WHEN my husband-to-be and I met the Ghanaian politician John Dramani
Mahama at a friend’s wedding near Accra eight years ago, I liked him
immediately. I kept up with his fortunes mostly through mutual friends,
and I was happy to learn in 2009 that he had been elected his nation’s
vice president.
When I read a draft of his trenchant memoir, “My First Coup d’État,” in
2010, I offered to introduce him to some agents and editors in New York.
Many people in the developed world expect African heads of state to be
either terse and political or bloated and ideological. The surprise of
John Mahama’s book is its tender humanism, and I thought it would go a
long way toward breaking down prejudice in the United States.
I blurbed the book when it was published last July; I hosted a party to
celebrate its publication; I conducted an onstage interview with John
Mahama at the New York Public Library and I am thanked in the book’s
acknowledgments.
Soon after, the Ghanaian president, John Atta Mills, died and John
Mahama stepped into the presidency; in December, he was elected to
another term. Two weeks ago, the Ghanaian press suddenly exploded with
references to Mr. Mahama’s relationship with me.
“President John Dramani Mahama has been fingered to be in bed with one
Mr. Andrew Solomon, a gay lobbyist,” blared one unfortunately worded
report. Another announced, “Andrew Solomon reportedly gathered a few
affluent people from the gay community to raise campaign funds for
President Mahama with the understanding that when President Mahama won
the elections, the president would push the gay rights agenda.” I was
reported to have paid $20,000 for copies of the book.
The occasion of these revelations was Mr. Mahama’s appointment of what
one newspaper called the “fiery human and gay rights advocate, Nana Oye
Lithur” to head the newly established Ministry of Gender, Children and
Social Protection. In confirmation hearings before a parliamentary
committee, Ms. Lithur averred that “the rights of everybody, including
homosexuals, should be protected,” thus invoking a firestorm.
I was
presumed to have pushed through her nomination, even though I had in
fact never heard of her. The argument that Ms. Lithur was selected not
for her formidable skills, but because of a foreign devil fit with the
continuing position among some Africans that homosexuality is an import
from the decadent West.
I have neither the ability nor the inclination to meddle in foreign
elections, and I paid not one red cent for the book John Mahama
inscribed to me. The only way I may have influenced him on gay rights
was by welcoming him into the household of a joyful family with two
dads. It is deeply unsettling to be implicated in a national scandal, to
know that my attempts to be kind and helpful to someone would become
his millstone.
On Friday, Feb. 1, the president’s spokesman said that President Mahama
didn’t know me. On Saturday, the president called me to apologize. On
Sunday, the government issued a statement that Mr. Mahama and I know
each other, that I have never made a campaign contribution or persuaded
anyone else to do so, and that President Mahama “does not subscribe to
homosexualism and will not take any step to promote homosexualism in Ghana.”
I am not sure what is involved in promoting homosexualism, but I am
pleased to know that a cordial friendship with me does not constitute
such an act.
The situation of gay people in most of Africa is deplorable, and the
double talk from the Ghanaian administration has done little to assuage
valid concerns. In the wake of this brouhaha, I have received hundreds
of letters from Ghanaians via my Web site and Facebook. Half are from
gay people about how dire their situation is. One said, “I am tired of
this humiliation and embarrassment. I don’t know whether I am a gay. I
am not a living being. I have tried to pretend to be what they wanted. I
need your word of advice and help. Sorry to say I feel like committing
suicide. My tears are dropping so badly that I have to end my e-mail
here.”
But the other half are from straight allies, of whom there appear to be
legions. One woman complained, “Men are deceiving me too much, so I want
to join your LGBT please.” My favorite was, “I wish God has blessed me
like you. I am not a gay but I respect and love so so much. May you live
to always help mankind.”
By curious coincidence, this whole matter has unfolded while I am in
India promoting a book that deals in large part with how any condition
may go from being perceived as an illness to being lived as an identity.
It draws on my experience of such a transition for gay people in the
United States. When I first visited India, some 20 years ago, the only
clearly gay people were destitute and marginalized. On my second trip,
in the late 1990s, I met a subculture of rather soigné gay people, but
their faces flushed whenever the thing we had in common was
acknowledged. At the Jaipur Literature Festival last month, the “gay
panel” attracted more than a thousand people who complained of the
hideous prejudice they faced in India — but who were emboldened to
object publicly to the problem in a tone that anticipated its ultimate
resolution.
In Ghana, the articles that attacked President Mahama for knowing me
referenced “the raging national
debate on gay and lesbian rights” in
Ghana. That there is such a debate — even if it’s a debate about whether
to lynch us — is meaningful progress. The fact that local propagandists
can plausibly suggest that the president of a West African country is
in the hands of gay lobbyists reflects a changing world. I hope that
President Mahama will seize this occasion to take a leadership role in
the region on L.G.B.T. rights. The fact that so many people from his
country wrote to me when the scandal broke indicates that many are
thinking through these issues. I hope the time is not far off when to
know someone like me will be less of a liability and more of an asset.
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