Traditional values

Liberia, where homosexuality is already illegal, is currently trying to increase the prison sentences for it. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, last year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is very much against decriminalizing homosexuality. "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve. We're going to keep to our traditional values," she says.

That's funny. I thought Liberia's traditional values were civil war, rape and cannibalism, as well as its traditional place in the last ten countries as listed by Human Development Index.

A former president of this highly traditional country, Charles Taylor, is currently in Hague on trial for murder, rape, torture, mutilation and cannibalism.

Of the other fine politicians of Liberia, Prince Johnson is known for torture and dismemberment, Roosevelt Johnson is known for sponsoring Joshua Milton Blahyi (also known as General Butt Naked), Joshua Milton Blahyi is known for human sacrifice, eating children's hearts and playing soccer with people's detached heads (yeah, and being butt naked).

I understand that next to all these dignitaries Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has never committed a violent crime or at least been caught doing so, totally deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Seriously though, there is some point in her Nobel Peace Prize. She managed to criminalize one traditional Liberian pastime: raping everything that moves, and a lot of things that don't move fast enough (like babies, for example). Yep, they banned rape in 2006. Before that it was kinda traditional.

Americans got a little taste of traditional Liberian values a couple of years ago, when a 8-year-old Liberian girl was raped by four boys aged 14, 13, 10 and 9 and was thereafter disowned by her parents, Hemie and Wedeh Dio (currently on trial in Arizona for 7 unrelated counts of child abuse).

But it's a good thing the president is standing up for the traditional values. I mean, Liberia is so fucked already, imagine how it would be if homosexuals were allowed to have sex!