The Blood Feud Continues...

I keep hearing the SA blood "service" whining about another blood shortage - but at the same time they continue to refuse to accept blood from people who are gay. They won't accept the perfectly good blood that the Pink Community willingly offers - so as far as I'm concerned, they can just whine and whine till they run dry.

They have no reason to not accept our blood. 

None. 

Only the terminally stupid or ignorant believes that blanket discrimination is the best way to protect people from receiving HIV infected blood. The problem here is their clear refusal to screen for HIV infected blood - but they clearly have no problem with discriminating against people. And surprisingly, they are allowed by SA's government to continue blatantly thumbing their bigoted little noses at the non-discrimination clauses in our Constitution. What gives?

I Woke Up This Morning

I woke up this morning, alone. 

The space beside me, cold and empty. You should have been there, but you weren't. Your pride was too strong and you were too good for me, remember? 

Well, I do. 

How could I ever forget?

You said you could handle my past, you said you could face the future by my side. But somehow both issues became just too steep for you to climb over. What I am and what I was before was just too much for you to accept or deal with, your misplaced faith that I could be anything else just too much for me to give in to, or capitulate.

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.

Blasphemous Rumors

I know I have been quiet lately, but it's just because I've taken the weekend off. Honest. Rumors of my being "raptured" are greatly exaggerated - in fact, I am still here, and so is my underwear drawer, which still needs tidying. 

Damn.

I am typing this article on the morning of Sunday May 22, 2011. I am still here, and so is the house I live in - and the cars parked outside tell me the businesses across the road are doing their usual booming breakfasting business. The city around me is not on fire and there haven't been any tsunamis during the night. My mother woke up this morning, as usual, and shuffled past my door - so I knew she was still here. All is right with the world then.

Come To The Dark Side - We Have Cookies Too

Christians - you just can't seem to win with them. 

If you're gay, you're evil. If you're not religious, you're evil. If you're an atheist, you're a "willing pawn of the devil" - or an outright "satanist". If you believe in another god or gods, or even call their god by another name, you're "evil" or "lost". If you are tolerant of other faiths, or of homosexuals - then you're "misled", "backsliding" or yep, "evil".

If you're gay and a Christian (horror of horrors), they want to cut up your membership card and deny that you are part of their club (or ever were), and when you abandon their faith or even go so far as to change religions and want nothing more to do with them, they still persecute you because you have somehow "proved them right" - and then they see you as an even bigger "threat" to their paranoiac little "worldview".

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.

Spit Or Swallow?

Belief is subjective, you don't have to like somebody else's beliefs any more than somebody else might agree with folks standing in church waving their hands in the air. Some folks see religion as chicken soup for the soul - well, some folks like their soup with croutons, others with noodles. Some like tomato, others butter-nut. It would be a boring old world if we all just stuck to "hearty beef" now wouldn't it?

When I posted that on Facebook as a status, an old friend of mine replied, extending the metaphor: "Some people are vegetarian, others just hate soup, others say soup is for sick people, and some just eat soup cos they are too poor to eat steak."

Living In Interesting Times

A few thousand years ago the Chinese developed a saying that went "May you live in interesting times". This is, believe it or not, intended as a curse, not a blessing. By "interesting times" of course, they meant that by looking at history, it is the eras of peace which are most dull and uneventful - and the chapters of violence, war and chaos, the more interesting to read.

With natural disasters and the collapse of tyrannical rulers and their regimes progressing in a kind of tsunami in the Middle East, the changes in Egypt, the civil war in Libya, the other threatening revolutions in various exotic places and the disaster in Japan, our times appear to be most interesting indeed, and looking to be more so each week.

Wow what an interesting few weeks this has been in South Africa.

Why I Do Not Celebrate Human Rights Day In South Africa

Did you see Mr Gay South Africa™ win Mr Gay World in the news last week? 

 

No? Neither did I.

Many South Africans will be celebrating Human Rights Day in South Africa on Monday 21 March, but I won't be one of them. Why? Because despite our Constitutional provisions of equality and democracy and human rights, I am still part of a minority group which is discriminated against, and whose concerns are sidelined by the lack of interest of others who like to look down on myself and those like me - and who view our existence and achievements as an embarrassment, or at best, uninteresting.

Are Good Christians 'Too Forgiving'?

Are good Christians "too forgiving"?

That's quite an interesting question, especially if you look at the "inerrant' scriptures which set the precedent for "turning the other cheek". 

 

Why do I think "good" Christians might be too forgiving? For that matter, why do I think there might be Christians who are not good, but bad? Why indeed?

The Parliamentary Drowning Pool

Last weekend, Mr Gay South Africa won the Mr Gay World contest - the second time a South African title holder has walked away with the top honors of this prestigious event - and also incidentally, the second year of the Mr Gay SA event. To crown this achievement, South Africa has also been selected to host next year's Mr Gay World event in Johannesburg. This is no doubt a remarkable achievement, and something to be proud of, well, at least one would think so.

Yesterday the news broke on Twitter and Facebook that the DA (Democratic Alliance), the official Opposition party in Parliament, was to make a motion to congratulate Mr Gay SA and the organizers on this fine achievement. It was alleged that Upon hearing of this motion, the ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party) immediately declared that it would oppose this motion.

Many folks, myself included, felt that the ACDP stood a snowball's chance in hell of blocking this motion with its puny three seats in over 400 in Parliament, but it seems we were in for a surprise.

Sleeper Awake!

Sometimes it feels like you are the only one who sees the world for what it is, while it seems that all those around you are blissfully unaware - not knowing and not caring to know things that could make a difference in solving problems or bringing about changes necessary to improve things. One of the catch phrases I remember from the original Dune movie in 1984 was "sleeper awake!" and it describes exactly how I feel today.

Why?

Despite appearances presented to the outside world, South Africa - and Africa - is a human rights mess, and especially so on the front of Pink rights.

Viva Secularism, Viva!

Many people today have moved beyond the confusion caused by mixing religion and affairs of the real world. 

 

Unfortunately there are still many people who cannot tell the two apart. 

 

To them there is no difference between politics, civil affairs, daily life and their own personal religious views. And for some unfathomable reason, whenever it is pointed out to them that they are being unfair for using their personal religious opinions to detract from the civil rights or equalities of others, they start whining childishly that it is they who are being picked on, and not their victims.

The Little Joys Of Being Trans In SA

I went to renew my driver's license today. Oh, you have no idea. It was an adventure. 

 

Funny, you would think that once you were found competent enough to drive a car, or own a gun, and not having any serious misdemeanors logged against your name - that you wouldn't need to keep reapplying for various permits? It is an interesting innovation in South Africa, figuring a way to make people pay for the same damn thing over and over again - and paying more each time. What fun.

So off to the merry traffic department I went.

Free Hate Kills

You believe in freedom of speech, don't you? How about freedom of religion? You believe in that? I know I do. But every so often there are people who come along demanding that some forms of freedom of speech or expression of their religious beliefs are actually "hate speech" - like those nasty deviants and trolls, the homosexuals. Know what I mean? 

No?

Well let me tell you. A few years ago Uganda (yes - that Uganda, the little country in central Africa that most people in the Western world need to look for on a map to see that it is an actual place and not some fictional setting in a novel or a suburb somewhere in Soweto) started cleaning house and tidying up all the loose ends. 

Broad-Spectrum Anti-Idiotics

"Before Carol was a Carol they were a David, strange but true. Make some hard cash and any transexual can become a woman."

This is broadly speaking the comment someone made about somebody else in a discussion I was part of recently. 

 

They had it in for somebody whom they didn't agree with on some or other matter, and went around posting articles and comments venting their dislike for them - and in each case pointing out the detail that they were "transsexual", only to later have it pointed out to them that they had it completely wrong - "Carol" as it turned out, was intersex, not transsexual.

Personal differences aside, it made me wonder why some people find it necessary to pick out a particular characteristic of somebody they don't get on with - and then use that as an insult and a judgment, or even a blunt instrument - at the same time insulting and judging all other people who have that feature in common too.

That is like saying "Joe Soap, who is an Aquarius, is an incredibly bad cook - and therefore all other Aquariuses are too". Make any sense?

Happy New Year

When I sat down to write today's article, I started off thinking about last year and all the things I felt good about. It's my first article for the new year... and then I thought about last year, and the year before that, and all the things that p'd me off during that time - and about how many of them are still applicable and have been carried over like remainder in some obscene parody of Sub - A maths.

So Who Is Erroll Naidoo?

Over a number of days recently, I was engaged in an email debate with Errol Naidoo of the so-called "Family Policy Institute", based in Cape Town. 

 

The reason for the debate? 

 

Mr. Naidoo is leading an attack on Cape Town Tourism over its support for the Mother City Queer Project, and the use of a catch-phrase advertising Cape Town as "the Gay Capital of South Africa". He also issued another call to fellow Christian fundamentalists and homophobes to target entities which he frequently accuses of "promoting the homosexual agenda".

In the course of this debate, Mr Naidoo played the card which has become expected of him - that is, he pretends to be nothing more than a "concerned citizen", a "pastor" and "faithful Christian" who is nobly "standing" for "Christian biblical values" while "doing the Lord's work". In addition, he said he "doesn't hate gay people" (despite the proof that he actually said the complete opposite only last year), in fact he says he has a "good relationship" with one gay man who has been his barber for 30 years, and whom he invites to family celebrations.

 

Yeah, right.

At the same time, he has been using his own religious views to fight against the equality and civil rights of our community since the early 1990's, and is probably the most outspoken and visceral opponent of our human and civil rights in South Africa. Well, aside from that other guy on Facebook last year who claimed to be calling for the return of the death penalty because he was a Christian and believed gay people should die for their "sin". Wow, seri-haas. 

 

Not exactly good PR material, that one.

'The homosexuals are coming! The homosexuals are coming!'

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.

Reading Between The Lies

Apparently South Africa has gained a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council - for the second time. 

 

Considering their track record of betraying the principles of the SA Constitution so far, I can only imagine the kind of mayhem they could wreak if they ever got a permanent seat. 

As a South African of mixed sexual orientation and gender identity, it makes me shudder. No, really. I love my home, and I love my country - but lately I cannot help but to be ashamed of it.