Two Mutuas, porn, and a tussle over Kenya’s "free speech"

Two Mutuas - US based legal scholar Prof. Makau Mutua, and Kenya Film Commission boss Ezekiel Mutua-, have traded barbs online over Kenya's religious/secular learning, and its impact on free speech.

Writting on Twitter, Prof. Mutua, also takes issue with Garissa town MP Aden Duale and his recent sponsorship of a Bill that proposes stiff penalties on people found with porn.

A Ksh20 million fine or a 25-year jail term (or both) may be slapped on persons found guilty of sharing pornographic material, if Duale has his way.

On his part, Ezekiel Mutua has been vocal against racy and lurid public displays especially by musicians and celebrities at large. His campaigns have earned him the moniker "moral cop."

Mutua, Professor, who is also Kenya Human Rights Commission board chairman, is not happy. "The likes of Duale and Mutua must get it in their noggin that Kenya isn’t a mosque, or church. It’s a secular state governed under secular — not religious — law. Criminalizing pornography is Neanderthal legal paganism. The law is an attack on free speech."

"A person shall not knowingly publish pornography through a computer system, produce pornography for the purpose of its publication through a computer system, download, distribute, circulate, sell or make it available in anyway from a telecommunications apparatus pornography,” Duale's Bill reads.

Prof. Makau's tweet triggered an angry response from the moral cop. "How is pornography a "speech" let alone a free one?!!," he replied. "Sometimes I am baffled at how you defend useless things with big English, lazed in sinful fanaticism. To use big words that mean nothing to make others look bad because of their convictions is the domain of narcissists!"

The verbal ping-pong continued: