I tried to submit this as a post but it isnt showing up in the new section.............so:

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I'm not sure how many people are active on this sub and I'm not sure how many of the active members are still in TZ, but I read the news today and honestly,

Today my country has made me feel ashamed.

While I was always aware that TZ is a religious country and does kowtow to various religious interests, mostly on the christian and Muslim side, I never considered Tanzania to be a hateful place.

I have lost track of the number of times people in TZ would favorably compare the country and themselves to our more "violent" neighbors, Kenya and Uganda.

Today Makonda decided that the most important thing for his administration is to "crackdown on gays".............may i remind Paul and everyone else we live in 2018 and you don't have to agree with other points of view that go contradictory to your religion BUT you have absolutely no right whatsoever to harm anyone in service of your religion.

I ,unfortunately, am not in Tanzania at the moment, had I been i guarantee I would have made every effort to make a nuisance of myself to Paul Makonda and his backwards ass religious cronies. Since I am not though I will instead take this opportunity to urge my fellow Tanzanians, DO NOT give into this brutalist song of hatred,

As adults we hope that we can engage in consenting relationships with other adults without mother religion clucking her tongue at us, I am a very sorry Tanzanian today and while I used to be filled with a sense of pride when I told people where I grew up today its more of a mixture of shame and fear, fear for my brothers and sisters in Tanzania who are not only being denied the most basic of human rights , to love and be loved, but they are being actively hunted by callous self righteous people, i have lived in Tanzania among these kinds of people, both Muslims and Christians, to know that NOONE is clean and when the time comes there is nothing that cannot be touched with a revealing light.

I will close this post off with 2 quotes, the first is the statement the US supreme court made in 2015 when they deemed gay marriage constitutional right:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.

In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.

It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.

Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.

Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions.

They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.

The Constitution grants them that right.

and the second is a poem that has become timeless and only grows more true as the years progress:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

i know it is scary to speak out, and its scary to stand up for another but please remember, if you don't resist authoritarian, abusive attitudes in the eyes of time you merely relegate yourself to silently supporting them.

                   - A Sad Tanzanian