upworthy
Wellness

The group turning religious leaders into LGBTQ rights crusaders in Kenya

The group turning religious leaders into LGBTQ rights crusaders in Kenya

This piece was first published on Reasons to Be Cheerful and is part of the SoJo Exchange from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.


Penda* did not feel worthy of a seat at the table with the 15 religious leaders she found herself nervously sitting across from, seven of them Christian, eight of them Muslim.

"Before I attended that forum, I knew that I was a sinner," she recalls. "I didn't think it was possible for me to go near a church. I didn't even think that I could have a conversation with a religious leader."

Yet in 2014, Penda, a masculine-presenting lesbian, found herself in conversation with these faith leaders, all of whom believed — and in many cases preached — that homosexuality is evil. But this was no ordinary conversation. At Penda's side were three other people: a Kenyan gay man, a sex worker and someone living with HIV. None of the faith leaders knew these details. That information was held back — until just the right moment presented itself.

The forum was part of a strategic faith engagement session organized by Persons Marginalized and Aggrieved in Kenya (PEMA Kenya), a sexual and gender minority group in the coastal city of Mombasa. In Kenya, where the LGBTQ community is a frequent target of conservative religious leaders, who preach discrimination and sometimes even violence against them, PEMA Kenya takes an unusual approach: it works to "convert" faith leaders to the gay rights cause by introducing them to LGBTQ people, face to face, to build empathy, compassion and understanding.


The carefully orchestrated encounters require the utmost care — for all involved. "We don't aim to 'sensitize' religious leaders," says Lydia Atemba, a member of the faith engagement team. "We also prepare and equip our community to participate in dialogue with them. We try to bridge the gap on both sides."

The most unlikely allies

The five-day event attended by Penda and the 15 religious leaders was ostensibly to discuss barriers to health care faced by marginalized people who have HIV. For the first three days of the forum, no explicit mention of homosexuality was uttered.

"We [then] brought other queer members into the sessions and they spoke with the religious leaders," says Pastor McOveh, a queer pastor who helps to facilitate the program. (He requested his first name not be used.)

Penda was one of them. Now 44, she calmly shared her experience as a lesbian living in Mombasa. She had moved there in 2010, leaving behind the ruins of Kitale, a cosmopolitan town in Kenya that was struggling to recover from the 2007 election crisis. She described to them how she was verbally abused, and how she had been forced to sever ties with her spirituality because of faith leaders preaching anti-gay violence and discrimination.

"I have had troubles reconciling my sexuality and faith," she told the group.

She says sharing her personal story was surprisingly effective. The faith leaders' beliefs weren't instantly transformed, but, she says, "I think I saw a lot of compassion in some of them."

She was right. One of the conservative religious leaders in attendance that day was Pastor John Kambo. A pastor at the Independent Pentecostal Church of Kenya, Kambo was well known for his public attacks on the LGBTQ community. He once declared that "the gender and sexual minorities, especially in worship places, are cursed sinners and will go to hell."

This wasn't Kambo's first PEMA session. The organization had been holding discussions with him for four years, gradually drawing him onto their side. "It was just follow-up meetings — continuous engagement overtime [to] change the way [he] sees things," recalls Ishmael Bahati, PEMA Kenya's executive director and co-founder. During this period, Kambo began reflecting on what the Bible says about love. According to transcripts from PEMA Kenya, he ultimately said that "continuous participation in these trainings opened my mind and I realized that we are all human beings." The meeting with Penda was his last as an outsider — afterwards, he joined PEMA Kenya as an active, dedicated member, and remained one until his death last month.

In the end, Kambo became an unlikely friend to the queer community. He underwent PEMA's Training of Trainers, which taught him how to carefully discuss LGBTQ concerns with his fellow faith leaders. But his conversion came at a price. He was excommunicated from the church for three years, and his marriage hit the skids. He continued to be an ally, however, and in 2018 he became the first religious leader to be nominated as a "Human Rights Defender" by the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders — Kenya.

That same year, Kambo invited Pastor Benhadad Mutua Kithome to a PEMA discussion. "PEMA Kenya produced good notes, and they were helping us very much," Kithome says of that meeting. "Some pastors were not agreeing with them — they were just agreeing with what the scriptures say. The way Sodom and Gomorrah was. The way, because of homosexuality, people were punished. But because of this training, some pastors, especially me, came to understand."

Athumani Abdullah Mohammed, an Ustaz (Islamic teacher) whose view of queer people changed gradually after partaking in a PEMA session in 2018, had a similar experience.

"When I got a chance to engage, it was not easy because… I work with conservative organizations," he says. "The whole gospel I was hearing was against 'this people,' as they called them. I thank my brother Ishmael because he was so persistent. He brought me on board. The funny thing is, the first meeting we held was not a good meeting. I was so against everything they were saying, but he saw something in me which I couldn't see by myself. And he kept on engaging me. Now, I learned to listen and I opened myself to listen. I listen to what I want to hear — and what I don't want to hear."

Converting a culture

The coastal city of Mombasa is a conservative place. Religion is at its core, and local faith leaders wield outsized influence, often preaching violence against the queer community.

"Rhetoric vilifying LGBT people, much of it by religious leaders, is particularly pronounced on [Kenya's] coast, and shapes public perceptions," according to a Human Rights Watch report.

This was the environment into which PEMA Kenya launched in 2008. Started as a health and social wellbeing community for gay and bisexual men following the tragic death of a gay man in Mombasa — he became sick and was abandoned by his family — the group later expanded to accommodate other gender and sexual minority groups. Then, in 2010, a call to "flush out gays" by two major religious groups — the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) and the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) — led to a spate of attacks on queer people.

The violence became a catalyzing moment for PEMA Kenya. "We thought that it is a good time to have a dialogue with the religious leaders," recalls Bahati, "to see if we can have a lasting solution for the attacks."

The organization appears to be making progress toward that goal. Until five years ago, Bahati says, Ramadan, which concluded this month, was a particularly dangerous time for queer people in Kenya's coastal region. A U.S. government report supports this observation, concluding that "the highest incidences of violence in the Kenyan Coast, which has a largely Muslim population, are reported during Ramadan."

For this reason, organizations like PEMA used to focus on simply keeping LGBTQ people safe from harm during these weeks. "Most organizations were looking for funds to relocate people, to support people" during this period, says Bahati.

But this year's Ramadan has been different. Attacks on queer folks are down, Bahati reports. "Things have really changed." He believes PEMA's years of meticulous relationship building are beginning to bear fruit. To date, PEMA has trained 619 religious leaders, 246 of which are still active members in the network. These members are crucial to spreading the acceptance of queerness in their congregations and communities in Mombasa and across Kenya. They also facilitate events alongside queer pastors and Ustaz, and review the group's strategic faith engagement manual, Facing Our Fears.

According to Jide Macaulay, an openly gay British-Nigerian priest, the influence religious leaders hold over public perception makes them invaluable allies. In his experience, building radical queer institutions in a place like Mombasa just isn't effective. This is something he learned first-hand — in 2006, Macaulay founded House of Rainbow, the first queer church in Nigeria. It was considered an affront to the societal and religious norm, and met with hostility. It lasted only two years.

"My largest focus was on the [queer] community, not necessarily on the rest of the society," he says. "We didn't take time to educate the society. House of Rainbow would have benefitted if we had allies within the community. [It] would have benefitted if we started maybe as a support group rather than a full-blown church."

Now, like PEMA Kenya, House of Rainbow has evolved to make engagement with Christian and Islamic faith leaders the core of its mission, holding forums in Malawi, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

What the scriptures say

Bahati's expertise as an Islamic scholar comes in handy. For instance, he notes that the role of language is key to winning converts to an inclusive community.

During PEMA's strategic meetings, faith leaders are introduced, carefully and tactfully, to humanizing language. "You see, the word homosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer are not bad words," says Macaulay. "Society has made them scary." PEMA's facilitators explain appropriate usage, context and meanings, and the harmful implications of using such language as slurs.

"What we say is that language is not innocent," says McOveh, the gay pastor. "Most of the time we realize that faith leaders use language unknowingly."

Of course, simply teaching more sensitive language is only the first step. In the Bible and Quran, certain verses and stories are still used to justify homophobic slurs and attacks.

"You realize that scriptures have different interpretations," says McOveh, "so we try to find common ground to tell them that, see, there is this which is provided by the religion and this which is given as perception." Macaulay echoes this point. "Looking at the Bible, there's a history of bad theology, mistranslation, and that mistranslation has caused many churches not to understand that homosexuality is not a sin. Homosexuality is not like robbery or theft. Homosexuality is like being Black. Homosexuality is like being albino. There are things that you just cannot change…Homosexuality is not a crime and it should never be criminalized."

While groups like PEMA Kenya and House of Rainbow have battled systemic homophobia in society, their efforts are still "a drop of water in the ocean," says Macaulay.

Homosexuality remains illegal in Kenya. The Penal Code explicitly criminalizes it, and a conviction can carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years. Petitions filed in Nairobi and Mombasa high courts in 2019 to rule these laws unconstitutional were both dismissed this year. Appeals have been filed, but according to Michael Kioko, a lawyer and LGBTQ advocate, it would take a long time to get a ruling.

"We'll have to wait for years to see whether the court of appeal will declare those provisions unconstitutional, and they may not," he says.

32 out of 52 African countries criminalize same-sex relations, with punishment ranging from death to lengthy prison terms. In some ways, these laws lend legitimacy to perpetrators of homophobic violence and discrimination.

The pandemic has presented PEMA Kenya with yet another challenge. The delicate work of working with new religious leaders can be risky, and the discussions can only take place in a secure location, says Mohammed.

"You cannot talk to people about these things in their area," he says. "You need to be very particular when it comes to safety because it's a lot of voices which are talking against this and people are willing to kill." Holding discussions with participants in an undisclosed location is safer, but it requires funding which PEMA has spent on taking care of needy community members during the lockdown.

Still, the efforts of PEMA Kenya's faith leaders continue to foster a safer city for a lot of queer people in Mombasa — in the streets, in the churches and mosques, and in their own homes. "[Now] someone can walk for a kilometer without being attacked," says Penda with relief. "Those were things that were not very much happening back then."

*Name has been changed to protect the person's identity.


Parenting

Millennial dad of 3 unloads on boomer parents over their unreasonable holiday plans

"Yeah, not this time," he said. "I think for the holidays I'm just gonna stay in and relax."

via Canva/Photos
A Millennial dad has had it with his boomer dad's expectations.

The holidays are supposed to be a time for enjoying special moments with family, but often they become a source of stress. Traveling, navigating familial relationships and tensions, talking politics at the dinner table, and handling the all-encompassing issue of "presents" can wear down even the most patient and even-keeled person. It can be especially challenging for parents with young kids who are expected to travel long distances in the name of "family togetherness."

A TikTok video posted by @carrerasfam is going viral, with over 300,000 views, because so many millennial parents can relate to the frustration of grandparents having unrealistic expectations related to visiting with the kids.

In the satirical video, a husband stages a conversation with his "practically retired" baby boomer dad, in which he explains politely but firmly that he’s not taking his 3 young kids on a 400-mile drive to their house for the holidays.

Carerras Fam is a popular TikTok page about “all things postpartum and mamahood.” Together, the mom and dad share funny skits and slices of their life with three little ones.

The husband opens the conversation with his dad by explaining all the inconveniences of taking 3 young kids on a long road trip. “I know you want us to drive down for the holidays, but it's kinda ridiculous that you want me to pack my 3 kids with their portable beds with my clothes, their clothes, the formula, everything that goes on with raising 3 kids and having them feel comfortable. Drive down for over four hours just so that we could spend some time in your house?” the husband says while absurdist music plays in the background.


@carrerasfam

Sorry it’s just so much work. But you’re welcome to visit us #millennial #millennials #parents #parenting #parentsontiktok #boomers #millennials

It’s obviously inconvenient for the couple to pack up their kids and drive 4 hours, but it’s also unsafe because the house is not baby-proof. "I'm gonna have to run around, make sure that they don't break any of your stuff, and which you will 'take care of them,'” the husband continues using sarcastic air quotes. Most parents eventually realize that visiting with the kids does not equate to getting help with them — no, it means chasing them around frantically yourself until it's time to leave.

The dad brings up another great point: His parents are in good health, so why don’t they drive to their house? “You could visit. You don't have little kids,” the dad continues. “You don't have anything going on.

"Why is it that every time I have to make the effort for you, yet you can't do the most basic thing for me?”

millennials, baby boomers, parenting, dads, moms, babysitting, grandparents, parenting tips, family, love, kidsAll parents feel like this when it comes to spending time with the grands.Giphy

It’s clear from the phone call the dad understands that traveling with the kids and staying in a house that isn’t correctly set up for young kids will make the holiday a struggle. Instead of making memories, they’ll most likely be running around bent over trying to save their kids from breaking something or hanging out at Target buying electrical socket plugs and a bottle brush because they left theirs at home. What's especially frustrating is the pressure and expectations. Parents are often guilted for not wanting to pack up the the kids and travel, even though it's not hard to see why they hate it so much.

The video struck a chord with many millennial parents. Nearly 500,000 people watched the clip with hundreds and hundreds pouring in to vent their own similar frustrations.


@carrerasfam

Something needs to change #parenting #parents

“First holiday with a kid… parents are confused why I won’t drive 9 hours with a 3mnth old for Christmas,” too_many_catz writes.

“The ‘not baby proofed’ part hit my soullllllll. It’s so stressful having to chase your kids around and ask to close doors, move pictures, block stairs, etc. And nobody takes you seriously!" OhHeyItsIndy added.

It’s also expensive for young families to travel. “Add to it they want us to spend money on gas, airfare, etc. when we live paycheck to paycheck and rent while they own homes and live comfortably off a pension,” another user wrote.

"My mom asked me to drive 13 hours with our 2 month old…she doesn’t work and has flight points," one mom added.

This one hit hard: “They always act like you're asking the world of them, yet they will willingly go on any other vacation that they choose,” Mackenzie Byrne wrote.

"They can never make the trip for us but they can make them trips to Europe and cruises to the Caribbean," another user noted.

TX Travel Chick may have hit the nail on the head with her explanation for why boomer parents expect their children to road trip it to their house for the holidays. “Because we are used to following their orders!!! REVOLT,” she wrote.

millennials, baby boomers, parenting, dads, moms, babysitting, grandparents, parenting tips, family, love, kidsSee ya next year, grandpaGiphy

Ultimately, it would be interesting to learn why boomer parents want to inconvenience their kids when it would be much easier for them to take a trip to see them, especially if they can afford a hotel. One wonders if they are being entitled or if they’ve forgotten how hard it is to travel with young kids. In some cases, it's a little more complicated — many baby boomer grandparents are still working and have less time and resources than previous generations did to help with the kids.

"Yeah, not this time," the dad sums up in the video. "I think for the holidays I'm just gonna stay in and relax."

It's a hilarious and relatable video, but ultimately, it's a skit. The power of boomer-grandparent guilt remains undefeated in many households, so the smart money says the Carreras family sucked it up and traveled for the holidays despite their annoyance. Here's hoping that together, we can eventually break the generational curse when our kids become parents one day.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

A candidate running for office.

As the old song by The Who goes, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” It’s a sentiment many of us feel every time a new mayor, governor, or president takes office, and we can’t help but feel that we deserve someone better. In a country with so many brilliant scientists, business people, educators, and public policy experts, why do the least impressive of us seem to rise to power?

Philosophy expert Julian de Medeiros, a popular TikToker and Substack blogger, recently wrestled with this question, and it must have been on a lot of people’s minds because the video received over 4.2 million views. “Why does it seem like so many people in power are so dumb? It's like, why can't we get a better class of leaders?” he asked.

@julianphilosophy

Why do stupid people have so much power? #chomsky #philosophy #psychology #power

Why is it that dumb people are always in power?

Ultimately, de Medeiros believes that power and intellect are often at odds. “I've thought about it a bit more, and I think this is my thesis: that power is inherently anti-intellectual. Because what does intellect do? Intellect questions power. It speaks truth to power. It critiques power. And power doesn't like that,” he says. “And so power has to speak to the lowest common denominator. It dumbs everything down."

"It's an anti-intellectual force. And that's why it seems like those in power are also the dumbest,” he concludes his video. The commenters further expanded on de Medeiros' thesis. “Also, intellectual people question and analyse everything. A leader needs to be invested in their opinion and abide by it,” one wrote. “Because those in power or seek power cares about the power only, so they make the decisions that keep them in power no matter what is the output,” another offered.

politicians, idiots, dumb people, anti-intellectualism, candidate, A candidate who wants your vote.via Canva/Photos

What is anti-intellectualism?

Another reason people who are a few fries short of a Happy Meal are often voted into office is that there is a deep vein of voters who are skeptical of intellectuals. These people tend to be populists who value “common sense” over intellectualism and may see experts or highly educated people as dangerous and out of touch with the common man. So, candidates position themselves against the “intellectuals” by either being their proud, dumb selves or by taking their IQ down a few notches while in public.

Theologian and philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906—1945) believed that dumb people often ascend to power because evil people have difficulty getting elected. So, they champion someone who may be more charismatic or connected and ride their coattails into power.

Finally, much like de Medeiros, Bonhoeffer believes there is a big difference between intellectualism and power. Therefore, once one attains power they are highly lifely to look like a buffoon. It’s as if, “Slogans, catchwords and the like… have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being,” Bonhoeffer says.

It’s sad to realize that the very nature of power means that those who hold office, whether we voted for them or not, will probably disappoint us at some point. But the good news from this understanding is that we are freeing ourselves from the constant disappointment of having leaders appear rather dumb. Now, whenever we meet the new boss, we can assume he's just like the old boss and be positively delighted if they wind up slightly smarter.

via J.R. Minton (used with permission)

A Texas UPS driver has a strong opinion on stay-at-home moms.

J.R. Minton, a 33-year-old UPS driver from the Dallas, Texas, area, recently ruffled some feathers with a viral TikTok video titled “SAHMs Listen up!” that begins with him asking, “I mean, how entitled could you be?” At first, Minton appears to fail to appreciate the enormous amount of emotional, mental, and physical labor that stay-at-home moms provide.

“I truly cannot imagine the amount of arrogance you must have to sit there and complain when you are so privileged to have a person who is willing to provide such a carefree life for you,” Minton continues. “Let’s get real! What do you do all day? Your spouse is taking care of everything so you can take care of one thing. How complicated could it be: all you do is go to work?”

At this point, legions of stay-at-home mothers and those who love them considered trucking themselves to Dallas to find this unappreciative UPS driver. However, it was soon apparent that Minton was referring to himself.

@minton__jr

Grow tf up—You should be doing more. #sahm #sahmlife #momlife #mom #momsoftiktok #sahmsoftiktok #sahmtok #momtok


“For 10 hours a day, you get to live the life of a single, childless, carefree man because your wife was willing to take the financial risk of allowing you to be successful in your career while she takes care of everything else,” he continues. “She provides childcare services, home cleaning services, medical services, food services, scheduling services, and a list that goes on and on. And you provide... a paycheck? And you have the nerve to call yourself the provider! What is it going to take for you to realize that, bro, everything you have in your life is because of a stay-at-home mom.”

The commenters on the video breathed sighs of relief and then praised Minton, a father of 4, for publicly appreciating his wife’s work.

sigh of relief, relief, woman sighing, exhaustion, exasperation, joyA woman breathing a sigh of relief. via Canva/Photos

"My sleeves were rolled up, earrings were off, hair tied up.... I was so ready...." one commenter joked. "I thought I landed in enemy territory for a min..." another added. "You have just made me realize after all these years that *I* am the freaking provider and that feels amazing,” a stay-at-home mother wrote.

People appreciate Minton’s post because he praised stay-at-home mothers and placed his wife’s work above his, which he characterized as merely bringing home a paycheck. Minton has one job, delivering packages, but as he noted, his wife is an expert in over five different professions. In a world where stay-at-home moms are fighting to be seen as equals to their working spouses, Minton places them on a pedestal and owes his “carefree life” to them.

"Married life, with children, is bound to be chaotic," Minton told Upworthy. "It’s bound to have its ups and downs; It’s made me question myself a thousand times. However, the marriage my wife and I share has given me the space to find peace."

via Canva/Photos

Minton may be sharing an opinion we don't hear often enough, but he doesn't think he's the only one who thinks that way. "The last thing I am is rare or unique. There’s nothing special about the way that I feel or the things that I say. I have the same thoughts, feelings, frustrations and problems that any other husband or father might be struggling with," he told Upworthy. "The only difference that might be apparent is how I choose to react to the same situations any other man might encounter."

This post isn’t the first time Minton has pulled the bait and switch on his followers. Last year, he made a video where he appeared to take pride in the fact that he never “helps” his wife with chores.


The twist in this video was that he doesn’t “help” his wife with chores because they are also his responsibility. "Because I do what I am supposed to do as a father and a husband. I cook. I clean. I do the laundry. I take care of the kids. I can't help my wife do those things because they are my job, too,” he reveals.

He then urged men to change their perspectives on how they view stay-at-home moms. “Change the way you speak, change the way you think, and grow the f*** up and be a man," he added.

Minton is an equal partner to his wife because he wants to treat his wife and family differently from how he was raised. “Pretty much everything about my parenting style is in spite of what I saw when I was growing up,” he told Today.com. It's wonderful to see someone like Minton breaking the generational cycles. What makes it even better is that he wants to teach others to do the same.

This article originally appeared in January 2025.

Humor

A mom lost her son on a cruise ship. Turns out he was going viral from the karaoke room.

Tyler knew exactly where he was—rounding up aunties with his Keith Sweat performance.

A mom lost her son on a cruise ship. Turns out he was going viral from the karaoke room.

Cruise ships are often the perfect family vacation. They allow you to go to multiple different locations on a tighter budget while also giving your family a resort experience with all the on ship entertainment and activities. But cruise ships are big. We're talking so large that they make the Titanic look like a tug boat, so, it's fairly easy to get lost on one. This is what one mom, Kim Heyworth, thought happened when her young adult son disappeared from the group for a while.

Thankfully, that wasn't the whole story. In turned out that the missing 20-year-old was going viral while his mom was actively looking for him. According to some comments, the missing kid, named Tyler, was supposed to be going to the pool but wasn't there when his family went looking for him. Instead of taking a dip, Tyler Heyworth went on a bit of a side quest after coming across a room full of people dressed up and singing karaoke.

Tyler on cruise; Tyler singing; kid singing on cruise; Tyler on Carnival; cruise ship; karaokeA large neon karaoke sign on the side of a building. Photo by Nikola Đuza on Unsplash

Clearly, Tyler was no longer interested in the pool. His calling suddenly became the stage, a microphone, and a room full of uncles and aunties waiting to be entertained—and entertain he did. Tyler grabbed the mic as a familiar tune filled the room: "Nobody" by R&B artist Keith Sweat. Was he actually going to sing Keith Sweat? He was. He did. And the 20-year-old knew every single word and tone without having to look at the screen. This kid was born an entertainer, clearly.

As soon as he starts singing the first few words, one of the women in the front of the room gets up and walks away before stopping to fan herself. It's clear that nobody in the room thought that song was going to come out of Tyler's mouth, probably because it's a pretty niche song that didn't seem to have much crossover when it was dominating the R&B airwaves.

Before long, Tyler's older brother comes looking for him, but fails to bring his brother back at all. The brother, Timmy, saw what Tyler was doing and decided to join in on the fun, both apparently forgetting they were supposed to be returning to their mother. Timmy dons a pair of sunglasses while rocking a messy bun and grabs the second mic. In time, the duo are grooving to the 2004 hit, "Let Me Love You" by Mario.

While the crowd was thoroughly entertained, their mother was confusedly still searching—now for both of her sons. In the meantime, Tyler was going viral on social media thanks to small snippets from cruise passengers that were quickly being reshared online. Soon, Carnival had reshared a clip and, serendipitously, John Legend did too. Funnily enough, Tyler didn't have his own TikTok at the time, which was a let down for fans looking to follow him. What fans did have, though was Tyler's first name and the name of his cruise ship.

@crazy_chickenlady03 Brothers Timmy and Tyler singing. #karaoke #carnival Paradise @TimmyHeyworth @tyler ♬ original sound - Kim Heyworth

Eventually, word got to Tyler's mom and she found her boys in the middle of their viral moment. Soon, she uploaded two full videos of the performances: one of Tyler singing alone and the other with his brother.

Carnival later reached out to Tyler, sending him a box full of goodies and inviting him back on one of their cruises with a guest. Tyler is good for business.

I Googled to see if Maria Von Trapp remarried after Georg died. The result was horrifying.

Having blatantly false information as the top search result is actually a huge problem for us all.

Google's AI Overview sometimes gets basic facts wrong.

With AI being implemented seemingly everywhere for seemingly everything these days, it wasn't surprising when Google launched its "AI Overview" in the spring of 2024. With messaging like "Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you" and "Find what you're looking for faster and easier with AI overviews in search results," the expectation is that AI will parse through the search results for you and synopsize the answer.

That sounds great. The problem is, its synopsis is too often entirely wrong. We're not talking just a little misleading or incomplete, but blatantly, factually false. Let me show you an example.

I recently wrote an article about the real-life love story between Maria and Georg Von Trapp, and as part of my research, I found out Georg died 20 years after they married. I hadn't seen anything about Maria remarrying, so I Googled whether she had. Here's what the AI Overview said when I searched last week:

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, ai, InternetThis is what Google AI Overview said when I asked how many times Maria Von Trapp had been married. It's wrong.Screenshot via Google

"Maria Von Trapp married twice. First, she married Georg Von Trapp in 1927 and they had 10 children together. After Georg's death, she married Hugh David Campbell in 1954 and had 7 daughters with him. Later, she also married Lynne Peterson in 1969 and had one son and daughter with him."

Something about that didn't add up—and it wasn't just how it said she married twice but then listed three spouses. Maria Von Trapp was born in 1905, so according to the AI Overview, she remarried at 49 years old and had seven more children, and then married again at 64 years old and had another two children. That seems…unlikely.

old woman, elderly, golden girls, women, gifDid Maria Von Trapp have two children in her mid-60s? No. Giphy

So I clicked the link icon on the AI Overview, which took me to the Maria Von Trapp Wikipedia page. On that page, I found a chart where the extra two spouses were listed—but they very clearly weren't hers. Hugh David Campbell was the husband of one of her daughters. Lynn Peterson was the wife of one of her sons.

The fact is that Maria never remarried after Georg died. If I had just run with the AI Overview, I would have gotten it this very basic fact about her life completely wrong. And it's not like it pulled that information from a source that got it wrong. Wikipedia had it right. The AI Overview extrapolated the real information incorrectly.

Ironically, when I Googled "Did Maria Von Trapp remarry after Georg died?" in the middle of writing this article to see if the same result came back, the AI Overview got it right, citing the Upworthy article I wrote. (Yes, I laughed out loud.)

maria von trapp, ai overview results, false information, media, literacyAfter my article was published, the AI Overview cited it while giving the correct answer.Screenshot via Google

This may seem like a lot of fuss over something inconsequential in the big picture, but Maria Von Trapp's marital status is not the only wrong result I've seen in Google's AI Overview. I once searched for the cast of a specific movie and the AI Overview included a famous actor's name that I knew for 100% certain was not in the film. I've asked it for quotes about certain subjects and found quotes that were completely made up.

Are these world-changing questions? No. Does that matter? No.

facts matter, misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, AIFacts should matter no matter what they are.Giphy GIF by Angie Tribeca

Objective facts are objective facts. If the AI Overview so egregiously messes up the facts about something that's easily verifiable, how can it be relied on for anything else? Since its launch, Google has had to fix major errors, like when it responded to the query "How many Muslim presidents has the U.S. had?" with the very wrong answer that Barack Obama had been our first Muslim president.

Some people have "tricked" Google's AI into giving ridiculous answers by simply asking it ridiculous questions, like "How many rocks should I eat?" but that's a much smaller part of the problem. Most of us have come to rely on basic, normal, run-of-the-mill searches on Google for all kinds of information. Google is, by far, the most used search engine, with 79% of the search engine market share worldwide as of March 2025. The most relied upon search tool should have reliable search results, don't you think?

Even the Google AI Overview itself says it's not reliable:

ai overview results, false information, google reliability, AI, misinformation Google's AI Overview doesn't even trust itself to be accurate.Screenshot via Google

As much as I appreciate how useful Google's search engine has been over the years, launching an AI feature that might just make things up and put them them at the top of the search results feels incredibly irresponsible. And the fact that it still spits out completely (yet unpredictably) false results about objectively factual information over a year later is unforgivable, in my opinion.

We're living in an era where people are divided not only by political ideologies but by our very perceptions of reality. Misinformation has been weaponized more and more over the past decade, and as a result, we often can't even agree on the basic facts much less complex ideas. As the public's trust in expertise, institutions, legacy media, and fact-checking has dwindled, people have turned to alternative sources to get information. Unfortunately, those sources come with varying levels of bias and reliability, and our society and democracy are suffering because of it. Having Google spitting out false search results at random is not helpful on that front.

AI has its place, but this isn't it. My fear is that far too many people assume the AI Overview is correct without double-checking its sources. And if people have to double-check it anyway, the thing is of no real use—just have Google give links to the sources like they used to and end this bizarre experiment with technology that simply isn't ready for its intended use.