Prof. Wole Soyinka File copy

The Prelate of the Methodist Church Nigeria, Dr. Sunday Makinde, has described the criticism of the same-sex marriage bill passed by the Senate by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, as unfortunate and regrettable.

In a statement in Lagos on Tuesday by the church’s Media and Public Relations Officer, Rev. Oladapo Daramola, the cleric said the comment credited to the Soyinka was “an attempt to psychologically bully the lawmakers into taking an unpopular decision and to give approval to an unreligious and noncultural act.”

Makinde said such attempt would be resisted by those who believed in sanity and the sanctity of marriage as ordained by God.

He said, “His comment is an affront to our socio-cultural and religious values which I find as highly unfortunate. When people look up to us as role models in the society, we must see it as a public trust which must be guarded jealously.

“I urge members of the National Assembly not to be dissuaded by this kind of comments and insults hauled on them by Professor Wole Soyinka; rather, they should base their actions on the clamour by a majority of Nigerians which is overwhelmingly against same sex marriage.

“He should apologise to the legislators for telling them to go back to school. Let me ask: is Prof. Soyinka or any of the advocates a product of same-sex marriage? I wonder if the conventional marriage has not been upheld as passed down by our fathers, how many of those who are proponents of this ‘evil’ agenda will be in this world today.”

Makinde added, “The question we should also ask people like Soyinka is how many countries in the world have legally recognised same-sex marriage? Only 10. Even the same United States government that is castigating the Nigerian government has not accepted this nationally.

“Just like Mexico, it operates in some jurisdictions in the US. So why must westernisation becloud our civilisation? Civilisation becomes abused when conventional wisdom is condemned to the whims and caprices of westernization. We will strongly resist this madness.”

Makinde said it was important to note that the 10 countries that embraced same-sex marriage did it for political reason and not based on moral convictions.

-Punch

Posted by admin on Dec 21 2011. Filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry