Freeze - FPI!

Once again, as a human rights activist for the pink community I run the risk of offending people who identify as Christian as well as gay, trans or pro-equality through targeting the matter of religious persecution of gender and sexual diversity and bigotry.

Please rest assured that this is not my intention. My intention is to highlight the actions and words of a minority of fundamentalists who use religion as a weapon against people for their own selfish ends. This is the offense - and not just against loving tolerant Christians, but against everyone who loves democracy, freedom and equality. We trust that Christians who support freedom of thought and the ideals of democracy and equality will take this into account wherever we engage bigotry espoused by those who claim to speak against the pink community for them as well.

Shuffling A Pack Of Lies

On Friday I received notification that a hate crime had taken place in a small town in New York State. Rachel Roo, an 18 year old teen mentor on a popular transgender forum had been brutally murdered.

It was reported that Rachel who had transitioned quite young, had been involved in a car accident in which her mother had lost an arm. Upon testifying in court, the lawyer for the opposing party outed her - apparently her townsfolk did not take kindly to this revelation and she and her family now faced numerous death threats on a daily basis. It was reported that while riding to a nearby store on Friday evening, she disappeared. Her bicycle was found in a dumpster and some hours later she had been found lying at the side of the road. She was reported to have been gang-raped, and so badly assaulted that even her knee caps had been shattered by what was assumed to have been a sledgehammer. Apparently she was supposed to have been left for dead in a shallow grave, but supposedly managed to crawl out and towards the roadway, and collapsed where she was later found. She was taken to ICU where she died in the early hours of the next morning.

 

Like many others around the world, I was incensed on reading this, not to mention upset. Quite honestly I was shattered. I felt that I had lost somebody I had known and it actually brought tears to my eyes. After all, hate crimes like this are the reason I became an activist for gay and trans rights.

Imagine my shock and disappointment upon finding out that it was all a lie.

Infernal Affairs

Many people, including some in the transgender community have been heavily criticizing the Beatty couple for deciding to rear their first child themselves. The latest, second pregnancy in which Mister Beatty has also opted to carry their second child has raised the ire of the transphobic bigots and trans community alike.

Although the negative response is much, much less than the first time round, I cannot help but be saddened by the irony and paradox in all this.

Doctors For ...What?

One would expect on seeing the name "Doctors For Life" that it would be some medical reference, a respectable medical group perhaps - but upon closer inspection of their website and internet trail, you begin to see a trail full of footprints - worrying footprints. A paw-print of anti-abortion activism here, a paw-print of anti-gay activism there - and all the way the menacing sign that the tail of Christian fundamentalism has been dragged through between them.

What Comes Out Makes Us Unclean, Not What Goes In

What does gender have to do with sexual orientation? The questions bigots ask again and again reveal their ignorance about the subject - and the fact that try as you may to explain it to them - even by referring them to expert sites on the matter, they just won't get it - shows contempt for diversity.

They continue to ask sarcastically "what makes gays physically different or is it a spiritual thing? Or is it a mental condition that convinces them that they are not men and women, but rather homosexual men and lesbian woman?" - So after all the long explanations - and even some really short ones - according to them a gay man is not a man? Gay people are "physically different"? LOL.

Here is the short version:

Government Service - African Style

There is only one thing worse than spending three hours sitting in a queue that doesn't move - spending three hours STANDING in a queue that doesn't move. In South Africa's government departments, this is getting beyond a joke.

Vicious Circles And How The Wheel Turns

Gay-haters claim GLBTI are less than one percent of the total population (when worldwide stats seem to place us conservatively at TEN percent (based on estimates of the KNOWN out pink population)) and object to having "their rights" placed secondary to a minority. Funny that a bunch of fags gaining legal equality with them will make them feel less than equal? How does that work again?

Isn't it strange the way some people reason? You can almost taste the irony in the air when people justify their actions by saying it was necessary to kill a hundred in order to save a thousand? Isn't that called rationalization? Particularly when you really have to wonder what it is they are trying to "save" people from? It certainly makes me wonder about the way they think - their motives, reasoning and whether or not they have any conscience at all? After all, how many innocent victims of their hate does it take before it becomes wrong?

For us, one is already too many. For them, a thousand is not enough.