To understand the phenomenon and meaning of homosexuality in the black community, it is necessary to begin from the original spiritual beliefs of “African” people. These beliefs have been researched and documented by numerous scholars and are summarized here as 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors.
In Volume 1 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, and in a subsequent article ON QUESTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY I wrote,
“YOU ARE ALL YOUR ANCESTORS – You (every single person reading this) is the union of your mother and father. That’s how you got here. Your father planted his seed in your mother’s womb, she nurtured it for nine months, and then you were born. Every human being that has ever lived was born from the union of male and female. The very BLOOD that circulates in your body was given to you from your mother and father. The very LIFE FORCE energy, the BREATH OF LIFE, and the GENETIC INSTRUCTIONS that are responsible for the life that you have – you received all of it from your mother and father. Therefore, your mother and father live inside of you. Because this is also true of your mother and father – that their mother and father live inside of them – then it is also true that your grandparents – their blood, their life force energy, their breath of life, and their genetic instructions, also live inside of you. From this it follows, that ALL your ancestors live inside of you. Your blood, your life force energy, your breath and your genetic makeup are shared by all the ancestors living inside of you. Therefore, your life is not your own. ALL your ancestors depend on you for their existence.”
It follows from this that every human being is both male and female since no one can deny that they are the union of their mother and father. This union of mother and father expresses itself physically through various features - you may have the hair color and texture of your mother and the nasal structure of your father. Your eye color comes from one parent and your cheekbone structure comes from the other parent. Likewise, you can have the genitalia of one of your parents and the sexual orientation of the other parent. The combinations are infinite and thus, it is not difficult to understand how it is possible how one person who expresses the physical appearance and genitalia of one parent can have the sexual orientation of the other. That said, regardless of one’s sexual orientation, there is both a spiritual and theoretical basis for understanding homosexuality and respecting the humanity of each and every person as energetic beings that are the union of their mother and father.
That said, from the point of view of African spirituality, there was a reason that ritual initiation ceremonies featuring circumcision were among the first spiritual rituals ever invented. Albert Churchward explains this in his book, The Origin and Evolution of Religion:
“The next stage of Religion and Religious ideas was evolved by the Nilotic Negroes. We find as man advanced up the ladder in evolution, so his Religious ideas progressed and advanced to a higher plane. All humans in the pre-totemic stage were in the state of a gregarious horde with its general promiscuity.
The earliest form of human society was brought into existence by the Nilotic Negro under what may be termed Totemic Sociology, which in one phase distinguishes it from the pre-totemic people.
For reasons unnecessary to be dilated upon in this book, they first divided themselves into two halves, or tribes; afterwards, these divided again into four; later a further subdivision took place into eight, and then further subdivisions, each tribe having its own distinguishing Totem. It became necessary to distinguish the blood relationship of these various tribes - the one from the other, as the Father of a child was never known - because all Women, of, say, “A” tribe, were common to men of “B” tribe, and vice versa, only the Mother blood could be traced. To ascertain this and keep it true they introduced ‘Totems’ and performed Sacred Ceremonies called Totemic Ceremonies. Whilst some of the Nilotic Negroes carried out the primitive wisdom from the same central birthplace in Africa (at the head of the Nile and around the Great Lakes), to the islands of the Southern Seas and other parts of the world . . . those that remained carried it down the Nile to take living root and grow, flourish and expand as their Mythology and Astro-Mythology, finally ending in the development by evolution in the Eschatology of Ancient Egypt.
The name Totem [is} . . . from the Egyptian Tem-t. The hieroglyphic is the figure of a total composed of two halves. The Egyptian Tem or Tem-t has various applications in Egyptian. It signifies Man, Mankind, Mortals, also to unite, to be entire or perfect; it is the name for those who are created persons, as in making young men and young women in Totemic Ceremonies. . . . To understand this definition, take the case of two different classes of one clan or class; the whole clan or tribe we will call A. This is subdivided into A and B. All A can marry all B, or all B can marry all A, but A must not marry A nor B marry B. These again can be (and are in some cases) re-divided again as regards their children and come under either C or D, and these again into two other sub-classes. Yet all are totaled into the one tribe. It is also a place name, as well as a personal name for the social unit or division of persons.
Among the Nilotic Negroes the Totem first represented two phases- primarily it was given to the girl when she was made a woman, as her badge or banner by which she, as the Mother, and all her children would be known; and, secondly, it included that of food districts, and the special food of certain districts was represented by the Totem of the family or Tribe. The Totem was first eaten by members of the group as their own special food; later this was altered, and the Totemic food was only very sparingly eaten by the Tribe with that Totem; it became Tabu, or sacred, to them. The Tribe was appointed its preserver and cultivator and was named after it.
Regarded as the climax of the Dip rituals, the blessing of the sacred stone takes place in a special grove of trees on the outskirts of the town. Tekpete refers to a legendary stone that the Krobo carried down from Krobo mountain in their original hoomeland. . . . Still revered as a focus for worship, the stone plays a special role for the initiates, who are brought to it for a test of their virginity. Wearing pure white strips of calico around their heads and crisscrossed over their chests, the initiates must remain silent during this most sacred of rituals. Each girl has a leaf placed in her mouth to turn her thoughts inward and to remind her of the obligation not to speak until the ceremony is over. As the girls proceed to the sacred grove accompanied by their ritual mothers, they carry long sticks called dimanchu, which literally means, “to make you a woman.”
The Totem primarily, then, was given to a girl when she became pubescent, as her badge or banner, by which she and all her children were always known. Thus, if her Totem was a Lizard, all her children would be Lizards, or, if a Crocodile, all her children would be young Crocodiles; and when we read in books, as we do, of women bringing forth Snakes, Crocodiles, or any other Zootype, we know that the Totem of the Mother was a Snake or Crocodile, or some other Zootype which was the name of her Totem, and her children obviously were named accordingly. The Totem, then, represented the Maternal Ancestor, the Mother who gave herself up for food to the tribe, and was eaten absolutely alive after she had ceased to bear children, because she should never die, but always be alive. This was the primitive Eucharist, and was the foundation of all such rites. The body and blood were veritably eaten whilst alive, and no morsel, however small, was allowed to remain uneaten. It was a sacred feast to be equally partaken of by each member of the tribe. . . . .In Totemism, the Mother and Motherhood, the Sister and Sisterhood, the Brother and Brotherhood, the girl who transformed at puberty, the Mother who was eaten as a sacrifice, the two women who were Ancestresses, were all of them human, all of them actual, in the domain of natural fact. But when the same characters have been continued in Mythology, they are superhuman. The Mother and Motherhoods, the Sister and Sisterhoods, the Brother and Brotherhoods, have been divinized. The realities of Totemism have supplied the types to Mythology as Goddesses and Gods who wear the heads and skins of beasts, to denote their character. The Mother, as human in Totemism, was known by her Totem, as the Water-Cow, and this became the type of the Great Mother in Mythology. But it is the Type that was continued, not the Human Mother. The Mother as first person in the human family was the first person in Totemic Sociology. Hence came the Great Mother in Mythology . . . .
The Totem afterwards, in its religious phase, was as much the sign of the Goddesses and Gods as it had been for the Motherhoods and Brotherhoods from whence it took its origin. The Zootype became and was the image of the superhuman power; for example, the Mother-Earth as a giver of water was imaged as a Water-Cow. Seb, the Father of Food, was imaged by the Goose that laid the eggs. The primary seven elemental powers were looked upon Mythically as children of the Great Earth-Mother, who were all born as Males; they were begetters as transformers. The two primary were twin-brothers, Set and Horus, representing as powers, Night and Day, or Darkness and Light, assigned as Set, God of the South, and Horus, God of the North. Shu was the third, representing the breath of life, breathing force; the winds, represented at the Equinox by the Lion; and these formed the primary Trinity, or the God in a triune form, or with three attributes. The cult of the primary Mythology was founded in invocation and propitiation of the Great Mother-Earth, the giver of life and birth, of food and water, as the primary power who brought forth the seven elemental powers, called her children. Many and various Zootypes have been used by the Nilotic Negroes all over the world as representative images, by the later Lunar and Stellar Cult people who came after. The powers of nature had been represented by pre-totemic people by sign language only. It was the Hero Cult Nilotic Negro who first represented these nature powers by means of Zootype forms. . . . . It was these Nilotic Negroes who first used Zootypes to distinguish the human Motherhoods and Brotherhoods. . . .
It is only by studying primitive man, his thoughts and his Totemic Ceremonies, and all that these represented to his mind in Sign Language, following and tracing them through the evolution of the human race, that one can arrive at a definite and true knowledge of the origin and meaning of our present-day beliefs. . . .
Ceremonial rites were established as the means of memorizing facts in Sign Language when there were no written records of the human past. In these, the Knowledge was acted, the Ritual was exhibited and kept in ever-living memory by continual repetition. The Mysteries, Totemic or Religious, were founded on the basis of action, Thus, the Sign to the Eye and the Sound to the Ear were continued, side by side, on equal footing, in the dual development of Sign Language that was visual and vocal at the same time. The brothers and sisters were identifying themselves, not with, or as, animals, but by means of them, and by making use of them as Zootypes for their Totems.
The secrets of the most primitive form of the Myths and Symbols for thousands of years existed in human memory alone. In the absence of written records the oral method of communication was held all the more sacred, as was exemplified in the ancient Priesthood, whose ritual and gnosis depended on living memory for its truth, purity, and sanctity. It was the mode of communicating from mouth to ear; it continued in all the Mysteries . . . . The earlier religions thus had their Mysteries interpreted.
WE HAVE OURS MIS-INTERPRETED.
Now, what does this have to do with Homosexuality? Churchward continues,
“The change of the human descent from the Mother-blood to the Father-blood is obviously commemorated in the Mysteries or ceremonial rites . . . . In the operation of young-man making, two modes of cutting are performed upon the boy by which he becomes a man and a tribal Father. The first of these is commonly known as circumcision . . . ; the other ceremony of initiation, which comes later, is the rite of subincision . . . The second cutting is necessary for the completion of the perfect man. With this trial test the youth becomes a man; fathership is founded, and, as certain customs show, the Motherhood is in a measure cast off at the time, or typically superseded by the Fatherhood.”
Here we understand that the first ritual of circumcision, around the age of 12, was the first step in the process of initiation into manhood. Prior to this, the boy-child was identified with his mother. The circumcision began the transformation from the feminine to the masculine, spiritually. This unlocked the masculine creative powers - “begetters as transformers”. The second ritual of the subincision is literally “the creation of man”. From the point of view of African Spirituality, the quality of the boy’s being is forever changed. This is explained by principle 16 of 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors:
16. “The quality of ‘mfumu’ (chief) is added to the commonality of an individual neither by external nomination, nor by singling him out. He becomes and is ’mfumu’ by endowment therewith; he is a new higher vital force capable of strengthening and maintaining everything which falls ontologically within his cure. A man does not become chief of the clan and patriarch by natural succession through the deaths of other elders who had precedence and because he has become the oldest surviving member of the clan, but because primogeniture inherently supposes an inner secretion of vital power, raising the ‘muntu’ of the elder to the rank of intermediary and channel of forces between the clan ancestors on the one hand and posterity with all its clan patrimony on the other hand. It never takes one long to observe the transformation on becoming chief of a man whom one has formerly known as an ordinary member of the community. The qualitative change is made evident by an awakening of his being, by an immanent inspiration or even, sometimes, by a kind of ‘possession’. The ‘muntu’, in fact, becomes aware of, and is informed by, his whole conception of the world around, through all his modes of knowledge, that he is now a true ‘muntu’, endowed with a new power which did not belong to his former human status. He is no longer what he was. He has been changed in his very quality of being.”
In the same way that one becomes ‘mfumu’ through endowment, so too, the boy becomes a man through endowment that is begun with the circumcision ritual. By the second ritual of subincision, the boy, now made man, is endowed with a new, masculine power, which did not belong to his former boyhood status. He is no longer a boy, identified with his mother (feminine ancestor). He has been changed in his very quality of being into a “man”.
Returning to Churchward,
“Nature led the way for the opening rite performed upon the female, and therefore we conclude that this preceded the operation performed upon the men, which was a custom established in the course of commemorating the change from the Matriarchate to the Father-rite.
When we hear Nilotic Negroes say that ‘The Lizard first developed the sexes’ and also that it was the author of marriage, we must first know or ascertain what the Lizard signifies in Sign Language. we find that, like the Serpent of Frog, it denoted the female period, and we see how it distinguished or divided the sexes and in what sense it authorized, or was the author of, Totemic marriages, because of its being a sign or symbol of feminine pubescence. It is said of the Amazula: That when old women pass away they take the form of a kind of Lizard. The Lizard in the primitive system of Sign Language was a Zootype, the Ideographic value of which informs you that it appeared at puberty, but disappeared at the turn of life, and with the old woman went the disappearing lizard. . . .
When the Arunta perform the rite of subincision, which follows that of the primary operation (circumcision) a slit is cut in the penis right down to the root. It is performed as an assertion of manhood, and is a mode of ‘making the boy into a man,’ or ‘creating man.’ Now, at this time it was customary to cast the Motherhood aside by some significant action; that is, when the Fathership is established in the initiation ceremony. And in the Arunta rite of subincision, the operating Mura first of all cuts out an oval-shaped piece of skin from the male member which he flings away. The oval shape is an emblem of the female all the world over, and this is another mode of rejecting the Mother and of attributing begettal to the Father, as it was attributed in the creation by Atum-Ra, who was both male and female. (As the one “ALL PARENT”).
From the ‘cutting’ of the male member now attributed to Atum-Ra, we infer that the rite of circumcision and of subincision was a mode of showing the derivation from the human Father in supersession of the Motherhood, and that in the double cutting the figure of the female was added to the member of the male; not is this without corroboration. In his ethnological studies (p. 180) Dr. Roth explains that in the Pitta-Pitta and cognate Boulia dialects, the term Me-Ko Ma-ro denotes the man with a vulva, which shows that the oval slit was cut upon the penis as a figure of the female, and a mode of assuming the Fatherhood. In the Hebrew Book of Genesis this carving of the female on the person of the male, in the second creation, has been given the legendary form of cutting out the woman from the body of the male. Adam is thus imaged as a biune parent, Atume-Ra.
But when the custom of circumcision was transferred to the time of childhood, as it had been by the Jews and Arabs, to be performed on the infant of eight days old, then the natural (i.e. according to the Totemic religious condition) loses its sense and becomes cruel in its dotage.
The Mystery of the resurrection, which was originally instituted by these Totemic Nilotic Negroes, may be seen still performed symbolically by the Arunta Tribes in the quabarra inguriringa inkinga, or corroborree of the arisen bones, which bones image the dead body, whilst the performers represent the Ulthauna, or spirits of the dead. The bones were sacredly preserved by those who were yet unable to make the mummy as a type of permanence.
Every native has to pass through certain ceremonies before he is admitted to the secrets of the tribe. The first takes place at about the age of 12 years; the final and most impressive one is probably not passed throught until the native has reached the age of 30 years. These two initiations thus correspond to, or represent, the origin of those mysteries of the double Horus, or Jesus, at 12 years of age; the child Horus, or Jesus, makes his Transformation into the adult in his baptism or other kindred mysteries. Horus, or Christ, as the man of 30 years is initiated in the final mysteries of the resurrection. . . . The first act of initiation in these Mysteries is that of throwing the boy up into the air. This was a primitive mode of dedication to the Ancestral purity of the Totem or the tribe, whose voice is heard in the sound of the churinga or bull-roarers whirling around.
It is said by the natives ‘that the voice of the Great Spirit was heard when the resounding bull-roarer spoke.’ The Great Spirit was supposed to descend and enter the body of the boy and to make him a man, just as in the mystery of Tattu, the soul of Horus the adult, descends upon and unites with the soul of Hours the child, or the soul of Ra, the Holy Spirit, descends upon Osiris to quicken and transform and re-erct the Mummy, where risen Horus becomes bird-headed as the adult in Spirit; the Arunta youth is given the appearance of flight to signify the change resulting from the descent of the Spirit, as the cause of transformation. When one becomes a soul in the mysteries of the Ritual by assuming the form or image of Ra, the initiate exclaims: ‘Let mew wheel around in whirls, ler me revolve like the turning one’ (Ch. 83, Rit.) The ‘turning one’ is the sun God Kheper. . . as the soul fo ‘self-originating force,’ which was imaged under one type by the Bennu, a bird that ascends the air and flies to a great height whilst circling round and round in spiral whorls (Ch. 85, Rit.).
The doctine of soul-making at puberty originated amongst the Nilotic Negroes, as did many of the other Egyptian Mysteries. . . . “
Now consider the Balanta. In Volume 1 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, I wrote,
“The Balanta had worked to maintain customs and traditions based on their ancestral histories; . . . After the harvest, the Balanta people have a celebration called the Kussundé, where non-initiated men compete in dances. As symbols of family and spiritual connection, the masks play an important role when the community comes together to celebrate with music and dance. The Balanta practice indigenous, spiritual customs and rites. In the Balanta society, God is believed to be far away, and communication with the Almighty is established through their spiritual practices and traditions. All important decisions amongst the Balanta are taken by a Council of Elders. To become a member of the Council of Elders, the person has to be initiated during the Fanado ceremony. In general, egalitarianism prevails amongst the Balanta.
The Balanta have initiation rites at various states of the individual’s life. Each phase of life, from childhood to adulthood, is regulated by an initiation that marks the entrance into a new social category. From early childhood up to age 15, the child belongs to the category of Nwatch. Around age 18 to 20 the individual enters the Fuur and then enters the Nghaye around age 25. Around age 30, according to the rites of Kgnessa man will be authorized to take a woman. After the young Balanta man has become a landowner and taken on family responsibilities, he can then be chosen by his maternal uncle to participate in the Fanado initiation. Once chosen for the Fanado, a Balanta man cannot refuse the family’s wishes. The Fanado initiation ceremony takes place once every four years. The Fanado is a two-month process in the “sacred woods” which is the ultimate phase of initiation rites and social hierarchy. Initiation during the Fanado ritual opens the doors of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.”
Such age-grade initiation ceremonies of the Balanta are common among all people of Africa everywhere. And now we can begin to understand the phenomenon and meaning of homosexuality in the black community.
When people were kidnapped, captured and taken in chains from their homelands in Africa and brought to the America’s, they were prevented from practicing most of their spiritual and cultural traditions, including their traditional age-grade initiation ceremonies and rites of circumcision turning boys into men. After six or more generations without such transforming cultural practices, male children of the descendants of those who were enslaved had to find other means to make such transformations. Over the past twenty years or so, that alternative venue for establishing manhood came from “street” and “gang” culture. In my review of the Balanta novel 13 Bars of Iron, I discussed this, also:
“Similarly, another typical young black male hood behavior pattern can be re-examined and re-defined: dropping out of high school. Perhaps the book’s most brilliant passage occurs when Cal is explaining to his girl Kim why he and Black males like him drop out of high school. When Kim says, “You lost me; you love learning, but hated school?” Cal responds:
“Let’s take a subject, any subject, seventh-grade science, for example. In that textbook you gone cover Astronomy, Physical Science, Biology, Botany, Geology, etc. By the end of the year, you will have a solid foundation and understanding of the basic principles of each of these sciences. Then you go to high school and spend a whole year on Biology, a whole year on Physics, a whole year on Earth Science, essentially relearning the same shit you learned in the 7th grade. Now, that’s cool if you plan on becoming a Botanist or Biologist, but, if not, when you start relearning the same shit you learned when you was little, you gone eventually tune out. It’s the same for the other subjects. And tune out is what I did for four years of high school. I was barely there, and when I was there the shit they was hitting me with wasn’t stimulating me, because it wasn’t new and I wasn’t learning shit about myself there. I don’t think I learned shit the entire time I was there. I could have gone to college straight from the eight grade. . . .
You seen the minis-series ‘Roots,’ right? So you remember when Kunte Kinte was in Africa before he got caught by the slave catchers. He had just completed his manhood ritual, his rite of passage so that he could become a warrior in his tribe. This was customary in almost every West African society. The Fulani, the Wolof, Mandinka, they all had these rites of passage. In most West African cultures, by the time a boy is 15 or 16 he went through one of these rites. The learning during these rites was Socratic; the young man was tested, mentally, physically, emotionally. After demonstrating an in-depth understanding of certain principles, principles the elders deemed necessary to live, protect and govern, he was elevated from the status of boy to that of a man. That’s where we get the whole concept of pledging in our black Greek lettered organizational from. The new man then returned to the village and was given his own hut. He provided for his village. He was allowed to participate in governance. He was a man in every sense, and even his mother wasn’t allowed to question him. He didn’t know everything at that age and stage. He still had to utilize the counsel of his elders, but society recognized him as a man. Now, you contrast that with a 15-year-old boy of African descent growing up in the U.S. He’s forced to sit and be lectured at for eight hours straight, five days a week, lectured at about the same shit he been learning the last nine or ten years. We not even taking into account the bias and the structural racism in the U.S. education system. His nature is going to lead him to a different environment, one where he is stimulated, and one where he is able to test and prove his manhood. And where is that in most cases? Well, for many of us it’s the streets. That’s why you see so many cats leave school and turn to the streets right about that age. That’s the only place many young men can receive the stimulation their physical and mental maturity warrants.. At 15 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was at Morehouse, not in high school. At 15, Malcolm X was on the streets of Boston getting his education. Look at hip hop. Cats like Nas, Jay-Z, Tupac, by most measures these dudes are all considered geniuses, they also all abandoned our educational system about the same age. I know I am using anecdotal and historical evidence to prove my point, but I bet if you look at the data you’ll find that most black males who do drop out of high school do so at that very age, right about 15 or 16, right at the age where biologically and culturally, in African culture anyway, he was trained to become and eventually was treated as a man. In this culture, he is treated like anything but. Our nature and our pre-slave culture and tradition is completely incompatible with this Western education system. That’s why it fails so many of us. I read a book on this shit when I was a kid. Check out this cat named Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu. He lays a lot of this shit out in a book series he has called Countering the Conspiracy Against Black Boys.”
Lundy states that “The fanadu initiation is arguably the most important stage in the Balanta age progression because it represents manhood, adulthood, and the rights that are associated with this status. This ritual is some-times described as ‘opening the doors’ of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.” How could Cal and the millions of young black men like him, ever behave appropriately having never had the doors of maturity and wisdom opened for them?”
Denied the age-grade initiation ceremonies and having only street and gang culture, and I would add sports, as the only alternative for developing manhood, many young black men never had the spiritual, cultural and ontological opportunity to constructively develop their manhood. Meanwhile, the religion that was eventually open to them was Christianity. However, the version of Christianity that was presented was already corrupted and devoid of the gnosis of the Nilotic Negroes who originated its foundational spiritual concepts. This Europeanized version of Christianity was deliberately used to foster the spirit of “submissiveness” and subservient role in society that further mitigated against the development of traditional African manhood. Consequently, since all things proceed from “spirit”, lack of spiritual man-hood transformation has led to the physical manifestation of boys who never became men. They didn’t learn the secrets of their healthy, African society and never had the doors of maturity and wisdom of their FATHERHOOD and natural place in society opened to them. Living in the unnatural environment of white supremacy that denied and demonized black manhood, the result has been increased homosexuality. This was clearly articulated by Ras Jahaziel,
“When one looks at the first inspiration that came to I&I from His Majesty, it was an INSPIRATION through the establishment of IVINE ORDER. It was not an inspiration to create a mere RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. Neither was it an inspiration to create a mere social movement nor a political movement. The vision was to create an IVINE ORDER OF LIVITY that encompassed ALL aspects of life. . . . Without a Pan-African vision that has as its goal the establishment of Black Nationhood with a restored concept of BLACK ROYALTY AND DIVINITY, the root of the problems that now face Black civilization cannot be rooted out. THE TRUTH MUST BE FACED THAT THE PROBLEMS ARE NOT ONLY ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL, but they are also SPIRITUAL in the sense of having been subjected to unnaturalness for so long that naturalness becomes an unwelcome stranger. TRAPPED, domesticated and tethered for centuries to the stake of unnaturalness the caged and domesticated creature is apt to lose its spiritual equilibrium and forget what is clean from what is unclean, what is right from what is wrong, and what is high from what is low. This is the condition of the ‘ex-slaves’ in this time, sorely in need of something more than a political movement, something that involves the reshaping of character in the similitude of ROYALTY. . . .”
From the Balanta and other African peoples point of view, once one understands and internalizes the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors, then one understand that the greatest duty of a Balanta man is to bear children and to continue the customs which sustain the ancestors. This is totally incompatible with homosexuality. If you do not bear children to carry on the lineage of people who, through the original totemic rituals, sustained the life of the ancestors after they departed the earth, then what use, what WORTH do you have to the ancestors? The natural law justice in automatic operation is the fact that homosexual men would not reproduce themselves. However, the advent of technology and LGBT communities presents a new challenge since homosexual men are using surrogates and then raising children in non-traditional (African cultural) homosexual environments.
Finally, in concluding, I understand that many people will think that modern science and technology is a mark of progress and represents a greater level of human understanding and achievement. Such people, however, suffer from a Western bias that has proved to be the very thinking that is destroying the planet. Such people think that everything is material and they neither understand nor care to see the spiritual reality of all existence. Placide Temples, a white supremacist who studied the Bantu people, put it best when he wrote,
“In common with so many others, I used to think that we could get rid of Bantu “stupidities” by suitable talks on natural science, hygiene, etc., as if the natural sciences could subvert their traditional lore or their philosophy. We destroy in this way their Natural Sciences, but their fundamental concepts concerning the universe remain unchanged…. They have a different conception of the relationships between men, of causality and responsibility. What we regard as the illogical lucubrations of ‘gloomy Niggers’ . . . are for them logical deductions from facts as they seem them and become an ontological necessity. If thereafter we wish to convince Africans of the absurdity of their sizing up of the facts by making them see how this man came to fall sick and of what he died, that is to say, by showing them the physical causes of the death or of the illness, we are wasting our time. It would be in vain even to give them a course in microbiology to make them see with their own eyes, or even to discover for themselves through the microscope and by chemical reactions what the ‘cause’ of the death was. Even then we should not have settled their problem. We should have decided only the physiological or chemical problem connected with it. The true and underlying cause, the metaphysical cause, would none the less remain for them in terms of their thought, their traditional ontological wisdom.”
