Yesterday I received an incredibly long-winded and frantic response from Errol Naidoo - a man who sits at the head of a one-man show called "the Family Policy Institute" based in Cape Town, with offices apparently right across the road from Parliament. This is to keep his eyes on them, of course - both of them, just in case those sneaky homosexual activists and their liberal allies try to sneak (or is that "rail-road") some pro-gay legislation into Parly.
Chuff...chuff...woo...wooo.
Er, sorry.
Coming back to the email from Mr. Naidoo, it seems the email campaign to demonstrate our objection to his attack on Cape Town Tourism for supporting the city as a gay and gay-friendly tourist destination must have struck a nerve somewhere. For one thing, in the space of just two A4 pages, he used the word "homosexual" no less than 22 times!
My, my - his feathers must really have been ruffled.
In his email, Mr. Naidoo used the word “family” a whole 6 times, most often in direct connection with the word "anti-" preceding it, or "friendly" following.
As I read it, a pattern emerged, indicating that Mr. Naidoo seems to be obsessed with gay people and "families"
– and children too - and for some unfathomable reason, views them as opponents on a chess
board. The former, not any of the latter, naturally. Which piece he plays, is anybody’s guess - but since he seems to
be such an adept drama queen, your guess is as good as mine.
Perhaps he imagines he is the "Paul Revere" of his right wing religious
extremist tribe of Leviticans? I mean, he might as well have titled his letter “The homosexuals are coming! The homosexuals are coming!”
Perhaps, like the American folk-hero Paul Revere, he imagines someone will
one day name a brand of cigarettes - or chewing gum, or brandy, after him? Who knows? Given his branding, I imagine he seems to desire becoming a household name - but, speaking of
advertising, the advertising slant calling Cape Town the gay capital of South Africa , or even of Africa -
which he is waxing hysterical about this particular week, is by far nothing new.
In fact, Cape Town has been called such for the better part of the last decade - it is hardly new. It is
quite strange that our friend Naidoo has suddenly got his panties in a
knot over old news – but that is hardly out of character I think.
Not once in his lengthy diatribe did he use the word "gay" – which is because he hates gay people and would sooner bend over to pick up soap in a prison shower before he would use an inoffensive term like "gay" - because we chose it for ourselves.
"Gay", as I have said before, is an identity people adopt for themselves. "Homosexual" is a label which others apply to them.
I'm not saying that Mr. Naidoo hates gay people just because I don't like him, I'm saying that because he was quoted as saying such in a newspaper article last year. Such hateful people prefer to use the "H" word because it is precisely what riles us, and it probably rolls so nicely off the tongue when you’re waving your arms in time to to the beat of your lips and foaming at the mouth in a pulpit while working up to the bit where you pass round the collection plate.
As a community, we Pink folks are quite used to the slurs, insults and name-calling directed at us by arrogant, cocky people who seem to have their underpants on too tight and a few screws loose or missing. Very often there are attempts to strip us of our human rights and dignity, and certain legal provisions which grant us equality and freedom regularly come under attack from such shallow and narrow-minded individuals who demonstrate a penchant for hate-mongering, arm-chair criticism and abusing human rights.
Unsurprisingly, it is Mr Naidoo who is most often standing out front, cheering them on, directing their otherwise futile rage at anything which they belligerently squint at through a very narrow and puritanical worldview, and pointing out “enemies” for them to vent their generally pointless hatred and frustration at. As a part-time pastor, it is his self-appointed job to give his flock of sheeple a wolf to unite against, and where one does not exist, to invent one.
But who is Errol Naidoo, and why all the fuss?
He started out as a pastor for the "His People" church in Greenpoint, Cape Town
Cameron meanwhile, who once was a psychologist and keen student of Nazi eugenics, was banned from practicing in the USA in 1983 for manufacturing fraudulent “studies” designed to indicate that gay people spread disease, are more prone to suicide, more likely to die before the age of 40, molest children – and who also advised President Reagan to exterminate all gay people in the USA to prevent the spread of AIDS in 1985. I kid you not. Many right wing groups who hate and target the Pink Community refer to Cameron’s work, even today – including the US based “Family Research Council”, whom friend Naidoo visits every six months for inspiration. The actual scientific community refers to his "studies" as "essentially a waste of paper".
Naidoo brags of his visits in his Family Policy Institute newsletters (and in "Joy!" magazine) to spend time with his mentors, the Colorado Springs based "Family Research Council", to draw inspiration from them for his "Family Policy Institute" in Parliament St, Cape Town. I wonder if he even cares that the FRC was recently declared a hate-group in the USA, after decades of vilifying and intimidating the Pink Community? The FRC regularly bullies companies who dare to treat their GLBTI employees with some respect or humanity, with boycotts, and calls for gay people to be imprisoned. Sound familiar?
Our Mr. Naidoo spent a great deal of time in the 90's speaking for the "CAN" and its subsidiaries, against gay people, presenting homophobic talks at universities, so-called "pro-life" events and such, vilifying our community and using nothing - nothing - but the fake “studies” of discredited charlatans and Nazi acolytes like Paul Cameron, and his own twisted personal interpretation of his religion to do so.
It seems he isn't called the "High priest of hysteria" for nothing.
Naidoo’s friends at CAN still spend a great deal of time and effort campaigning against gay rights, picketing abortion clinics Westboro Baptist-style, and writing nasty letters to editors and strident articles on a variety of topics including the evils of secularism, gay rights, communism and Islam. They are famed for coining the terms "homofascism" and "Christophobia" despite not being able to point out a single case of persecution of Christianity in post-Apartheid South African history. On its website, CAN advocates home-schooling as a safe and convenient method for people to indoctrinate their children and to keep them free of unhealthy influences such as free thought and the liberal cancer. Another affiliate of the CAN, Doctors For Life, proliferates Paul Cameron’s garbage as “medical advice” on homosexuality and plays the role of “amicus curiae” whenever it gets the chance to stab gay rights or abortion in the neck.
Hammond, a missionary "reverend" and former special ops Rambo-type for the Apartheid government, heads up the western traveling circus that is the CAN – and has been very quiet since he faced charges in 2005 over an incident in Cape Town, where a trick-or-treating child was shot in the face at point blank range with a paint-ball gun to "teach them a lesson" about the evils of Halloween. (This earned him the nick-name of "the Paintball Pastor".) He was reportedly arrested for gun-smuggling in Sudan in the early 2000's, and his organization is involved with the far-right pro-gun movements in the USA
In 2005-6 Naidoo appeared in the papers on several occasions while crusading against marriage equality, and whipping up the crazies into a frenzy. At this time he represented the "Marriage Alliance of South Africa", and was best known for claiming that “gay marriage is a new thing” and "never existed in the past" – flying in the face of historical evidence which shows that same sex marriage occurred as far back as 6000 years ago in Egypt, in the East, through the Greek and Roman periods, right until some bigot in a dress in the RCC in medieval Europe, made it illegal. Whoops.
Naidoo’s pet project, the "Family Policy Institute", presumably named so that it can sound really impressive and even possibly legitimate when you say the acronym really fast, isn’t based so close to Parliament simply for the good view of Table Mountain, or so he can wave at the MP's as they drive past. No, the FPI is intended to watch Parliament, like Trevor Noah watches Cell C – like a hawk, cac-aa.
This is of course, as I mentioned earlier, just in case Parliament dares to sneak any crafty liberal “anti-Christian” pro-gay bills across their table without checking with him first, and he can rush over and remind them that he's still there.
Last year before the most recent general elections, Naidoo and Hammond tried unsuccessfully to broker a merger between all the Christian fundamentalist political parties in South Africa
Why am I focusing so much on Mr. Naidoo’s associates? Well, because it goes to show where he’s coming from. These people are the kind of right wing fundamentalist who view "humanism" - literally human rights - as being "anti-God" – especially where they believe God commands death in the old testament for various silly little things like tattoos and eating shellfish - no, wait, they ignore that part for the sake of convenience, but they do when it comes to loving someone of the same gender.
This of course defines people like him not as Christians, but as Leviticans.
Leviticans reject the forgiving, tolerant and loving Christ in favor of the Old testament laws in the book of Leviticus. They despise secularism, calling the absence of religion a religion (what?) and see secular government as an affront to their faith.
Leviticans view gay people as a perversion and as a "lifestyle choice", not a natural occurrence - and therefore, through the lens of religious fundamentalism - an abomination. Many of them want gay and transgender people killed, and unsurprisingly, want the death penalty returned in order to do it. They would be very popular in places like Uganda, which views gay-bashing and genocide as a national sport. Like all Leviticans, Naidoo and his associates reject all medical and scientific evidence which contradicts their prejudices and only entertain material that confirms their biases (the very essence of what is called 'confirmation bias). Thus, any science claiming that people are born gay or transgender and that such inborn traits cannot be changed - is dismissed and attacked by them outright, or distorted to portray things as they see them.
This isn't exactly something new - this has been done in the "culture wars" in the USA for decades by now. Naidoo is a keen student though, and I'm sure he's learned these tricks at his mentors' knee, over in Colorado.
In his newsletters and statements to the press, Naidoo describes every expression of our civil and human rights and equality as an affront to his puritanical view that South Africa, being made up of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, atheists and agnostics - is somehow a "Christian nation" under siege. Clearly all those people of other religions (or even no religion) simply just don't matter and don't even come into it.
He's spent a great deal of time trying to dress up his own homophobia and extremist hatred and Dominionist ambitions with the respectability and "morality" of Christian tradition, but it seems that only the very gullible, or the terminally uninformed are buying any of it.
By claiming South Africa is a "Christian nation" all that such people are doing, is copying the Roman emperor Constantine (founder of the Roman Catholic Church, incidentally) who sprinkled a little water over a few thousand battle-hardened pagan Roman soldiers and told them "Okay, you're all Christians now - so follow me and kill those people!" He's always signing off his newsletters with the word "standing". It is surprising indeed that the hordes of people out there who are Christian but do not agree with his hatefulness do not tell this hysterical embarrassment to their faith to STFU and sit down.
Over the years, he's campaigned vociferously against pink pride events around the country - chiefly in Knysna, trying to get these events banned. He has used all kinds of insulting, offensive and false claims about public sexual acts, full nudity, child abuse and public indecency at pride events to try and smear the constitutional, fully legal and free expression of GLBT people's existence into oblivion. For ten long years so far, he has campaigned against the Pink Loerie - and for ten long years, to his chagrin, he has failed.
Over the past year, he seems to have shifted (or expanded) his focus. He's been extending his influence over government, schmoozing Ministers and MP's of various parties in trying to get controversial, anti-gay and anti-democratic bills passed - one of which is the so-called "porn" bill, which he hopes will allow people who share his fundamentalist views to censor what people use their mobile phones for, and what goes on TV, radio and into the media.
He regularly criticizes TV stations for what he calls their "attack" on Christianity, and what he expressively calls "blasphemy". Just recently he threatened to launch a boycott against Woolworths and several other privately owned chain stores if they dared to stop selling "Christian" fundamentalist material - such as "JOY!" magazine - a right wing publication of which he is one of the editors. Poor Woolworths it seems will have to continue stocking reams of wastepaper that don't move much - because I can't imagine they actually sell many copies of it anyway, sooner than risk the ire of "so many" conservative South Africans who can't see past their own eyelids most of the time.
Mr. Naidoo clearly does not like living in a democracy, because he doesn’t like people who don't share his views being able to express themselves, to watch or listen to whatever entertainment suits them, or to exercise their right to love, life and the pursuit of happiness, in public spaces or even in the privacy of their own homes. He seems far too interested in the events which unfold behind the closed doors of private homes, or what adults occupy their minds with, or spend their money or free time on, even with other consenting adults. He obviously doesn’t care a toss for the dignity of the Pink Community either because he has spent his entire career claiming that we don’t have any, and is obviously taking great pains to make sure that becomes true.
What stands out to me in Mr. Naidoos rantings in response to the consequences of his bullying tactics, is the overwhelmingly obvious fact that while the Pink Community is fighting for equality, he is crying wolf about our "onslaught" on his "Christian civil rights" - rights which, far from describing the guaranteed freedom to practice his religion in peace, rather more describe his desire to live without having to share the world with people like us.
I guess it is really typical of the aggressor to cry foul and to blame everything on their victims, when an actual persecuted minority stands up to those who vilify and conspire against them. While this seems on a par with narcissism, that - like their hate, is not a new thing.
With all the real problems facing us in South Africa (some of which are of people like Mr. Naidoo’s own making I might add), I find it surprising to see that he can "stand" there with a straight face and make a song-and-dance about an advertising campaign designed to bring more income to Cape Town businesses – and to South Africa, and expect rational South Africans with more important things to occupy their time, to take his ludicrous yarns and wild accusations seriously.
Naidoo denies the estimate that ten percent of the human population identifies as GLBTI, but on the same note, weaponizes numbers to define the worth of our human rights and equality in his view. He asserts that there are fewer of us than ten percent of the population, and because of that, our needs for equality and human rights are not as relevant as his. As someone recently pointed out, equality does not exist on a sliding scale. Either all people have equality, or there is no equality.
He calls the advertising campaign naming Cape Town “the gay capital of SA” - “divisive, anti-family and pandering to the homosexual lobby” – and yet he would have the City instead pander to his own agenda - which I would think is far more divisive, anti-human rights and anti-family because unlike Mr. Naidoo and his followers, GLBT people aren't out to destroy anyone.
He calls the “concerns” of the homophobes “valid” – thereby suggesting that our concerns of being persecuted, objectified and discriminated against are invalid. I can think of a dozen ways to present reams of factual evidence to show Mr. Naidoo - or any doubters - that GLBT people are indeed a persecuted minority, and generally by people like Mr. Naidoo. Not that he would deign to listen, of course.
Erroll Naidoo is a quintessential religious fanatic obsessed with gay people and bringing about their destruction. His obsessive attacks on the Pink Loerie pride festival is an attempt to whip any audience who gives him the time of day into a homophobic frenzy, and to enlist them in his quest to destroy what fragile human rights protections exist for us in the SA Constitution. The worst part about this for me is the fact that he doesn't even try to disguise it - he has the brass balls to actually brag about it as if it's something virtuous, and something to be proud of! The crowning insult about all this to me is the part where he has the utter GALL to describe a celebratory awareness-raising social event like Pride "divisive"?
Naidoo's hysterical arm-waving about gay people and gay rights being “anti-family” – and a “threat” to morality – and now the economy as well - has been, time and again proven nothing more than a manufactured and infantile fantasy by decades of research conducted in countries in Europe as well as in the USA. This research shows that children are in no way negatively affected by gay parents, a gay presence or by the color pink, nor are pedophiles any more likely to be gay than straight. Funny how the countries who conducted these studies have experienced none of the ill effects over the past thirty years which Naidoo and his friends over at CAN have been "warning" about. And no, Spongebob Squarepants isn’t gay, Erroll – it’s a cartoon character. Get over it.
Despite his political posturing and presenting himself like a wannabe Republican politician or bible-thumping pastor straight outta America (same thing, right?) Mr. Naidoo - like all homophobes, is afraid of us.
He fears our similarities rather than our differences, which is why he chooses to focus on how unlike him we are. He fears being equated - or made, or treated as EQUAL with us. Homophobes GLBT+ people because they don’t understand us - or themselves, and this fear is exacerbated by their steadfast almost maniacal refusal to try – because it may tempt them into the unthinkable – realizing how wrong they are, and actually not hating us anymore.
"Ironically, those who attack and demonise anybody with a different viewpoint to their own are the very people who bleat incessantly about tolerance and constitutional rights." Says Naidoo, completely missing the irony in his own statement.
It is our friend Naidoo who has spent the past 16-plus years attacking and "demonizing" our entire community - and "bleating incessantly" like a sheep on its way to the disassembly line about the so-called "homosexual agenda" - an effort by an oppressed minority group to attain equal civil rights with people like him and his farcical image of "the family" - and to end the persecution directed against us by people just like him.
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.
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