Christianity and homosexuality have long been conflicting concepts. It is grimly disillusioning when a top Christian man who is a pastor births a homosexual, proud son. Can he eliminate his own son for the sake of a being a pastor? This is something that is unlikely but how does he preach about homosexuality before the church when his own son is gay?

Growing up gay, intelligent and boldly courageous, his father had to learn to live with him, despite his controversial sexual orientation. The father couldn’t cast a spell or renounce him, but consoled himself that it is God’s will. The Bible he reads doesn’t allow him to do anything unholy, and the law isn’t on his side either.

The advice ‘Go and find yourself’ has always caused him (gay son) anxiety. This is primarily because it implies that creation of a person starts with the synchronicity of completion and loss of self. It suggests that he has to get out, find himself, a he that he has never met, but somehow lost.

Renowned author, novelist and publisher, Dr Bryan Keitsemang doesn’t think that’s how anything begins. He imagines a person that a person starts as nothing and in their interaction with the world, they create themselves with pieces that they feel when put together, would form who they want to be. Growing up, he had so many fears about the future and most of them were about who he might become.

“I feared becoming an untamed spirit whose wranglings with religion would lead me to believing in absolutely nothing else but freedom, friendship, sex, family, justice, love and a life of hope, art and resilience. I also used to fear that people would notice I was homosexual before I told them.” Dr Keitsemang said this in an exclusive interview this week.

Dr Keitsemang highlighted that being homosexual doesn’t mean it as a stamp of identity, but as a component of his behavior. There is more color to him than just hi sexual orientation.

“So many things that I am would make my younger self cringe. But I have grown. So much that I look back on him not with embarrassment or shame but with warmth and understanding. He was only doing the best he could with what he knew.”

The young author previously said he almost married a woman, something that he would obviously regret his entire life, because “I kept getting a feeling that this was not what he wanted.”

“I loved her so much it hurts and I won’t hesitate to say this any day, she was an incredible woman. What kept echoing on my mind was that it won’t last. And what I didn’t want was to hurt her by not being true to my sexuality. We amicably ended the relationship but it was sad at the same time. We both invested our emotions into a relationship that was blank but it is what it is, we had to make things end.”

Post this dramatic crash, Dr Keitsemang felt relieved and light. But he had a storm to weather: people knowing he is gay would eventually be judgmental but he had to live the truth in order to safe himself.

“Self-discovery can liberate those we love. I don’t think it is wrong for a human being to be seen being human. I simply believe that there are so many colorful ways to live and love. I am also aware of how difference can be isolating and frightening, especially when you’ve come of age in a country where politics are defined by marginalization and exclusion.”

“I know the crippling anxiety that comes with the thought of giving years of love and life to your partner only to be seen as nothing but a familiar stranger at the ICU door. The private battle with oneself contributes so much to queer drama. This is why we come out because we’ve lived so much of our lives nervous and hidden in the broken pieces within ourselves.”

Talking about politics, it has been over three weeks now since churches raised their voices about amending laws in the Penal Code that criminalizes or discriminates gay persons.

Dr Keitsemang stressed that he and members of the LGBTIQ community are going nowhere and Batswana will have to learn to live with them. Unashamedly gay, he said the conversation of criminalizing homosexuality is irrelevant until the church gives a justification for why it’s right to override individual freedom and autonomy.

The celebrated author has published several books including Prayers of an Atheist, a memoir that tells his story of growing up gay and atheist as a pastor’s son. The book earned him endless criticism from religious pundits, but he says whoever thinks he’s speaking out to stir controversy must widen their sense of awareness. “I am a writer. I owe it to myself and to my art to live truthfully.”

When further unleashing his frustrations, Dr Keitsemang said he is baffled by how people live in a society that frowns upon love but encourages hate. “Christians are thickening the air with homophobia and it is important to remember that in a functional democracy, equality doesn’t only mean uniformity.”

“Equality also means divergence from mainstream ideas if we’re to protect vulnerable groups of our society. Churches can march all they want to Parliament- they have the right to demonstrate their rejection of homosexuality- but the constitution liberalism in our democracy recognizes human beings have inalienable rights, and that governments ought to accept a basic law which limits its own powers to secure those rights.

He said churches must rehabilitate its argument or let gay people be, saying people don’t have to agree with homosexuality to understand that not everyone carries the same beliefs and that love us too beautiful to be constricted.