A Truth Stranger Than Fiction

On Saturday night I watched District 9 and I am still completely blown away and speechless! 

 

What an amazing, action packed, convincing, serious, poignant, funny, relevant movie! 

 

It is hard to believe it was low-budget - even harder to believe it comes from here - what can I say? For me it was all those things - and for once, it makes me actually proud to be a Souf Efrikin - TREMENDOUSLY enjoyable!

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

If a gay community leader began preaching "reparative therapy" how long would he or she remain a gay community leader? Interesting question.

It seems people choose their leaders because they agree with their own views - or because they feel these leaders have their best interests at heart. Clearly the above example illustrates my point. A gay leader preaching "ex-gay" dogma and "reparative therapy" clearly does not have the best interests of the gay community at heart - but the complete polar opposite. In fact, I would say this person would be ostracized from their community as a traitor - and with good reason.

Likewise, if a woman begins preaching on behalf of the patriarchy - against feminism - for me, all sorts of warning bells and alarms go off.

Hmm. Parrot indeed.

March Hares And April Fools

Since the April 22 Election in which it got its chronometers soundly cleaned, the right wing Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA) has been quiet - dare I say "silent as a tomb"? No press statements since April. No more boisterous squawking in nauseating radio ads about gay people being "enemies of Christianity" and a "threat to the family" or rabid press releases aimed at the government for the folly of including human rights of gay people in the Constitution and "dethroning almighty God" in favor of the rule of mere human law. 

 

In fact, short of one or two blog posts by one of its fearless leaders, Colin Fibiger - obviously on the inseparable issues of religion and politics, and suggestions on training the youth to "know better” next time, there has been no visible activity on their part. I'm thinking they ran out of a lot more than cash at the end of the elections - they ran out of supporters, interest - and credibility as well.

Religion, Deadly Contagion And Other Afflictions

Imagine a pandemic which claims a death toll so high it staggers the mind. Millions upon millions dead, suffering and dying from a plague which knows no cure. Every single human being touched personally by the hand of death, suffering and tragedy. Everyone who survives, perhaps the last remaining member of a large and happy family, standing alone and wondering where to go from here? Far fetched? 

Not really. It already happened at least once in recorded history. In Medieval times, bubonic plague took nearly half the population of Europe, some scholars postulate up to two thirds. And what could medicine do about it at the time? Nothing. They couldn't even ease the suffering of the victims. The contemporary art reflects the ever present um, presence - of death in the conscious and sub-conscious, particularly in portraits and other art of the day. The fabled Dans Macabre is just one example. At the time, the science of medicine was in its infancy. With hardly any contrast at all, the prognosis for such a massive and virulent outbreak of some new or resilient disease today is not much better.

“It” Is For Objects, Not People!

Recently I engaged in a private debate with representatives of international GLBTIQ advocacy groups online. Actually it started out as a call to action, to launch protests to affirm opposition to transphobia and the pathologicization of transsexuality - then one of them launched into a scathing criticism of trans people who wanted to have transgender classification removed from the coming DSM-V manual.

Presumably she would prefer transsexuals to continue to be classified as mentally ill - as they are deemed currently by world health professional groupings. Presumably she likes the stigma attached to being transgender and the rigmarole involved in getting the goodwill of the "gate-keepers" who hold the keys to their future happiness, assuming of course that they jump through all the hoops and barrels like good little freaks should.

The Human Race

The issue of Caster Semenya, the 18 year old female athlete who has won two gold and one silver medal for her country - South Africa - makes me wonder how far we have come in the past 15 years post-Apartheid, and how far we have come since the inclusion in the Constitution of certain phrases which are supposed to guarantee equality for people on the grounds of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation with everyone else.

 

Of course, you'll notice I said 'supposed to'.

Stupidity And Self-Inflicted Ignorance

Isn't it strange that having a dick automatically makes you a man, but having a vagina isn't enough to make you a woman?

 

Equally strangely, the reaction of some to those who don't live up to these somewhat rigid, if not obsessive, perceptions, is to resort to brutality, violence - and homicide.

Death Squads = Genocide

Once upon a time, not very long ago, the world went to war over persecution and genocide of the Jews. Oh yes, there were other reasons for that too, mostly relating to territory, resources and ideologies, but "they" like to let us believe it was a moral issue, and thus a very noble endeavor. 

 

A little while later, economic sanctions and political action were taken against a repressive regime over the persecution of people on the grounds of race to bring down the social system known as Apartheid. Of course, there was also the knotty problem of mineral resources in that particular country as well, but we won't talk about that.

 

It will be very interesting to see what, if anything, gets said or done by the major players sitting around the Monopoly board about the persecution and genocide of gay people around the world today. 

 

Not that I am in favor of war of course, but I am simply drawing a comparison here on the all too apparent variable value of human life.

A Very Gay Agenda Indeed

Who in the pink community hasn't heard stories of the "homosexual agenda"? I know the first time I heard about it, my first thought was "WTF?" - but seriously now, there are some people and groups of people out there who really think it exists. We all know the type, the maniacal wing-nuts who can't even bring themselves to use the word "gay" and use the insulting alternative "homosexual" instead. The whack-jobs and nut-cases that claim gay people are 'sinners' who could just 'choose' to be straight on a whim and stop sinning, that they are 'anti-god' and after "special rights" and that we "recruit" through pedophilia and so on... because as they say "everybody" knows that the real "gay agenda" is that we are after their children. Who among us hasn't heard all the hateful, nasty and paranoid things they say about us?

Let's look at what they say the "homosexual agenda" is:

Mad As A Hater

I know it isn't a fair comparison - and I must apologize to Linux fans for this unintentional sleight - but whenever I see anything that reminds me of Angus Buchan, I immediately think of Red Hat and its Fedora distro. Why? It's because of the hat. That hat has become synonymous to me with that man. In fact, one of these days I think some avid Angus fan may even release - or unleash - a new linux distro on an unsuspecting world and call it "Angus Fedora" Linux or something appropriately lame. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux - and I love that cute penguin - at least a good deal more than I like Angus - or his silly hat. Fortunately most Angus aficionados are clearly not bright enough to be Linux developers - or they would be bright enough to know a scam artist, baloney merchant or snake-oil salesman when they see one.

Flexible Morality

Ever notice how often human rights come under the attack of groups like Christian Action Network and Family Policy Institute lately? 

 

They have a unique name for human rights advocacy, and the notion that all human beings deserve to be treated equally, or with compassion, or justice, these fundamentalist radicals - they call it "secular humanism" and they call it a religion - just as they claim that atheism is also a religion, in spite of an absence of BELIEF or FAITH. How an absence of apples still counts as apples to these cretins is unclear to me, but be that as it may, by their contributions to the rat-infested storehouse of radical fundamentalist barely-literary material, you will see they are certainly not overly fond of the concept.

Indecent Exposure

It is quite cute how some people can glory in being ignorant. Have you ever noticed how they seize upon junk-science they find on the Internet, put there by their equally ignorant compatriots - and claim "I win!" when it is as fake as their faith and their claim to worship and follow a loving God who is supposed to have created - and to therefore love - all of us?

A Change Of Heart

Christianity - the lifestyle choice that elevates one to a position from where you can look down on everyone else, and point out their mistakes - and everyone who disagrees is automatically "evil", "anti-God" and a "heretic", a "deviant" - or a threat to "the family", and somehow less of a human being for it.

This is how a friend of mine put it: "Very true - even of "good" Christians who claim to hate the sin but love the "sinner". "No, you're not evil, but your acts are evil." Evil. Good. Evil. Good. When will people just be able to accept reality as it truly is?"

When people stop fearing the dark as some representation of evil and see it as a shadow, an absence of light, and also a consequence of it.

Going Mental

I know this guy, see? He's a local, claims he's a Christian - belongs to all the "right" clubs and parties - supports the CDA, ACDP, CP, UCDP - in fact any political party in South Africa with a "c" in it - okay, except possibly for THAT one. 

 

This bloke hates gay people and loves to point out all the usual verses in his holy book that support his misogyny. On his more lucid days he claims he doesn't, though you can see it right through the beatific smile on his face. On his worst days he admits to his hate and promotes the death penalty for gay people and then shifts the blame by claiming "it's not my fault - the bible tells me so". 

 

This man is proud of - and even brags about - being a Christian fundamentalist.

Oh... Fundamentalists!

Cameronian Pscience Abounds

Yesterday I found a Facebook group addressing the matter of a pending legal motion to change the legal age of consent for the youth in South Africa. 

 

The group creator doesn't stop at just attacking the suggested move to lower the age of consent for heterosexual children, but differentiates between heterosexual and gay children and then launches into insulting references to fictional anti-gay pseudo-science and propaganda aimed at gay people. 

 

In fact, it seems to me this person and her group are obsessed entirely with gay male sex - as only a small portion of the lengthy rant on its information section concerns heterosexual children at all, so it seems fairly obvious where this individual's intentions lie.

Love Versus Hate

When one looks at hate crimes such as the Tel Aviv Massacre Saturday night in which fifteen gay people were wounded and three young people killed by a masked and cowardly gunman dressed in black who entered a gay center filled with gay kids and began spraying it with automatic weapons fire and then fled - it is quite easy to reciprocate the feelings of hate. 

Broken Logic

Over the last week an "ex-gay" champion engaged me in an email debate over my "leading gay people to destruction" by taking them "further away from the light of God" and "into the ways of the world".

LOL.

I brushed aside images of being a transgender "Moses" (or "Moselina") leading the downtrodden masses across a candy-floss desert in my bright pink cape, imagining various forms of burning bush and grinning annoyingly from behind my false beard. Achoo.