EDITORIAL: Spare the children

On Saturday, a child was spotted participating in a gay rights march in Windhoek. The boy, aged between 10 and 12, carried a poster that reads "abolish sodomy law". It is not known whose kid it is, but that is immaterial. Even if we assume the kid belongs to a gay couple at the event, involving him in the march was inherently ill-advised, if not downright predatory.

Some on social media called it child abuse. If involving him in the march of a predominantly sexualised matter wasn't irresponsible enough, making him carry a poster about sodomy, an actual sexual act, was as bad as it gets. There are limits to what kids in each age category must be exposed to. While children must be incrementally made aware of the realities of their surroundings, including the fact that same-sex intimacy does exist, this has to be done responsibly and over a period of time. There's nothing responsible about exposing them to granular graphics of what sodomy - or any other sexual act in heterosexual relationships - actually entails. Our war for equal sexual rights must be waged ethically. After all, there's a general acceptance, especially within the LGBTQ community, that children must be allowed to organically explore their sexualities with age. There's nothing organic about involving a kid in a march like this, because this way we might be silently coercing them into a particular sexual orientation. And that's selfish!