“LGBTI rights have become a political lightning rod,” explained OutRight director Jessica Stern. OutRight Action International, a New York-based not-for-profit that advocates for LGBT rights around the world, took the position that President Obama should not mention gay rights when he visited Kenya. “People weren’t even coming to collect their ARVs because they feared they were going to be attacked.” His clinic usually averages 50 visitors a day in the weeks before Obama’s arrival there were no more than 2 or 3. “That was the most tense in our life, before Obama came,” says John Mathenge, the director of a community center and health clinic in Nairobi called HOYMAS - Health Options for Young Men with HIV/AIDS and STIs. As the vitriol increased, so did the incidents of violence, from assaults to rape. Deputy President William Ruto gave a guest sermon in a church to announce that Kenya “had no room” for homosexuality. In the weeks leading up to Obama’s visit, Kenyan politicians took to the airwaves to assert their anti-gay bona fides. Many American activists were pressing him to publicly condemn Kenya’s colonial-era law making homosexuality a crime.īut Kenyan gays and lesbians were wary.
Everyone knew President Obama would say something about gay rights when he made his visit to Kenya last summer.