Nigerian-American novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a lot of intelligent things to say about the troubling new “anti-gay” legislation up for debate in her home country. As all democratic civilizations bend towards our generation’s central civil rights debate, it’s refreshing to hear a writer speak out with such conviction. Here’s an excerpt from her speech:
The new law that criminalizes homosexuality is popular among Nigerians. But it shows a failure of our democracy, because the mark of a true democracy is not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority — otherwise mob justice would be considered democratic. The law is also unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a strange priority in a country with so many real problems. Above all else, however, it is unjust. Even if this as not a country of abysmal electrical supply where university graduates are barely literate and people die of easily-treatable causes and Boko Haram commits casual mass murders, this law would still be unjust. We cannot be a just society unless we are able to accommodate benign difference, accept benign difference, live and let live.
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