Exuberant Kenyans greeted President Obama on Saturday like a long-lost son, but signs of the gulf between the American president and his father’s homeland were on full display when he confronted the Kenyan government about gay rights.
Standing side by side with President Uhuru Kenyatta, a staunch opponent of any change to his country’s harsh laws toward homosexuality, Obama, a supporter of same-sex marriage, called upon Kenya and other African governments to set an example by banning state discrimination of gays and lesbians.
“When you start treating people differently, not because of any harm they’re doing to anybody, but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen,” Obama said, evoking his own experience with discrimination as an African American in the U.