The recent anti- same-sex relationship demonstrations by members of the faith community have sparked very interesting debates.
The noise that the self-acclaimed custodians of morality made was quite unnecessary and the involvement of the church in the hullabaloo made it worse.
It seems that as a nation we are not yet mature enough to separate private issues from matters of societal interest and, in this mist of ignorance, we keep advancing ridiculous agendas.
In Malawi, homosexuality and abortion are some of the issues that are very contentious, mostly because they touch on morality and ethics, in one way or another.
To begin with, the issue of abortion is utmost private, to say the least. There are several reasons why a woman chooses to abort and to reach that decision she undergoes a psychological turmoil that men of faith cannot even understand.
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Religious leaders should not mislead people in believing that everyone who gets pregnant does that willingly and therefore should bear the pangs of childbirth even against their will.
There are several issues surrounding pregnancies that need to be scrutinised before somebody comes up with hasty conclusions to force women do what they do not want to do in the name of religion.
The problem with dogmatic faith is that its custodians assume that they are always right and they ought to make choices and decisions for everybody, even for those who do not believe in their religion.
Knowing that Malawi is not a Christian country, one tends to wonder why our laws should be enforced by the dictates of Christianity when the State has its own ways of enforcing the same.
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The church can be allowed to regulate the morality of its followers but it should not over-step its bounds to force even free beings into submission to its beliefs.
No wonder France came to that rational decision of banning expressions and exhibitions of faith in public because, at the end of the day, such proclamations become contagious.
One thing that needs to be cleared is that organisations like the Coalition for the Prevention of Unsafe Abortion are not there to encourage abortion as some people want us to believe.
The name of the organisation alone clearly indicates its intention: to prevent unsafe abortion.
What is primary here is the realisation that abortion takes place in this country, whether we like it or not, and the least we can do is to create a conducive environment so that those who want to abort should do that safely without losing their lives.
But as usual, these religious leaders want to make us believe that Malawi is a holy land where everybody is a saint on a train to their heaven.
The chief problem with our religion here is the hypocrisy at its core and we keep living in denial when reality tells us otherwise.
For once, as a country, we need to accept what we really are and face our shortcomings instead of always hiding behind the veil of religion.
From a layman’s point of view, abortion and homosexuality are private affairs and need to be decided upon privately.
Society is in no way entitled to act as a negative force on any individual’s liberty for we know very well that society has been wrong several times before.
The Bible has been used to justify racism, sexism, purges, wars and several other evils before. As such we should be very cautious with this book, which is mostly cited by men who do not want to be questioned because their stands are often unjustifiable.
What we must know is that Malawi is not a collective of individuals with the same ideas, beliefs or consciences.
Malawi is just a geographical entity in which we just found ourselves and therefore nobody is very right to tell us what Malawi and Malawians should be about.
We are different people and difference must be recognised and cherished for peaceful co-existence and diversity. Christianity should not rule us in this country and neither should Islam, Hinduism, of any other beliefs that are decided upon purely on personal tastes and preferences.
As the renowned moral theorist, John Stuart Mill, puts it, “neither one person, nor any number of persons is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own well-being”.
