Kenya’s anti-LGBT+ ‘moral policeman’ is bending over backwards arguing against the Pope’s support of same-sex couples
“Moral policeman” Ezekiel Mutua said Pope Francis did not mean to support same-sex couples. (Ezekiel Mutua/ Facebook and Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty)
The CEO of the Kenya Film Classifications Board (KFCB), known as the country’s “moral policeman”, has insisted that Pope Francis must have been misquoted when spoke out in support of gay couples.
The 83-year-old Pope Francis made a major break from Catholic teachings in an interview for the documentary Francesco, which premiered on Wednesday (21 October).
The pontiff said: “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”
He added: “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.”
The comments made by the Pope were both celebrated and attacked around the world, but now Ezekiel Mutua, the anti-LGBT+ “moral policeman” in Kenya, has questioned whether they happened at all.
Mutua is a devout Christian whose job is to censor films, songs, and TV adverts in Kenya that he considers to be offensive.
He and the KFCB were responsible for banning the film Rafiki, an award-winning Kenyan film directed by Wanuri Kahiu which tells a lesbian love story, on the grounds that it would encourage “moral decay”.
In a Facebook post Saturday (October 24), Mutua wrote: “I honestly do not believe that Pope Francis meant to endorse same-sex marriage, but if he did, then he’s grossly wrong and his advice should be ignored.
“I believe his statement was in the context of ‘gay human rights’ but not the practice of homosexuality. There’s a difference between human rights and homosexuality as a concept.
“A leader of the stature of the Pope cannot endorse what’s clearly against the order of nature and God’s plan for family and procreation.”
“If he did, he should be condemned and his statement taken with a pinch of salt. Homosexuality is outright illegal in Kenya and even from common-sense point of view, wrong.
“While we cannot deny the existence of homosexuals, we must never promote the behaviour as a way of life.”
Mutua said that being gay was not “normal behaviour”, and that the Pope supporting same-sex couples was “heresy and perversion of men”.
He added: “That’s why at KFCB we ban films or content that glamorizes, glorifies or normalizes homosexuality.
“We do not hate gay people, but the practice is wrong and against our culture and values.”
Last year, Kenya’s high court ruled to uphold a colonial-era law criminalised “sodomy”.
It was hoped that a positive verdict would have opened the floodgates for the repeal of similar legislation in other countries in Africa, where homosexuality is still illegal in more than half of continent’s 54 nations.
