Don't Scroll Past Without Thinking Rationally

I'm so tired of seeing posts like these in my Facebook feed. They're click-bait at best - and that's saying a lot. At worst, they're mindless, narcissistic time-wasting tripe designed to draw people into a vicious circle of cultist fantasy and a celebratory rejection of reality.

You know the posts I mean, right? Pictures of infants, men, women or children injured, abused, sick, dying - and sometimes even suffering animals - "don't scroll past without praying or saying 'amen'" they proclaim in the accompanying texts.

Why?

Passion, Perception And Prejudice

Today is another day I find myself facing accusations that I 'hate Christians'. The source of this accusation, undoubtedly, is some of the posts I circulate on Facebook - posts which unmask Christian hatred for the 'other' - that is, for non-Christians and LGBT people, also atheists, Pagans and people who worship other gods.

Unbelievable!

Let's talk about belief. It's amazing - and also quite frightening - how some people seem to be more concerned with what other people believe about anything, rather than concerning themselves with their own private beliefs. Typically this is even more true when it comes to religious beliefs.

Guest Post: "Moral Conflicts & Liberty: Gay Persecution In Uganda & How They Can Be Liberated" by F. Mwine

The following paper was sent to me by Francis Mwine Mubwaro, a LGBT activist from Uganda, with a request to repost it on my blog.

I am honored to oblige, and it is with utmost respect and admiration that I share this document here:

TITLE OF SESSION: MORAL CONFLICTS AND LIBERTY: GAY PERSECUTION IN UGANDA AND HOW THEY CAN BE LIBERATED.

PRESENTER: FRANCIS MWINE

This paper is published under the responsibility of Krysler Thematic and think tank group, where the presenter is the founding member and Chairperson, affiliated to Twagalane Association.

Comments on this paper are invited.

Please contact the author and presenter at EMAIL: frankmwine22@yahoo.com 

Manic Street Preacher With Huge Appetite 'Eats Witches For Breakfast'!

Let me tell you about my morning. 

 

Two things have absolutely pissed me off and ruined my mood for the day. One was more just a case of inconvenience. The other... well, the other was more of a literal slap in the face from both the other people I was surrounded by - and from the officials of SARS itself.

Let me start at the beginning.

 

I went to SARS (the 'tax man' for my non-local friends) at 6:45 am, thinking I'd be near the front of the queue. I was number 6, which is not bad, considering I was number 13 yesterday - but then today we waited and waited and waited and waited ...and waited and waited - watching SARS people to-ing and fro-ing and not actually doing anything much - until 815 am, when a chap eventually turned up to give us our numbers. 

 

That's 2 hours of standing, with no benches, no shelter against inclement weather (which there wasn't, fortunately) and no toilet facilities - and if you leave the queue, you lose your place. Unless you're the sort who just pitches up out of the blue and claims you "were here" two hours ago.

 

Oh, right. You were the invisible man?

School Of Thought

Let's talk about the issue of educating or raising your children within your religion. 

Christians do it. Muslims do it. Jews do it. So do Hindus and Buddhists. 

Each of them has their own private schools, but only Christianity has encroached into PUBLIC schools to the point where you have public schools pushing Christian religion into the school values, ethos and curriculum, paid for by parents AND the state via the tax payer. 

Does this sound fair?

My Public Appeal To Christians Worldwide

Good morning, Christian. I want to talk to YOU about YOUR role in the modern world. As we speak, millions of lives are in the balance, the world over. They have been for quite some time, but right now, this article isn't so much about them as it is about YOU.

According To The SAPS I Engage In Harmful Occult Practices

...And probably, you too.

I wear a pentagram. I wear it proudly on my necklace for all to see. I do so as a practising Witch. According to this article by the SAPS on their website, wearing a pentagram is a "warning sign of engaging in harmful occult practices". This and similar hare-brained lunatic ideas can be seen in the list of wildly inaccurate claims from their website where these *snerk* "occult experts" list "warning signs" about Satanist religion.

Ignorance Is Not A Legitimate 'Point Of View'

The debate around the St Marks "Sex in the City - Is Gay Okay?" discussion held at the church three weeks ago just doesn't seem to want to die. 

You can view the video I took here: https://youtu.be/00-u-tJwh-o

Homophobes continue to post their ignorant remarks  in such a manner as if to show that a) they know what they are talking about and b) they have some kind of hand-written note from "God" to authorize them to hate and to persecute others in its name.

Yes sirree, Port Elizabeth has a "prophet" in its 'burbs - another one who claims to know what "God" said and meant, intent on not letting anyone get on with their lives without being told off for being the "lustful sinners" they are.

In today's episode, let's look at the comment made by a Nigel Wakeford, a regular in the Herald "chirps" column. In my humble opinion, Mr Wakeford is just showing his ignorance. 

SAPS 'Occult Related Crimes Unit': A Christo-fascist Threat To Religious Minorities In South Africa

Over the past week a serious issue has come to light over the reformation of the SA Police's "Occult Related Crime" units. In a press release last week, the South African Pagan Rights Alliance, representing the Pagan community of South Africa, revealed that the SAPS is forming these units to address so-called "occult related crimes", based on information obtained from a SAPS internal memo. 

The Right Fundamentals?

The question often arises in my mind, when dealing with biblical literalists and fundamentalists, exactly WHAT their fundamentals are? What is it that makes them stand at the head of a crowd and whip them into a frenzy, spitting hatred for others - and doing so in the name of a god they claim is a god of love, and who is the personification of this all too cheap, commercialized emotion?

The Burning Question

A general look at similarities between some persecuted minority groups in SA, based upon differences in  race, sexual orientation, and religion or spiritual beliefs - and the similarities in the methodology of their persecution.

In this article I will broadly discuss my perception of the current situation in South Africa, in conjunction with general reference to "the Stanton Report", a model which assesses the make-up of a genocide, and to which the UN also refers. Broadly, the Stanton Report, developed and presented to the UN in 1996, demonstrates the different stages of the development of social discrimination into a full-blown genocide. There are 8 of these stages in the model, and these show how the removal of civil rights and legal protections of a social minority group is usually followed by vilification and persecution of that group, and that the persecution of the group is the real intended goal of removing such legal protections in the first place. 

Mirror, Mirror

As a non-Christian, I have never understood the need some people have to indoctrinate others, or to try and force their own views on them. 

When this sort of thing takes place during a time of grieving and mourning, such as at a funeral, it just makes it even worse.

Kicking The Crutch

The world around us is filled with people who are selfish, cocky and arrogant about their own religious beliefs. I say not these things because I resent the pride others take in their religion, but because the pride some of them take in their choice of beliefs boils over into a hatred of the religious choices of others who choose differently to them, and into persecution of those who dare to do so.

It Makes Sense, Doesn't It?

If you look at all the weird and wonderful new Bills being tabled in South Africa these days - there is little doubt in my mind that the Constitution and the freedoms contained within it - are clearly under assault. 

And those of us whose civil rights and equality are protected by those very clauses in the Constitution which are under assault, somehow seem unaware that we fill the sights and scopes on the weapons being directed against us by those who would chip away at our equality.

We Make Hate Great

Tolerance. Equality. Individual freedom. The right to self-expression. These are the things that make democracy great. These are the things that make life worth living.

And yet many people who claim to support these ideals, really do not. While they claim to, they see equality as something they are deserving of, while simultaneously they view anyone they do not personally approve of trying to gain equality with them as an attack on their own superior and privileged social positions. 

 

They distort facts and ideologies to serve their elitist and supremacist ideals, and hijack democracy in order to preserve a social order where words like "love" and concepts like "good" and "evil", and even terms like "family" and "marriage" become tools to exclude fellow human beings from equal, decent and humane treatment - and as weapons to destroy them.

Yes, Wiccan

I drive a Mazda, but I still know what a Mercedes Benz looks like. 

 

I have had Beetles, a Kombi, a Renault, a Toyota and a Golf as well. I realize they are all cars, and I at least have an idea of what makes each of them different from the other, and about the thing that makes them go. I also know that cars make traveling from one place easier and better. It doesn't mean I have to hate the other makes, or refuse to drive in whatever car my neighbor drives.

What I'm trying to put across in my own rather quizzical way, is religion. Yes, that. You may wonder what cars have to do with religion - but let me clear it up for you: I have been finding out the hard way how ignorant some people are about religions other than their own. 

Let's take Christianity as a prime example. 

Christo-fascismt Anti-fun Police At Work In SA

In recent times I began pondering more deeply about religious matters. Having come from a Christian background, I am more familiar with the way things work in what Pagans tend to describe as a "book religion" - by this is meant - a religion which is defined by a set of rules in a book, and a dogma which is taught and enforced in its temples, homes and wherever its adherents go.

Bed-knobs And Broomsticks

If people today think of anyone who is sexual, or who enjoys sex, as "immoral", "deviant" or "undesirable" today - it is because of religious indoctrination. If we think of people who abstain from all sexual activity, and those who remain virginal through their lives, living by a code that sex is for procreation and not enjoyment, it is because of the puritan hangover left us by folks who were too afraid to see themselves naked lest it cause them to think sinful thoughts - and with an obsession about the afterlife and where they would spend it - instead of enjoying and celebrating the life they had.

South Africa - Not So 'Liberal' After All

Not interested in politics? 

 

Not interested in how the government spends its time - and your money? Really? 

 

Think we live in a nice, quiet, safe country where all is right with the world? The government is benevolent and doing its best to deliver all the things it claims to? Think it lives up to our Constitution? Think it cares about all the people who live in South Africa? Think there is no reason to be concerned with anything to do with politics?

Who is still naive enough to think we aren't already living in a police state? Come on, don't be shy - put your hands up.

Think about it for a moment. No, really.