because society has denied them the opportunity to enjoy their sexual orientation. This might be wrong. Social scientists estimate that nearly 10% of the American population may be either gay or belong to LGBTQ. This means an estimated 33 million Americans may be gay or LGBTQ. Many live quiet but miserable lives. There are those who live in 195 countries of the world that might be outside Western world who might wrongly believe that being gay is an exclusive attribute of western moral decadence. This belief may also be misguided because 10% of the global population of 8.2 billion or 820 million people may be gay or homosexual.
Sexuality is probably the most powerful instinct that influences and dominates our entire lives in a largely positive or sometimes negative manner depending on our social upbringing as human beings. As we enjoy the advantages of social equality, globalization, advocate for democracy, freedom, justice and the championing of human rights, let’s make sure we extend the same empathy to gays, those who are transgender and members of the LGBTQ. Let’s also extend to them the gift of love, respect, the dignity of inclusion, and kindness that we extend to every man, woman, and child who is heterosexual.
