Indeed, my latest story on Medium is about LGBTQ refugees suffering terribly at the U.N. refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. I wrote about a young man who at the age of 17 was imprisoned, gang raped, and tortured with hot metal for being gay. His father was murdered.

This young man can find no refuge. Not in Africa, not in the developed world. He is stateless and hopeless, knowing almost for certain that he has no life to look forward to. He's only 21.

But to hear many African politicians tell it, there are no gay people in Africa. Gay is just a sickness of Western culture, they say.

But of course gay people do exist in Africa, like everywhere, including Iran and Alabama.

I know gay Iranians, some of whom have fled Iran, some of whom still live there. They exist, despite the state's assertion to the contrary.

Willl Alabama one day say that gay people don't really exist? Well, Moms for Liberty have already falsely claimed that schools are recruiting people to be gay, as if such a thing were possible.

So sure, one day political readers could make such an outrageous claim, just like they used to make in the United States and just like they still do elsewhere in the world.