Gay Kenyans hope for legal win, eyeing broader shift in Africa

When Kenyan feminist blogger Peps was growing up in Nairobi in the first years of the 2000s, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people didn’t exist.

At least, it didn’t seem like it. There were no out gay people on her favorite TV shows, or in her neighborhood, and being gay simply wasn’t a topic of conversation with her family.

“It was mentioned once in a while in high school, but I never thought of myself as gay,” she says. “I just thought maybe everyone felt like that.”

Now, however, Peps, who asked that she be identified by her nickname, lives in a different world. She is 24 and working in a Nairobi advertising