EDITOR’S NOTE: The image we originally ran with this story offended some readers. The author has posted his apology and explanation in the comments below.
Great. Ghana’s Western Region Minister Paul Evans Aidoo has ordered the Bureau of National Investigations and all security agencies to start arresting any and all homos in the region. He’s also asked for landlords and neighbors to help in the homo hunt. Aidoo says, “All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society.” Yipes!
Mr. Bernard Mornah, General Secretary of the People’s National Convention said hunting for homosexuals isn’t the ideal—namely because police will have to break down doors and invade bedrooms; but y’know… whatever works.
The trouble with identifying homos though is that they look JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!. So we wonder how one measures homosexual activity: number nudie mags? Homoerotic web activity (like visiting Disney’s Pixie Hollow)? PDA sightings? The inches of distance between the two men living in the same house? Anal diameter? No really, how the hell do you tell a homo is a homo short of catching him with a dick in his mouth? Do the Ghana police just have really excellent gaydar?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Anyway, anyone suspected of being gay (which will undoubtedly include straight people) will be tossed into court and then into the overcrowded prisons where they will suffer a lack of food, water, clothing, medicals and detergents day after day for years. It’s kinda like a state-sponsored sleepaway camp…
… in Hell.
christopher di spirito
Isn’t Ghana the African nation Bill Clinton visited as president and he said something like “Ghana represents the greatest hope for Africa.” Maybe Clinton wants to take this remark back now?
inoits2
That picture is hilarious but I question whether it kinda makes them look like savages.
christopher di spirito
I thought it was a picture of Tracy Morgan?
alan Balehead
Bill Clinton should apologize to gays for this one…
Henry
Maybe they find the gays by measuring the size of their skulls. I think Joseph Conrad wrote something about that… in relation to race.
Troll
@inoits2: they are savages 🙂
JayKay
@inoits2:
They’re doing a fine job of that on their own.
Honk
@Troll: MTE…
Henry
@JayKay: It’s not like there have been any mass persecutions of gay people in the predominantly white part of the world. I don’t recall a Lavender Scare in 1950’s America. I don’t recall a Soviet hunt for gay people. I don’t recall any slaughter of gays in the Holocaust, and I also don’t recall that concentration camp holding gay people remaining open long after the war, because nobody cared about releasing the homos.
Peter
@Honk: Honk-y? Makes sense.
Jay
As if White American gays actually care about African gays being killed.
inoits2
@Henry: I really don’t think what happened in the past, no matter what race, is relevant for any actions today. Citing past examples from is like saying “if that group has done it why can’t they” Who cares.
Porter
@Jay: Gay people do tend to care about other gay people. It might have something to do with them both being gay!
Henry
@inoits2: I’m sure you don’t think it matters, since proportionally white people have committed a million times more slaughter than black people. Which is relevant when some racist tool calls black people savages. Also the examples I posted are all very recent.
inoits2
@Henry:I didn’t call them savages and questioned the use of that image. I am just saying that race shouldn’t be a factor in this conversation. It should be about what they are doing. If they said lock up all white gays then it would become a racial issue.
Henry
@inoits2: I didn’t say you called them savages. Guilty conscience much? I do find it strange that you say that race shouldn’t be a factor, but don’t have any condemnation for the racist who brought up race to begin with.
Dallas David
Anti-gay Christian Fundamentalists are, IMHO, savages. Race matters not a whit.
ladyguyguyhasapeepee
what do you expect from a bunch of savage african monkeys
asdSR
TRACY MORGAN!!!!!
Steven
Something tells me that Queerty knows exactly what it’s doing when it posts racially tinged photos like the one here. Because we all know that every Ghanian runs around with tribal face paint making Looney Toon Sambo faces.
Frankly, there are days where I can’t tell what’s worse – Queerty’s inability to ever do anything without their special brand of tired snark or the comments said articles attract.
Ray
How long before this is traced back to the same christian pigs in the republican party that sponsored the Kill the Gays bill in Uganda?
asa1973
Thanks, Queerty, for using that delightful image to purposefully skew the conversation once again toward racism instead of homophobia. Minister Aidoo’s decree is appalling and disgusting. You did not have to use this photo to inform us about it. Before anyone says anything about my being too sensitive about the use of the word “savage” in the comments, you should look through all the NOM, Marcus Bachmann, etc. threads and see if anyone ever used the term. I would say probably not.
But I actually don’t blame the dim-witted fools who have commented on this thread so far. I blame Queerty. You knew exactly what you were doing. Congratulations, you’re the Perez Hilton of gay blogs.
Steven
@asa1973: I’d say they’re more like the Matt Drudge/Drudgereport of gay blogs. “Controversial” without context. Bomb lobbers. I’m fully convinced that Queerty publishes racially charged blog posts for page views – because they know the racist queens that haunt this place will pounce on any post that portrays blacks as (more) homophobic. The more attention an article gets the more pennies go into the bank.
Sure it incites unnecessary flame wars between the many different factions of gay persons here – but hey the light bill has gotta get paid. So civility be damned.
skrillex
asa1973 and Steven have it right on the money, and I feel slightly better about this whole debacle (the debacle being the pointlessly offensive photo and the comment war response, not the Ghanian government’s horrible decision, obviously) knowing that at least some people don’t have the wool over their eyes.
ron
European invasion was the best thing that ever happened to Africa. Since independence, it’s been all down hill. A truly hopeless shit hole..the whole continent is a write off except for a few South African neighbourhoods where whites are still the majority.
lapis
cra cra
Redcarpet
I’m calling it, the picture is racist. You don’t combat homophobia with racisim, you compound it.
Interesting how queerty is nice and PC queer, female, and trans friendly now what with it’s new management. But fuck those african savage voodoo cannibalistic africans, they’re hilarious.
God this place has become as self righteous and hypocritical as afterelton.
Aiden
Queerty, stop, just stop. We see what your doing with all these “black people are the worst homophobes” posts. You don’t fight ignorance with ignorance.
the crustybastard
Another shithole filled with shitheads. I just can’t regarded these things as coincidence anymore.
And wouldn’t it be nice to rest assured that our government would tell these morons that this crap is unacceptable, that’s the end of our our aid and assistance, they’re cordially invited to go fuck themselves, and if they even think about taking a swing at one of us we’ll make a religion of ensuring there isn’t one goddam brick standing on another in their entire cesspit of a nation.
Instead, our government will maybe possibly issue a bullshit nonbinding statement from some low-level State Department factotum intended to satisfy the Democratic voters the Administration is not really doing what they’re doing, then they’ll continue forcibly extracting money from gay Americans to finance our own oppression at home and abroad.
Complain and Democrats will fall all over themselves to remind you that Republicans would do precisely the same thing…without the encouraging but useless statement. As if that mattered.
Same. Old. Shit.
Magombo
The photo proves nothing other than everybody (no matter what their race) does some form of drag. Maybe we should ban, as being racist, photos of white pot-bellied, beer-swigging, football fans with their naked bloated torsos painted in school colors — as it shows white people looking “weird” too. Pahleeeze! Get a grip.
It’s funny though how few of you have actually commented about the growing call for genocide against our GLBT brothers and sisters in Africa — instead, you use the story to go on a ersatz racist indictment of Queerty and others. This neurotic over-sensitivity has to stop. It’s childish. Maybe a sweet photo of a well-dressed, pressed suit and tie, Obama-like Ghanan holding a machete and a severed gay person’s head would be less racist?
What’s next? If Queerty does a story on GLBT abuses in China and they include a picture of Fu Manchu or some nefarious Chinese caricature, then that means Queerty is Asianphobic and is making fun of people with “funny shaped” eyes? All of the unflattering photos of Michele Bachmann, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, etc. that depict them as wild-eyed, homophobic, psychopaths should be banned too because it may be construed as being anti-white and racially “insensitive”?
Sorry, all’s fair in love and war. Especially war against degenerate, despicable bigots — regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation.
——interesting article below on treating the “sickness” of prejudice————-
According to an Article in the Washington Post at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901938.html
“Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.
“We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders,” said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. “Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices.”
—————————–
So, you see, it is this same kind of sickness, coupled with mass hysteria, in Ghana which was obviously whipped up and exploited for political purposes. In Ghana and Uganda and in scores of other backwards countries (such as the USA) you have an uneducated, psychologically weak population eager to be exploited — just like the ignorant peasants in Europe who participated in anti-Jewish genocide in the middle of the last century, and the unHoly Inquisitions performed by the Catholic Church from medieval times up to the 18th century; as well as the horrific Witch burnings practiced by some Protestant faiths from the 16th century until colonial times.
Bigotry is one of the worse forms of spiritual sickness ever visited upon humankind — that, and letting your neighbor starve to death.
JohnAGJ
Ironically I stumbled across a National Geopgraphic video on YouTube about literal with-hunts in Ghana. This poor nation has problems that go far deeper than just homophobia. If anything, homophobia is but a symptom of a great problem plaguing that nation. A search of YouTube about Ghanian witches turns up even more about this:
Ghanian Witches (report by National Geographic)
http://youtu.be/woZCA12zdmc
Ghana: The witches of Gambaga (report by UK’s The Guardian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR5wyAY20-Q
Woman Accused of Witchcraft, Beaten to Death By Pastor in Ghana (report by PanandFocus News)
http://youtu.be/4uz89i_1gcw
Daniel Villarreal
Readers,
I originally created the image of a Ghanese citizen with his country’s flag painted on his face because I found it humorous, unexpected, and a tad scary as a visually striking image to accompany this horrendous story. I did not deliberately choose it (as some have suggested) to promote an idea of Africans as tribal natives or savages, though I can understand why some would think that.
I would like to apologize for my bad judgement as well as for the offense it has caused. We never meant to stoke the fire of racism nor to demean anyone. We try to push the envelope and do the unexpected here at Queerty and every now and then we cross a line. We appreciate readers for calling us out on it and always try to rectify the situation when we think we’re in the wrong.
That being said, I also think that the overt racism of a handful of commenters, the racist “Marriage Vow” signed by Bachmann, and the recent prominence of several anti-gay slurs from prominent black celebrities have compounded this belief that Queerty hopes to demonize blacks and stoke racial tension in a cynical grab for controversy and page views.
In our defense, Queerty has highlighted the anti-gay actions of many white politicians and right wingers as well and also try to highlight the supportive actions of black allies as well (such as Sheryl Swoopes, Magic Johnson, Rutina Wesley, Lorraine Hansberry, and even the President of the United States). We also try to include as many faces of color in our home page when possible so that readers can see that the face of queer culture does not belong to a muscle-bound white guy.
Nevertheless, we take seriously the issue of race and our role in guiding conversation and perceptions on this emotionally and historically-charged issue. In the near future we will post a longer article or series of articles addressing race and queer culture head on and calling out the Queerty commenters who all promoting racist views with hate speech.
We hope you will accept our sincerely apology for our offense and that you will continue to battle racism and help us promote racial growth and understanding on our comment boards and in the offline world as well.
Sincerely,
Daniel Villarreal
Queerty Day Editor
Kareemy
The adjective is GHANAIAN. not Ghanan or Ghanese.
Also, this is not about the representation about black people in American (i.e, I don’t think your references to Swoopes or Hansberry boost your point) but specifically about Africans. The representations of Africans in the media has common roots with, but is different from the representation of African Americans. The picture used is of a football (soccer) fan who already looks crazed and nutty and is totally out of context.
Also, the article makes Ghanaians sound completely foolish for initiating a witch hunt since it is ‘impossible’ to identify queers … unlike what happened in the U.S. under McArthyism, or even the tactics that had Lawrence and Garner arrested! Additionally, the article fails to mention other dissenting voices in Ghana that oppose the arrest of homosexuals: http://oneangryqueer.blogspot.com/2011/07/ghana-orders-arrest-of-all-gays.html?spref=tw
It just seems like the first impulse is on the author’s part was outrage and ridicule as opposed to a thoughtful engagement with politics (local and global), the role of religion in the society, anxieties around family and nation identity, etc. Please continue to cover international stories, we NEED this information, but please do thorough research. Many LGBTQ organizations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa have a web-presence, get on their lists! Follow them on Twitter. There are also many diasporic organizations you can contact in order to get some other informed information and opinions.
Kieran
The old Queerty had balls and would have stood their ground and brushed off criticism by those who believe that certain groups cannot be lampooned or spoofed because it might be deemed “racist” or “antisemitic”. But this apparently is the newfangled queerty that is clearly less edgy, decidedly less interesting, far less exciting, and way, way less entertaining. Anybody that wants the political correctness thing can always go over to the dull and boring Advocate website and get their fill. Many of us had hoped that Queerty would remain true to it’s original pledge, “Free of an Agenda, except that GAY one”. It’s sad you didn’t have the balls to take a stand for freedom of expression, even if it did “offend” some people. Maybe you need to grow a pair.
JayKay
Wow. New Queerty is run by pussies.
Z
They are fucking savages. There’s a reason the rest of the world is so much more developed than that continental shithole.
Queer Supremacist
@Magombo: Sorry, all’s fair in love and war. Especially war against degenerate, despicable bigots — regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political affiliation.
You said it. A picture interpreted by mealy-mouthed white “liberals” as being r*c*st is worth more comment than the impending African homocaust. It’s sickening. They’re trying to kill us and we’re the bigots due to a misunderstanding that’s not even good enough for a Three’s Company rerun?
The people throwing the r-word are louder and more annoying than any homophobic plant posting comments that really are r*c*st to make us look bad. Yes, I suggest the possibility that some of these r*c*st posts are put here by plants. I’ve seen it done at political blogs all the time. It is not beneath the likes of NOM, AFA, FOTF and their vile ilk to pull tricks like that.
christopher di spirito
Wow! The “new” Queerty buckled to a tiny handful of vegan, PC male queers who read Andrea Dworkin and call themselves feminists. Embarrassing.
paulcanning
More to this than meets the eye. See > Audio: In Ghana, is it getting worse for LGBT? http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2011/07/audio-in-ghana-is-it-getting-worse-for.html