Category: Viral

Exactly 300 years ago, in 1721, Benjamin Franklin and his fellow American colonists faced a deadly smallpox outbreak. Their varying responses constitute an eerily prescient object lesson for today’s world, similarly devastated by a virus and divided over vaccination three centuries later.

As a microbiologist and a Franklin scholar, we see some parallels between then and now that could help governments, journalists and the rest of us cope with the coronavirus pandemic and future threats.

Smallpox strikes Boston

Smallpox was nothing new in 1721. Known to have affected people for at least 3,000 years, it ran rampant in Boston, eventually striking more than half the city’s population. The virus killed about 1 in 13 residents – but the death toll was probably more, since the lack of sophisticated epidemiology made it impossible to identify the cause of all deaths.

What was new, at least to Boston, was a simple procedure that could protect people from the disease. It was known as “variolation” or “inoculation,” and involved deliberately exposing someone to the smallpox “matter” from a victim’s scabs or pus, injecting the material into the skin using a needle. This approach typically caused a mild disease and induced a state of “immunity” against smallpox.

Even today, the exact mechanism is poorly understood and not much research on variolation has been done. Inoculation through the skin seems to activate an immune response that leads to milder symptoms and less transmission, possibly because of the route of infection and the lower dose. Since it relies on activating the immune response with live smallpox variola virus, inoculation is different from the modern vaccination that eradicated smallpox using the much less harmful but related vaccinia virus.

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The inoculation treatment, which originated in Asia and Africa, came to be known in Boston thanks to a man named Onesimus. By 1721, Onesimus was enslaved, owned by the most influential man in all of Boston, the Rev. Cotton Mather.

Known primarily as a Congregational minister, Mather was also a scientist with a special interest in biology. He paid attention when Onesimus told him “he had undergone an operation, which had given him something of the smallpox and would forever preserve him from it; adding that it was often used” in West Africa, where he was from.

Inspired by this information from Onesimus, Mather teamed up with a Boston physician, Zabdiel Boylston, to conduct a scientific study of inoculation’s effectiveness worthy of 21st-century praise. They found that of the approximately 300 people Boylston had inoculated, 2% had died, compared with almost 15% of those who contracted smallpox from nature.

The findings seemed clear: Inoculation could help in the fight against smallpox. Science won out in this clergyman’s mind. But others were not convinced.

Stirring up controversy

A local newspaper editor named James Franklin had his own affliction – namely an insatiable hunger for controversy. Franklin, who was no fan of Mather, set about attacking inoculation in his newspaper, The New-England Courant.

One article from August 1721 tried to guilt readers into resisting inoculation. If someone gets inoculated and then spreads the disease to someone else, who in turn dies of it, the article asked, “at whose hands shall their Blood be required?” The same article went on to say that “Epidemeal Distempers” such as smallpox come “as Judgments from an angry and displeased God.”

In contrast to Mather and Boylston’s research, the Courant’s articles were designed not to discover, but to sow doubt and distrust. The argument that inoculation might help to spread the disease posits something that was theoretically possible – at least if simple precautions were not taken – but it seems beside the point. If inoculation worked, wouldn’t it be worth this small risk, especially since widespread inoculations would dramatically decrease the likelihood that one person would infect another?

Franklin, the Courant’s editor, had a kid brother apprenticed to him at the time – a teenager by the name of Benjamin.

Historians don’t know which side the younger Franklin took in 1721 – or whether he took a side at all – but his subsequent approach to inoculation years later has lessons for the world’s current encounter with a deadly virus and a divided response to a vaccine.

Independent thought

You might expect that James’ little brother would have been inclined to oppose inoculation as well. After all, thinking like family members and others you identify with is a common human tendency.

That he was capable of overcoming this inclination shows Benjamin Franklin’s capacity for independent thought, an asset that would serve him well throughout his life as a writer, scientist and statesman. While sticking with social expectations confers certain advantages in certain settings, being able to shake off these norms when they are dangerous is also valuable. We believe the most successful people are the ones who, like Franklin, have the intellectual flexibility to choose between adherence and independence.

Truth, not victory

What happened next shows that Franklin, unlike his brother – and plenty of pundits and politicians in the 21st century – was more interested in discovering the truth than in proving he was right.

Perhaps the inoculation controversy of 1721 had helped him to understand an unfortunate phenomenon that continues to plague the U.S. in 2021: When people take sides, progress suffers. Tribes, whether long-standing or newly formed around an issue, can devote their energies to demonizing the other side and rallying their own. Instead of attacking the problem, they attack each other.

Franklin, in fact, became convinced that inoculation was a sound approach to preventing smallpox. Years later he intended to have his son Francis inoculated after recovering from a case of diarrhea. But before inoculation took place, the 4-year-old boy contracted smallpox and died in 1736. Citing a rumor that Francis had died because of inoculation and noting that such a rumor might deter parents from exposing their children to this procedure, Franklin made a point of setting the record straight, explaining that the child had “receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection.”

Writing his autobiography in 1771, Franklin reflected on the tragedy and used it to advocate for inoculation. He explained that he “regretted bitterly and still regret” not inoculating the boy, adding, “This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”

A scientific perspective

A final lesson from 1721 has to do with the importance of a truly scientific perspective, one that embraces science, facts and objectivity.

Inoculation was a relatively new procedure for Bostonians in 1721, and this lifesaving method was not without deadly risks. To address this paradox, several physicians meticulously collected data and compared the number of those who died because of natural smallpox with deaths after smallpox inoculation. Boylston essentially carried out what today’s researchers would call a clinical study on the efficacy of inoculation. Knowing he needed to demonstrate the usefulness of inoculation in a diverse population, he reported in a short book how he inoculated nearly 300 individuals and carefully noted their symptoms and conditions over days and weeks.

The recent emergency-use authorization of mRNA-based and viral-vector vaccines for COVID-19 has produced a vast array of hoaxes, false claims and conspiracy theories, especially in various social media. Like 18th-century inoculations, these vaccines represent new scientific approaches to vaccination, but ones that are based on decades of scientific research and clinical studies.

We suspect that if he were alive today, Benjamin Franklin would want his example to guide modern scientists, politicians, journalists and everyone else making personal health decisions. Like Mather and Boylston, Franklin was a scientist with a respect for evidence and ultimately for truth.

When it comes to a deadly virus and a divided response to a preventive treatment, Franklin was clear what he would do. It doesn’t take a visionary like Franklin to accept the evidence of medical science today.

Mark Canada is Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Indiana University Kokomo.

Christian Chauret is Dean of School of Sciences, Professor of Microbiology at Indiana University Kokomo.

This article first appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

The sports world is abuzz in reaction to Sha’Carri Richardson getting banned from running the 100 meters at the Summer Olympics. Richardson tested positive for marijuana recently, meaning she accepted a one-month suspension from the United States Anti-Doping Agency and saw her recent result in the race, in which she ran a 10.86 en route to establishing herself as a gold medal contender in Tokyo, disqualified.

Richardson can still run the 4×100 at the Olympics, but it’s an overly harsh penalty and one that comes, as she explained on Today, after she used marijuana as a way to cope with the recent passing of her mother. Only 21, Richardson has the silver lining of youth, and it is very possible this won’t be the only time she’s a gold medal threat.

In the aftermath of this, plenty of folks — including a number of professional athletes — have been in Richardson’s corner. One person who decided to fire off a take is Emmanuel Acho, the former NFL linebacker who is now a Fox Sports personality. Please look at this tweet:

What this appears to imply is that if we let javelin participants smoke marijuana, they’d take them in their hands and then throw them and impale people, making some type of human kebab. It seems to be something out of a really weird cartoon and not, you know, real.

As you can guess, the Twitterverse saw this and was totally baffled as to whatever Acho was going for.

Even Robert Griffin III and retired defensive end Chris Long opined on what Acho had to say.

I am not an expert but I am inclined to believe that a person who is baked out of their mind would not be allowed to throw the javelin, and if so, people would probably not stand in such a place that they could get their lives ruined. Having said this, I have been wrong before, so who knows?

Seinfeld, a show about nothing, now officially has the slap bass-fueled soundtrack its fans have always desired. Variety reported Thursday that the legendary sitcom would get an official soundtrack, 23 years after it left primetime for an endless loop of syndication and streaming binges.

The show’s popularity in the two decades since its last episode has only grown as new generations experienced its eccentricities. Which perhaps is why more Seinfeld content like this has emerged in recent years. And, quite frankly, no one seems to know why it’s taken so long for the show to get an official soundtrack anyway.

“It was 30 years in the making,” says “Seinfeld” composer Jonathan Wolff, with a laugh, about the new release. He confesses he doesn’t know why there wasn’t a “Seinfeld” soundtrack while the series was on NBC between 1989 and 1998.

“It struggled for the first few seasons,” he points out. “We were an accidental hit. We were busy getting episodes out, and nobody was thinking about the music. And that’s OK.” The series was among TV’s most popular shows for its last five seasons.

The good news for longtime fans of the Jerry Seinfeld vehicle is that all your favorites are there. The mouth popping, slap bass and synthesizer that would highlight the show’s transitions and credit sequences are at full power on the Jonathan Wolff-led official TV soundtrack. And with 180 episodes to pluck songs from, there’s a surprising range to the offerings and even some never-aired stuff in the mix.

The range of styles is surprisingly broad: hip-hop for “Kramer’s Pimpwalk,” happy whistling and guitars for “Jerry the Mailman,” a “Mission: Impossible” vibe for “Jerry vs. Newman Chase,” suspense-thriller scoring for “Cable Guy vs. Kramer Chase,” ’90s rock for “Kramer’s Boombox,” Eastern mysticism for “Peterman in Burmese Jungle,” and vintage guitar-and-harmonica blues for “Waiting for the Verdict” from the series finale.

A highlight turns out to be music that was intended for, but never heard in, the show. When Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) dates a saxophone player in a seventh-season episode, the original script called for several scenes in a jazz club where he was playing.

And, indeed, the show’s theme song and other tracks did hit Spotify and elsewhere on Friday. So if you need your fill of mouth-popping sounds on this July 4 holiday weekend, boy is it going to be lots of fun for 32 tracks or so.

[via Variety]

It can feel like doomsday cult behavior, sometimes, this heralding of stars. We, as a collective, pin every hope on the date they’re picked and then weirdly long for them to immediately upend, wreck havoc, outright destroy the thing they’ve been drafted into en route to becoming the generational player that was promised. And when it fails to pan out, the scramble resets. We go back to consulting the data for the next year, pick new candidates, and hope this time, we’ll get the asteroid that wipes everything out. Our cult, clearly pretty shitty at predicting the future, can finally rest.

With the real-time and compelling rise of players like Trae Young, Devin Booker, Luka Doncic, Ja Morant, Deandre Ayton, and more in what’s been a sustained sea change, these playoffs have upended all that. What’s more, with the NBA’s fixed postseason stars largely absent, we’re seeing the future identity of the league — from its most dominant players to the way the game itself looks — take shape with every brash and innovative night on the floor.

And while there’s a feeling of immediacy to the performance of these players, and a sense that through their finesse and flourish — Young’s playful manifesting of the villain in theatrical bows and shoulder shimmies, Ayton’s candidness in celebrating Nikola Jokic and teammate Chris Paul in his postgames with the awareness that he now shares the same stage, too — there’s recognition they’ve stepped into the spotlight. And perhaps more promisingly, the path they traveled to get here came from some of the most understated and unpopular methods in a league hellbent on win-now acceleration: drafting for fit, solid coaching, and gradual development.

When the Hawks gave up the number three pick that could’ve landed them Doncic to trade down for Young, the franchise was skewered for it. Atlanta had just come off their first season without seeing the playoffs after a decade getting there and falling out in early exits, and Doncic looked like the kind of player who could propel the team past where it had been stuck for so long. By comparison, Young was rakish, green, if a little awkward. But in him, the Hawks saw the fluidity of his handle, the depth of his shooting, and the potential to tie everything together with prodigious playmaking.

In his first two seasons in Atlanta, Young could be mercurial on the floor, swinging from firing on all-cylinders offense to harried defense, doing a little bit of everything. The Hawks, too, were a team in transition, a vet-heavy roster with a handful of young players. Loosening from the repetitions of Mike Budenholzer and adjusting to the defensive demands of Lloyd Pierce, Atlanta had plenty of upside, but the problem of that potential came in choosing a direction. The abrupt firing of Pierce and his replacement in Nate McMillan at the beginning of March this past season could’ve brought with it more reluctance, but it’s instead forced a way forward through trust.

“I told him, ‘You’re a Ferrari, but even in a Ferrari conditions change,’” McMillan said recently of Young, “If there’s ice on the road, you have to slow down. If it’s bright sunshine, go do your thing.”

The conditions for Young to flourish have come from trusting his teammates. In Bogdan Bogdanovic, Danilo Gallinari, and Kevin Huerter, Young gets ready, intuitive outlets, shooters who offer opportunities for Young to run the floor without the weight of every shot, lead, or deficit falling on him. In Clint Capela, he’s given plenty of defensive room and intuition. McMillan has pushed Young to organize the team and by doing so Young has tapped into the individual capabilities of his teammates. It seems simple, but it is something that only comes in what can be most difficult for frenetic multitaskers like Young: giving up control.

“He has really gotten better at trusting his teammates,” McMillan said of Young looking to his teammates, “and understanding they can do some things too.”

The foundation of that trust has also become the stage for Young to play the villain, the most entertaining role of his NBA career so far and one that feeds back into the team around him. The Hawks, by some accounts, shouldn’t yet be where they are, a team too young, too brazen, too hopeful on the verge of the NBA Finals, but there were no shortcuts. Even making big splashes in free agency this year, bringing in Bogdanovic and Gallinari, were calculated moves with an eye on a window opening in the coming years. It was steady growth that got Atlanta and Young where they are, farther than the franchise has been in five seasons. Whatever happens, the best, most sustainable parts of it should carry over, in large part because of their young star guard who has exploded in his first postseason.

Incremental growth is something the Suns share with the Hawks, though Phoenix has had to wait a little longer for this high-powered, beaming team that’s burned up the West. For Booker, this playoff run has been six years in the making, for Chris Paul, 15. Ayton has only had to wait two seasons, but both were weighed down by doubt around his capabilities and the veracity — as if irrefutable proof in a concept so abstract, with so many variable, were possible — of his number one pick due to the guy who got traded for Young.

Instead, it was the perfectly timed and titled “valley-oop” that offered the tidiest, lethal proof of Ayton’s growth as a player. In those 0.9 seconds, everything from team synchronicity to Ayton’s sense of timing and trust in his role culminated in what’s been the most breathless, signature win for the Suns so far these playoffs.

“He’s starting to understand having a role doesn’t limit you,” Monty Williams said of Ayton after Game 2 against the Clippers.

That role has seen Ayton as an offensive juggernaut, providing pin down and ball screens for Booker and Paul, and hot handoffs to Cam Payne and Mikhail Bridges, all while limiting his own touches. Per James Herbert at CBS, Ayton’s own points, assists, and shot attempts are way down, but he’s collecting nearly 60 percent of opponent’s missed free throws, taking 69 percent of his shots at the rim, and making 81 percent of those close and often physical points. It takes everything to win a playoff series, each game its own grueling campaign of on-the-fly adjustments, near-psychic intuition, and a dizzying amount of intangibles capable of turning the tide minute-to-minute, and Ayton is doing it all. In a league so hyper-focused on the development of star players for their offensive prowess only, it can take years (if at all) for new players to round out (or even recognize they have to) their games enough to stay relevant. Ayton has needed three years to get to that point, and his arrival has been emphatic.

That the Suns managed to keep things consistent in a season impacted so deeply by COVID and injuries is a testament to how the team turned inward, shoring up skills they already had. Booker, who consistently carried the Suns all season with 30-plus scoring performances, has managed to back off on needing to be the most ball-dominant player on the floor, leaning into playmaking with pointers from Paul while expanding his midrange capabilities. His toughness has taken shape, too. Whether it’s from settling into an on-court shorthand with Ayton or under the domineering pressure of Paul, Booker hasn’t backed off from the physical challenges, most notable in a semi-finals dust-up with Jokic or having his nose broken in three places.

Where Booker had drawn ire in the past was from a showiness without substance, not only in physicality but in a willingness to take responsibility for where the team, once a quick group of impatient gunners, was falling short. But something has clicked under the measured coaching of Monty Williams and Booker is not just poised for the stage the Suns have taken, but mature enough for the spotlight not to spook him.

Regardless of how far the Cinderella-style runs the Hawks and Suns are having these playoffs take them, the impact of these two young, slow-built franchises — not to mention teams with a similar makeup who fell out a little earlier — is going to trickle into the league at large, in everything from copycat team building to game mechanics. This formula for gradual, even growth has offered a road for small-market teams to get out from under the big market behemoths powered by superstars as much as it encourages a new, potentially more accessible way for young players to advance their games and careers without getting stuck behind walking mountains like LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and James Harden for years.

What’s become evident in these playoffs is that established players do best when adjusting their own games to the developments the younger generation is bringing in. Where scoring in the paint was once put mostly to stretch forwards and big men, guards have scored more points up close in the last two seasons than both those positions combined. Guards are also shifting the preference in terms of go-to shots, with floaters now edging out pull-up jumpers overall. While the six most active floater utilizing players are all guards and all under 22, three of them — Young, Doncic, Morant — were difference-makers for their teams these playoffs, preferring zig-zagging drives that roll easily into floaters, disrupting defenses in their lurching wake.

A sea change like this doesn’t mean the end for the Draft — there are still plenty of teams that, nobly or not, the Draft provides the quickest route to change — nor is it a failsafe method. A franchise could still spend five years waiting for things to evolve only to end up with an anticlimactic bust. The reward of this new wave is, at first, selfishly singular. We get a crop of confident, brash players figuring out their own counters in a high-stakes, cinematic setting that feels closer to a 2K game, while players like Young, Booker, Morant, Doncic, and Ayton feel, for the first time, the reward of so much work, the quashing of Draft brainwashed doubt.

But what comes next, seen already through the ripples of in-game stylistic shifts and the force of a generation of stars instead of one generational star, is a new tide rising.

The most recent full-length album from James Blake is 2019’s Assume Form (although he released an EP, Before, in 2020). Now, Blake has indicated that his next release is complete.

He wrote on Instagram today, “Look mum, the albums’s done [check mark emoji].” He was also quick to nip inaccurate album cover rumors in the bud, noting of the post’s image, “This isn’t the artwork.”

That’s all the info we have on the album for now, although there are some previously released songs that could potentially appear on the release: Blake shared a couple of non album singles in 2020, “You’re Too Precious” and “Are You Even Real?,” that aren’t currently associated with a full-length project.

In recent months, there has been talk about two full-length Blake projects that have yet to be released. In November, Ty Dolla Sign said in an interview, “I was working with James Blake on some other stuff that we haven’t released yet. I shouldn’t even have said that… but yeah, it’s coming, guys.” Later that month, Blake noted that he made an ambient album that has Brian Eno’s approval, saying, “I’ve basically made an ambient album, but I just don’t really know when to put it out, so we’ll see. It’s at that point where you go, ‘Oh this is an album!’ […] I wanted to see what [Eno] thought and when his feedback was positive, that’s when I decided I would put it out one day.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

There’s a new way to play The Walking Dead and fair warning: if you let Daryl die, we riot. Playco’s The Walking Dead Life is Facebook Gaming’s latest social game built for its Instant Games platform. Released ahead of the show’s final season, the game lets fans get a bit nostalgic and experience the show’s most memorable moments before it all comes to a close this fall.

In The Walking Dead Life, players will encounter fan-favorite characters like Rick Grimes, Michonne Hawthorne, and, of course, Daryl Dixon. Through battling, leveling up, and progressing through the game, you can unlock Easter eggs hidden at various locations within the game, such as Hershel’s farm and the West Georgia Correctional Facility. In addition to simply allowing us to take a walk down gory ol’ memory lane, The Walking Dead Life allows players to collect items, squad up to raid bases, play in tournaments, and battle against enemies and friends alike.

According to a report by Variety, Playco CEO Michael Carter said the game is also a way to rally the community one last time and help them bond over the series before its end. Carter said the team is “thrilled to work with AMC and Facebook to bring The Walking Dead to life through a unique and interactive instant game for the millions of fans of this hit show across the globe. One of the best ways to connect with your friends is through the mutual love of entertainment like TV shows, and we hope this game brings friends closer together through play.”

As much as we can’t believe it either, the 11th and final season of The Walking Dead premieres on AMC Sunday, August 11.

Bill Cosby had his sexual assault conviction overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday after serving less than three years of a three- to ten-year sentence. He spent his first night out of prison “fielding congratulatory calls from his celebrity pals,” presumably including Phylicia Rashad, and shameless comedy club owners.

“He stayed up until 2 in the morning telling jokes,” Cosby’s spokesperson Andrew Wyatt said to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “This morning, he’s been talking to a number of promoters and comedy club owners over his breakfast this morning.” Wyatt said that “the world is welcoming [Cosby] back,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Janice Dickinson, one of the 60 women who have accused Cosby of rape and sexual assault, told Entertainment Tonight, “I would say, don’t be so happy with yourself, buddy, because you know what you did to me.”

Though Cosby has always maintained his innocence, Wyatt said the timing of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday that led to the comedian’s release came as a surprise. Cosby learned of it from a prison guard in the state detention center outside Collegeville where he’d served more than two years of a three-to-10-year sentence.

Cosby could face “fresh claims for defamation” if he goes on tour, according to attorney Lisa Bloom, for “claiming vindication from his accusers.” That’s likely the only reason he hasn’t already popped up on someone’s awful podcast.

(Via the Philadelphia Inquirer)

Janelle Monáe has released a brand-new song titled “Stronger,” taken from the soundtrack to the forthcoming Netflix show We The People.

Executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, the 10-part series features a number of big musical names, such as Monáe, HER, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Adam Lambert, who teach viewers about civil rights movements. Meanwhile, Monáe’s “Stronger” rolls out with an up-stroked reggae rhythm, as the Dirty Computer singer waxes poetic about seeking solidarity in the face of adversity. “Some of the friends taught me how to dream / Some of the friends taught me how to fight,” Monáe sings. “Even those times when we don’t agree / We know we all tryna save the same day / We don’t want the life without the liberty.”

Monáe has woven civil rights issues into her music over the last few years, such as when she released “Turntables,” for the 2020 documentary about Stacey Abrams, All In: The Fight For Democracy. Of writing music to inspire change, Monáe told Rolling Stone: “What is a revolution without a song? I started thinking about all the people on the front line. What could be my gift to them? It was this song to remind them that the tables are turning. We’re seeing that progress is being made, even in the midst of dealing with such traumatic events. We have figured out a way to be the solution. I wanted this to be my gift because revolutionaries need love too. They need inspiration, and they need an anthem. This is my stab at that.”

Listen to “Stronger” above, and check out We The People when it hits Netflix on July 4. Ahead of them, watch a trailer below.

Just hours after a criminal indictment was announced against the Trump Organization, Donald Trump’s niece sent her uncle a warning: watch out for your kids.

Mary Trump, a psychologist and outspoken opponent of her uncle, guested on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show to break down what this new legal woe means for the family and Trump’s most loyal supporters. In her estimation, while Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg — who’s currently facing charges that include conspiracy, grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, and falsifying business records — will likely side with the former president and refuse to cooperate with authorities, that same sense of allegiance might not trickle down to Trump’s three children. During the show, Maddow acknowledged that the indictment claims other executives may have benefited from the same scheme Weisselberg is currently under fire for, meaning Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump might also be in the crosshairs should the Manhattan district attorney’s office dig any further. And, if their feet are held to the legal fire, Mary Trump thinks Donald should be worried.

“I think [Donald Trump] would be surprised to learn that I don’t believe my cousins would exercise that kind of loyalty towards him,” she said. “His relationship with them, and their relationship with him, is entirely transactional and conditional. They’re not going to risk anything for him, just as he wouldn’t risk anything for them.”

Who said blood runs thicker than water?

You can watch the full interview below:

Penda* did not feel worthy of a seat at the table with the 15 religious leaders she found herself nervously sitting across from, seven of them Christian, eight of them Muslim.

“Before I attended that forum, I knew that I was a sinner,” she recalls. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to go near a church. I didn’t even think that I could have a conversation with a religious leader.”

Yet in 2014, Penda, a masculine-presenting lesbian, found herself in conversation with these faith leaders, all of whom believed — and in many cases preached — that homosexuality is evil. But this was no ordinary conversation. At Penda’s side were three other people: a Kenyan gay man, a sex worker and someone living with HIV. None of the faith leaders knew these details. That information was held back — until just the right moment presented itself.

The forum was part of a strategic faith engagement session organized by Persons Marginalized and Aggrieved in Kenya (PEMA Kenya), a sexual and gender minority group in the coastal city of Mombasa. In Kenya, where the LGBTQ community is a frequent target of conservative religious leaders, who preach discrimination and sometimes even violence against them, PEMA Kenya takes an unusual approach: it works to “convert” faith leaders to the gay rights cause by introducing them to LGBTQ people, face to face, to build empathy, compassion and understanding.

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The carefully orchestrated encounters require the utmost care — for all involved. “We don’t aim to ‘sensitize’ religious leaders,” says Lydia Atemba, a member of the faith engagement team. “We also prepare and equip our community to participate in dialogue with them. We try to bridge the gap on both sides.”

The most unlikely allies

The five-day event attended by Penda and the 15 religious leaders was ostensibly to discuss barriers to health care faced by marginalized people who have HIV. For the first three days of the forum, no explicit mention of homosexuality was uttered.

“We [then] brought other queer members into the sessions and they spoke with the religious leaders,” says Pastor McOveh, a queer pastor who helps to facilitate the program. (He requested his first name not be used.)

Penda was one of them. Now 44, she calmly shared her experience as a lesbian living in Mombasa. She had moved there in 2010, leaving behind the ruins of Kitale, a cosmopolitan town in Kenya that was struggling to recover from the 2007 election crisis. She described to them how she was verbally abused, and how she had been forced to sever ties with her spirituality because of faith leaders preaching anti-gay violence and discrimination.

“I have had troubles reconciling my sexuality and faith,” she told the group.

She says sharing her personal story was surprisingly effective. The faith leaders’ beliefs weren’t instantly transformed, but, she says, “I think I saw a lot of compassion in some of them.”

She was right. One of the conservative religious leaders in attendance that day was Pastor John Kambo. A pastor at the Independent Pentecostal Church of Kenya, Kambo was well known for his public attacks on the LGBTQ community. He once declared that “the gender and sexual minorities, especially in worship places, are cursed sinners and will go to hell.”

This wasn’t Kambo’s first PEMA session. The organization had been holding discussions with him for four years, gradually drawing him onto their side. “It was just follow-up meetings — continuous engagement overtime [to] change the way [he] sees things,” recalls Ishmael Bahati, PEMA Kenya’s executive director and co-founder. During this period, Kambo began reflecting on what the Bible says about love. According to transcripts from PEMA Kenya, he ultimately said that “continuous participation in these trainings opened my mind and I realized that we are all human beings.” The meeting with Penda was his last as an outsider — afterwards, he joined PEMA Kenya as an active, dedicated member, and remained one until his death last month.

In the end, Kambo became an unlikely friend to the queer community. He underwent PEMA’s Training of Trainers, which taught him how to carefully discuss LGBTQ concerns with his fellow faith leaders. But his conversion came at a price. He was excommunicated from the church for three years, and his marriage hit the skids. He continued to be an ally, however, and in 2018 he became the first religious leader to be nominated as a “Human Rights Defender” by the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders — Kenya.

That same year, Kambo invited Pastor Benhadad Mutua Kithome to a PEMA discussion. “PEMA Kenya produced good notes, and they were helping us very much,” Kithome says of that meeting. “Some pastors were not agreeing with them — they were just agreeing with what the scriptures say. The way Sodom and Gomorrah was. The way, because of homosexuality, people were punished. But because of this training, some pastors, especially me, came to understand.”

Athumani Abdullah Mohammed, an Ustaz (Islamic teacher) whose view of queer people changed gradually after partaking in a PEMA session in 2018, had a similar experience.

“When I got a chance to engage, it was not easy because… I work with conservative organizations,” he says. “The whole gospel I was hearing was against ‘this people,’ as they called them. I thank my brother Ishmael because he was so persistent. He brought me on board. The funny thing is, the first meeting we held was not a good meeting. I was so against everything they were saying, but he saw something in me which I couldn’t see by myself. And he kept on engaging me. Now, I learned to listen and I opened myself to listen. I listen to what I want to hear — and what I don’t want to hear.”

Converting a culture

The coastal city of Mombasa is a conservative place. Religion is at its core, and local faith leaders wield outsized influence, often preaching violence against the queer community.

“Rhetoric vilifying LGBT people, much of it by religious leaders, is particularly pronounced on [Kenya’s] coast, and shapes public perceptions,” according to a Human Rights Watch report.

This was the environment into which PEMA Kenya launched in 2008. Started as a health and social wellbeing community for gay and bisexual men following the tragic death of a gay man in Mombasa — he became sick and was abandoned by his family — the group later expanded to accommodate other gender and sexual minority groups. Then, in 2010, a call to “flush out gays” by two major religious groups — the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) and the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) — led to a spate of attacks on queer people.

The violence became a catalyzing moment for PEMA Kenya. “We thought that it is a good time to have a dialogue with the religious leaders,” recalls Bahati, “to see if we can have a lasting solution for the attacks.”

The organization appears to be making progress toward that goal. Until five years ago, Bahati says, Ramadan, which concluded this month, was a particularly dangerous time for queer people in Kenya’s coastal region. A U.S. government report supports this observation, concluding that “the highest incidences of violence in the Kenyan Coast, which has a largely Muslim population, are reported during Ramadan.”

For this reason, organizations like PEMA used to focus on simply keeping LGBTQ people safe from harm during these weeks. “Most organizations were looking for funds to relocate people, to support people” during this period, says Bahati.

But this year’s Ramadan has been different. Attacks on queer folks are down, Bahati reports. “Things have really changed.” He believes PEMA’s years of meticulous relationship building are beginning to bear fruit. To date, PEMA has trained 619 religious leaders, 246 of which are still active members in the network. These members are crucial to spreading the acceptance of queerness in their congregations and communities in Mombasa and across Kenya. They also facilitate events alongside queer pastors and Ustaz, and review the group’s strategic faith engagement manual, Facing Our Fears.

According to Jide Macaulay, an openly gay British-Nigerian priest, the influence religious leaders hold over public perception makes them invaluable allies. In his experience, building radical queer institutions in a place like Mombasa just isn’t effective. This is something he learned first-hand — in 2006, Macaulay founded House of Rainbow, the first queer church in Nigeria. It was considered an affront to the societal and religious norm, and met with hostility. It lasted only two years.

“My largest focus was on the [queer] community, not necessarily on the rest of the society,” he says. “We didn’t take time to educate the society. House of Rainbow would have benefitted if we had allies within the community. [It] would have benefitted if we started maybe as a support group rather than a full-blown church.”

Now, like PEMA Kenya, House of Rainbow has evolved to make engagement with Christian and Islamic faith leaders the core of its mission, holding forums in Malawi, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

What the scriptures say

Bahati’s expertise as an Islamic scholar comes in handy. For instance, he notes that the role of language is key to winning converts to an inclusive community.

During PEMA’s strategic meetings, faith leaders are introduced, carefully and tactfully, to humanizing language. “You see, the word homosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer are not bad words,” says Macaulay. “Society has made them scary.” PEMA’s facilitators explain appropriate usage, context and meanings, and the harmful implications of using such language as slurs.

“What we say is that language is not innocent,” says McOveh, the gay pastor. “Most of the time we realize that faith leaders use language unknowingly.”

Of course, simply teaching more sensitive language is only the first step. In the Bible and Quran, certain verses and stories are still used to justify homophobic slurs and attacks.

“You realize that scriptures have different interpretations,” says McOveh, “so we try to find common ground to tell them that, see, there is this which is provided by the religion and this which is given as perception.” Macaulay echoes this point. “Looking at the Bible, there’s a history of bad theology, mistranslation, and that mistranslation has caused many churches not to understand that homosexuality is not a sin. Homosexuality is not like robbery or theft. Homosexuality is like being Black. Homosexuality is like being albino. There are things that you just cannot change…Homosexuality is not a crime and it should never be criminalized.”

While groups like PEMA Kenya and House of Rainbow have battled systemic homophobia in society, their efforts are still “a drop of water in the ocean,” says Macaulay.

Homosexuality remains illegal in Kenya. The Penal Code explicitly criminalizes it, and a conviction can carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years. Petitions filed in Nairobi and Mombasa high courts in 2019 to rule these laws unconstitutional were both dismissed this year. Appeals have been filed, but according to Michael Kioko, a lawyer and LGBTQ advocate, it would take a long time to get a ruling.

“We’ll have to wait for years to see whether the court of appeal will declare those provisions unconstitutional, and they may not,” he says.

32 out of 52 African countries criminalize same-sex relations, with punishment ranging from death to lengthy prison terms. In some ways, these laws lend legitimacy to perpetrators of homophobic violence and discrimination.

The pandemic has presented PEMA Kenya with yet another challenge. The delicate work of working with new religious leaders can be risky, and the discussions can only take place in a secure location, says Mohammed.

“You cannot talk to people about these things in their area,” he says. “You need to be very particular when it comes to safety because it’s a lot of voices which are talking against this and people are willing to kill.” Holding discussions with participants in an undisclosed location is safer, but it requires funding which PEMA has spent on taking care of needy community members during the lockdown.

Still, the efforts of PEMA Kenya’s faith leaders continue to foster a safer city for a lot of queer people in Mombasa — in the streets, in the churches and mosques, and in their own homes. “[Now] someone can walk for a kilometer without being attacked,” says Penda with relief. “Those were things that were not very much happening back then.”

*Name has been changed to protect the person’s identity.

This piece was first published on Reasons to Be Cheerful and is part of the SoJo Exchange from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.