Kenya Cracks Down On Teenage Books With Gay-Specific Themes
The Kenyan government is cracking down on foreign books with gay content that it feels targets teenagers.
This crackdown follows a public outcry from parents with school-age children and religious officials who are demanding the government to do a thorough audit of books in the market and ban the ones with gay content.
Text Book Centre, one of Kenya’s leading bookstores in Nairobi, was ordered to stop selling a controversial teen book from a renowned British publisher that specialises in children’s books.
Image Credit: Pixabay
“What’s happening to me?” by Usborne publishers sparked outrage among those who feel it lures male teens into LGBTQ+ practices that are illegal.
“It is about a month since we removed the book from our shelves and returned it to the warehouse after the retail manager received an order from the U.K. manager,” a manager at Text Book Centre confirmed to the ‘Washington Blade’.
Part of the book states “it isn’t unusual to fancy someone the same sex as you when you’re growing up.” It adds, “Usually people go on to have stronger feelings for the opposite sex, but this doesn’t always happen.”
The book further states that “it’s possible to fancy both boys and girls” and then it defines lesbian and gay dating.
A group of Christian, Muslim and Hindu clerics earlier this month issued a joint statement that asked President William Ruto and his government to protect teens from so-called same-sex doctrine through books from Western countries.
“We will defend the defensible moral rectitude acceptable by the majority, and frown upon any socialization that raises a mortal threat,” reads part of the statement issued on Feb. 2.
“We cannot close our eyes to the incontrovertible fact that this slice of Western liberalism is a Trojan horse which will lead to the destruction of the family unit,” it adds. “We cannot christen evil as LGBTQ rights so that it can be embraced.”
The country’s penal code outlaws same-sex relations with a jail term of 14 years for “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” under Section 162. Section 165 proscribes a five-year prison term for “indecent practices between males.”
The clerics asked the police to install reporting desks in stations that would allow the public to report what they describe as suspected cases of minors “being recruited” to become LGBTQ+ and to have those responsible punished.
“If we freely and openly embrace LGBTQ as the diversity of sexuality and identity, we will soon find ourselves accepting bestiality on the same grounds,” reads the statement.
The clerics stated at the time the teachers’ employer fired six elementary school teachers who were captured on camera forcing male students to “engage in indecent/inappropriate acts depicting homosexuality within the school compound” as punishment. The teachers were subsequently charged with breaching the school’s code of conduct and ethics guidelines.
A senior official from Kenya’s Education Ministry who was not authorised to speak to the press questioned how the children’s books with LGBTQ+ content were stocked in bookshops against the country’s norms and laws.
“The person who ordered the books should have been arrested. Bookshops should strictly stick to the existing rules of operation,” the official said.
He stated that Ruto’s government has already affirmed the position of his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, to not bow to pressure from Western countries to decriminalise consensual same-sex sexual relations.
Ruto during an interview with CNN last September as president-elect maintained that focusing on LGBTQ+ issues was like creating a “mountain out of a molehill” since it was not a big issue for Kenyans.
KICD, Kenya’s agency that is responsible for approving curriculum books, noted the proliferation of foreign materials including children’s books into the country’s open market with poor control regulations putting buyers at risk of consuming restricted information.
“We are not law enforcers instead it is only the police who can apprehend the culprits behind the LGBTQ materials to children after being reported by parents. Regulation of such foreign content is the weakness we are grappling with,” KICD Communications Manager Erick Omulo said.
Omulo noted there should be enough tough regulations to limit the flooding of book content that violates Kenyan laws into the market.
Apart from Kenya cracking down on teen books with same-sex content, the government last September revealed it was in talks with Netflix to ban the streaming of LGBTQ+ movies.
“Usborne is one of the world’s leading independent children’s book publishers,” Usborne Head of Publicity Fritha Lindqvist told the Blade in an emailed statement. “We have over 3,000 books available in the English language, aiming to cover all subjects for all ages, from which customers around the world select the titles that work best for their market. All Usborne books are written in an age-appropriate way by experts in writing for children.”
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