An Inconvenient Home Truth

It's odd how for years, articles by Melanie Nathan have been highly prized and circulated and promoted by local human rights advocates, and how for years we have welcomed her campaigning to assist our cause, and her application of public pressure from outside the country - and now we can suddenly just turn around and say something like this:

"A condescending American [Melanie] Nathan based in America, who has no jurisdiction whatsoever in dictating to South Africans what to do (as what so many Western countries are prone to do), even if she was born in South Africa, she left this country three decades ago and has no business interfering. We're not listening - go write about the problems LGBTI face in the US. There's lots." - GaySpeak Ezine.

 

An email from Mr Gay SA did the rounds in the early hours of this morning, laying out in point form "the official stance" of a Pink Community leader figure in South Africa. 

 

Point five said: "We support what Melanie Lowe and Cobus Fourie from SA GLAAD wrote about standing together, but this has become an all-out attack against Mr GSA driven by people who are serving their own interests and shamelessly using this issue of the traditional leaders to promote themselves, their blogs and their brands." 

The email closed with "Please remove us from this mailing list - we will not respond if you do."

The quote at the top of this article was then posted on numerous Coalition and LGBT Facebook groups.

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.

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.

Sin Tax Error

GAY

=

PORN

As I said last week in an article about a gay pageant in South Africa and the lack of mainstream (straight) media coverage for the event, "gay + controversy = mainstream media coverage". Now it seems somebody else has gone one better to publicly redefine the nature gay people. But then, it is an old accusation, one which has been made many times, and this certainly will not be the last. Just a pity it comes from "one of our own".

Seeing Is Believing

Last weekend we saw the first Mr. Gay South Africa™ pageant - or rather, didn't. 

Those of us who were not fortunate enough to attend the main event, or the semi-final ocean cruise, or the other events which took place around the country, read about it. We saw articles and photos in local pink news services such as Gayspeak and Mambaonline - but that was pretty much the only mention the event received. Did we see any attention given to this event - which the gay community found to be of some import, in any mainstream newspapers or hear radio coverage or see any TV features? I certainly didn't. Apparently the Mr. Gay South Africa™ pageant (I keep writing it out in full because it is a completely different animal to the former "Mr Gay SA" pageant of years ago) did manage to make the News24 front page - online. Twice. It also made The Times once, but that was long ago, and somehow it made Die Volksblad in Bloem - I don't know HOW it got it in. But about the actual final event, only News24 - oh - and although displayed on the front page, the actual article was under "GoTravel" and not anything in the main news section. But otherwise, that was it.