Home Truths

I think everyone should experience what its like to lose their rights, even just for an hour or two, so they know how it hurts when you think how it might be to go through life being made to feel like a second-class citizen - a pariah, based solely on something you ARE, something you can't change or help being - something those in power see as wrong or undesirable, particularly for no good reason other than they feel like it, or their old favorite excuse - "cos we say so".

I imagine it would do people like Errol Naidoo, the South African Deputy Minister of Home Affairs (Gigaba), The Minister of Arts and Culture (Lulu Xingwana), Pastor "God-Squad" Ray McCauley and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (to say nothing of our own Kiddie Amin) a world of good. Dr. James Dobson too - even though he has been put out to pasture recently, he has left a legacy of hatred and prejudice (and a trail of misguided parents a mile wide) that can be called his hallmark - the so-called "Culture War" we still feel the effects of today.

Building A Better Mouse Trap

I noted the other day the similarities between some ancient South American religions and modern puritanical Christian fundamentalism. This is of course, only my conclusion - but feel free to take it all with a pinch of salt (and, if it is your "world-view", light):

The Maya, Toltec and Inca practiced human sacrifice of their enemies to satisfy the wrath of their blood-thirsty gods. Oddly enough, despite this minor shortcoming, we miss the contribution their cultures made to the body of scientific knowledge we as a society would have benefited from today. For one thing, their method for predicting the end of time and all life on earth by December in two years time, would've been quite nice (thank you, Mr Cortez). It would have been nice to know if they were accurate, scientific - or just smoking their orchids at the time. I am sure there will be some people who will actually give away all their worldly goods a day early and go sit on the nearest mountain to get a good view of the end of the world. I hope they remember to take pop-corn, if anything to make the trip worth anything.

Sadly, the records and knowledge of these ancient and (in some ways) highly civilized cultures were all but completely destroyed by the Spanish marauders when they conquered South America. Today we know they indulged in practices such as genocide and "ethnic cleansing" while under the mistaken impression that they were doing "God's work", while stealing land and hunting treasure. I don't wish to be a pain, but this seems strangely familiar, don't you think?

Christian fundamentalists today may not actually kill the people they don't approve of, or consider their enemies in their temples - but they certainly do make the gesture by destroying and endeavoring to destroy their lives in the world outside their churches.