Bang! - The Sound Of One Less Mosquito!

Like mosquitoes swarming around an exposed body part, homophobic bigots seem to make complete cliché’s of themselves in their crusade of the uneducated – the quest of the ignorant. 

 

One could also draw stark comparisons between bigots and their fellow bloodsuckers, and I frequently do. I thought I would include a few insights into the arguments used against us GLBTI advocates in the last while, just for your entertainment (and mine) - and to provide answers to these, while swatting a few bugs.

The End Is Nigh!

On Sunday morning I enjoyed a quiet relaxing walk hand-in-hand along the beach front with my girlfriend. 

 

On the way back we enjoyed looking at the stalls and were quite surprised to find one peddling religious fundamentalism as if it were a brand new bicycle. Signs pinned to the tent displayed the words "The End Is Nigh" and "It is closer than you think!" along with various other forms of bizarre and nauseating rhetoric and "Christian nationalist" propaganda. 

 

Strangely enough, there were a few people actually chatting to the stall owners, enthusiastically grinning from ear to ear, presumably gleaning finer details of this impending and absolutely certain doom, probably with exact time and date and instructions on what to do if "left behind". 

 

It was hard for me to resist strolling over and asking what date and time I should put in Google Calendar to mark this event, presumably with a 15 minute reminder just in case I miss it - or if I should lie down and put a brown paper bag over my head while I wait.

Pink Elephants, Red Herrings And Gay Rights Activists

It confuses and disappoints the heck out of me when people standing in the shoes of gay activists start to argue that gay activists should be concentrating on other issues like racism or xenophobia instead of protecting or advancing gay rights. "Hello, it's the plumber - I've come to fix your TV."

I always thought that we as gay rights activists (supposedly) stand against heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, discrimination and prejudice on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Yet some prominent (presumably) gay rights advocates in SA have criticized gay rights activists who pay attention to gay rights issues instead of tackling issues like racism and xenophobia.

Right.

Humans Are Funny Animals

Many detractors of the gay rights movement have spent the past thirty years or more criticizing it as somehow asking for "special rights".

George Orwell in his masterpiece "Animal Farm" which was a pertinent statement on the turmoil of post fascist western society and differing political ideologies (and almost a prequel to "1984") stated "All animals are equal - but some animals are more equal than other animals".

One can see warning signs of a harsh resentment and bitter distaste and disrespect for the humanity of other people in statements like "gay rights are 'special' rights". Often the fights in the past against slavery and racial prejudice are compared with the modern struggle for GLBT equal rights and all manner of interesting comparisons are drawn. There are in fact many similarities.

You Are Not Alone

Nice bigot folks always seem so concerned about the youth - but never seem to care a damn about the GLBT youth who get bullied, sidelined and forced into heterosexual pigeon holes - and show nothing but intolerance, complete disregard and blatant hostility for their well-being, inborn traits and sexuality. In fact some anti-GLBT groups have even publicly advocated bullying of GLBT youth to "encourage" them to "turn straight". Instead, today we see proof that this results in tragedy, such as the spate of recent juvenile suicides across the USA.

Through their shortsightedness, intolerance and incitement to hatred these nice people have even caused heterosexual teens to commit suicide out of the misery caused by bullies who mistakenly targeted them for being gay.

Gun Crime And The Scourge Of Pink Dinosaurs

Last night I read a news article on Pinknews about some bright spark who has claimed in a press release that there is a direct link between the gay rights movement and an increase in gun crime.

Gay rights are responsible for gun crime?

Huh? What?

Everybody Is An Agnostic - Even If They Don't Know It Yet

I have always wondered why people's IQ's drop the minute somebody takes out a book and claims: "God says..." and "God hates..."

I mean, HOW does ANYBODY know? How can anybody CLAIM to know? How can THEY claim to know? And yet they stake their own and other people's lives on this magical certainty... They judge and condemn other people (who generally are just minding their own business) out of some warm fuzzy feeling and go forth to beat them over the head with it like a weapon.

What it comes down to is this: Organized religion was and always will be about POWER and CONTROL.

In my time as a human rights activist have found it near impossible to engage persecutors without involving religion for the following reasons:

Whatever Floats Your Ark

I read that the most banned book in the USA today is a children's book. Now what, I hear people wondering, could have parents in such a state? Is it nudity? Violence? No, nothing so mundane and ordinary I'm afraid. They have banned a beautifully illustrated children's book about two gay penguins who adopt an orphaned chick. Quite a sweet touching story, except that it teaches tolerance for diversity and that same gender couples are also families.

"Oh dear," said the bigots - "We can't have that - it could threaten the traditional family!"

Poor Taste In "Men"

Last year a transwoman in the US, 23 year old named Angie Zapata who had not yet completed her transition, was brutally and mercilessly beaten to death by a man she met and entertained at home. 

According to the police interviewed in a media article at the time, he suspected something was amiss because she hadn't allowed him to touch her genital area and because of some of the pictures in her apartment. When she admitted to him she was transgender and pre-op, this man picked up a fire extinguisher and bludgeoned her over her head with it. 

She awoke some time later while he was going through her things and he finished her off with the same weapon. Afterwards he left the scene in her vehicle. When arrested by the police he had the arrogance to say to the police that "I killed IT".

It.

Like he was talking about putting out a cigarette.

Let us put it into perspective. Angie Zapata - much loved by her friends and family as a warm and caring human being - a woman - is dead, brutally slain for no good or justifiable reason at all. Another individual - I shall not call him a "man" because a "man" does not behave like that - is on trial for his crime. And if there is justice in the USA - and I believe there still is - he will pay for his hate crime.

GLBT Voter Apathy

Three people I know recently told me they aren't bothering to vote and don't bother with politics - and I have seen numerous others online say the same. Hearing things like that make my blood boil, not because I want people to support a party of my choice - but because they are so uninterested in their own affairs - in OUR affairs as gay and trans people in South Africa.

These same people are ones who often complain about homophobia in their workplaces, the hate in the media expressed against gay and trans people - and they often wonder aloud why "somebody" doesn't do anything about it.

They cannot see that even a non-vote is a vote for our enemies who campaign against us. They simply couldn't be bothered.

Divide And Conquer

All arguments aside about whether being gay is a sin or not - what about those Christians who take it upon themselves to persecute gay people?

We could debate another year, and for another year people who call themselves Christians and who yet hate gay and trans people could reject all evidence to show gay and trans people are as natural as heterosexual people, as well as rejecting all reasonable religious alternatives to the choice some make to hate or to love us in the name of the same God we also love and who also loves us. But let us put that aside for a moment, and narrow it down to response.

How do you as Christians respond to other people?

Curiouser And Curiouser

Today in India, homosexuality is illegal and punishable by laws and social stigmas inherited from British rule and Victorian conservatism.

We all remember the Victorians - people who were so severely religious, they were afraid to see even themselves naked in case it caused them to think sinful thoughts.

Of Grated Carrots And Canned Fruit

During a 'spirited' (no pun intended) debate with a supporter of the ACDC - I mean P, I suggested those "loving Christians" watch the documentary "For the Bible tells me so". For those who do not know, it is a documentary which exposes the motives and misinformation used by the religious right and biblical literalists to try and justify the persecution of GLBT people. It does not attack Christianity, but uses religious argument along with scientific facts to reveal the flaws and faults in the religious rights' attack on innocent people based on misinterpretation, mistranslation and prejudice.

People have been expressing hate under the guise of religious clothing for so long they do not even see the wrong in it anymore.

WDJD (What Did Jesus Do) ?

Happening upon another debate on a religious political party Facebook group hate wall, I noticed somebody posted the following in a debate about GLBT and their party's dicriminatory policies:

"God gave us freedom of choice so if you want to be bisexual, be bisexual; if you want to be a pedophile, that is your choice;"

So who's a hypocrite now?

COPE Lied To Us!

Late last year I was part of a group that lobbied the new party COPE to include GLBT rights in its policies and manifesto. COPE was then making all the right human rights noises and astonishingly even invited GLBT to the table. It seems in hindsight, that it may well have been just another ploy to win as much support as they could, at almost any cost. Almost.

- Next!

Today the rights, dignity and equality of gay and trans people are under relentless attack from people who use religion - and even the same religion of their victims - against them as a weapon. It is not just the rights we seek to be equal to them that they assault - but us as people as well. Gay-haters make physical attacks on hapless outnumbered victims, those thinking of themselves as "christian soldiers" have even bombed gay establishments around the world. America launched a war against terror for just one incident, horrible as it was - and yet for decades, GLBT have been on the receiving end of a largely ignored, publicly condoned and silent War OF Terror.

There Is No Fence!

A feminist friend pointed out to me the other day that men seem to be the root cause of all of women's - and society's ills:

We have MENstruation, MENopause, MENtal illness, deMENtia,

...and it seems now we can add fundaMENtalism as well.

She may have a point.

The Road To Heaven Is Paved With Hell

Taking on the immense hate there is out there for gay and transgender people is a very, very difficult thing to do. You open yourself up to all sorts of attack, both verbally and physically - in the online world and also in the real world.

In the past few years I have built up a small collection of what I call "fan mail" from "admirers" who have threatened - even from half the world away - to hurt me and even to kill me. Some of the lesser creative ones have even threatened legal action without any solid basis whatever for daring to tackle their unadulterated bigotry. Some of them would make pretty good one-liners, except they have no actual punchline. Just to cheer me up, I have also committed to memory the verbal threats and bullying I have been faced with in real life.

High Altitude Atitudes

High Altitude Attitudes

Diversity seems to scare some people. The thought of being equal to people they look down upon and think of as dirty or "too different" can scare them out of their half-wits. In another sense, this being brought down to the level of the rest of us ordinary sinful mortals makes some people doubt their own religion and forces them to face the fact that perhaps what they believe in is not as sound as they thought - and that the only way to 'save face' is to deny all truth and facts and turn extreme fundamentalist and to look for scapegoats to blame their worldly woes on. This is what seems to be happening in SA and around the world today.

Unity And Strength In Diversity

Spending quality time with the people you love - and who love you - is more than just goofing off or finding ways to spend time not actually doing anything useful. Many activists feel that taking such time is risky and wasteful and could be put to better use promoting the cause of human rights. After all, we are greatly outnumbered - and our enemies have no shortage of volunteers eager to drive another nail into the coffin of our human rights while our backs may be turned.

However, it does serve a very important purpose. Aside from reducing or countering the stress we as activists are met with in the world, it helps to remind us what it is we are fighting for - and why we are fighting in the first place.