It’s always better to understand why these things happen than to dismiss them as ‘just homophobia’ in a knee jerk reaction. Yes, of course it’s homophobia at its core, but as a queer person who has the privilege of watching this as an onlooker rather than living through it in Burkina Faso (and my heart goes out to the people living through it), I would like to understand what conditions surround the implementation of evil laws like this. Exploring that is not legitimising the homophobia.

And frankly accusing Awoo of trying to do that is just taking what she’s saying in bad faith.