NMB Pride Was Our Heritage Day!

This past Saturday saw a first for my home town: Almost 20 years into our new democracy, Port Elizabeth still had not had a Pride parade or Pride event, in fact it was sometimes a pit-stop for travelers on their way from somewhere else, to Pride events being held - well, somewhere else. 

 

All that changed last Saturday, when the very first Nelson Mandela Bay Pride was held - and I was so very proud!

Facebook Outted Me

Facebook outed me.

 

They did so, not for being being gay or transsexual, but for having a second anonymous account associated with Pagan, occult and other alternative communities on Facebook.

Be warned - Pagans, drag queens, transgender people, gays living in countries where they face violence and murder, non-mainstream religious groups - anyone not using their "legal" names in order to interact safely online without fear of exposure or persecution - Facebook has appointed itself in charge of moral policing and is gunning for you.

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. 

Bollocks And Bellyaching

Recently I saw an article posted by a transsexual sister activist about the failings of the alliance of the Pink Community. The article was very melodramatic, bordering on the hysterical. In fact, I feel it was nothing short of a load of bollocks and bellyaching.

Cardboard Armor & Quicksand

These days, after some years of dealing with religious fundamentalist bigots, I have little patience for people who jump up and wave their fingers down at me and people like me - not for anything bad that we have done, but simply for existing. They typically use flimsy and baseless religious rhetoric as a foundation for their hatred and prejudice, quoting scripture against established scientific reality as if it were some sort of magic bullet. 

 

You're running into battle wearing cardboard armor and waving plastic swords! Go back to school and ask for a refund!

EC Mirror Casts Poor Reflection

Some of you know that my city, Port Elizabeth, will be hosting its first ever Pride event this year - an event which I am proud to say I am involved in, be it in my own small way. ECGLA, an organization I am part of, stands behind the Nelson Mandela Bay Pride - which will take place on the 24th of September - with one or two smaller events on the side during the month leading up to the main event.

I have to say that so far I have been pleasantly surprised to note that there have been no negative encounters, nasty letters in the press, and no hate mail specific to the Pride event. In fact, we were even surprised and excited to learn how positive the public appears to be about Pride. Of course, there always has to be one bad apple in the basket, doesn't there?

Today I was forwarded an email reply to a request sent out to newspapers in our area to publicize an event which forms part of the run-up to Pride.

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:18 AM, EC Mirror Admin wrote:

System Failure

I think any system of government where human or civil rights depends wholly on the public opinion of the moment, is fundamentally flawed.

Where did that come from? Well, it goes back to before we had the present Constitution in South Africa, when as a teenager I was threatened with being labeled a criminal because being gay was illegal in this country then. That's right, I was threatened with jail because I dared to consider that I might not be your average heterosexual cisgender boy. And in those days, even being transgender was a very grey area in legal terms. 

 

Being caught in a raid dressed in women's clothing as a biological male was a risky business. It was "fine" to be a cross-dresser or drag queen busted at a gay club during a raid - but you better still have been wearing male underwear underneath your frock - or you would be thrown in jail for "impersonating a female". LOL. 

 

Go figure.

Bread And Circuses

Last week I had the pleasure of having to get up really early for work, at around 4 am, when all the respectable birds were still asleep. It was while having breakfast a little later that I heard something faint in the night, a kind of singing chant in the distance that reminded me of a Muslim call to prayer. I really had to strain my hearing to pick it up, as the very light wind at that time of morning affected it, and it faded in and out. It seemed to me that it might very well be that, from one of the mosques in the old part of town somewhere. I began to wonder if I was imagining it, but no, there it was, for a whole 2 or 3 minutes. It brought a smile to my face as I wondered why I had never heard it before.

I heard it the next morning too, while having breakfast, confirming to me that I had not imagined it. At the end of the week, I received an email notice that some people in my area (Richmond Hill) were angry about the "disturbance" coming from North End so early in the morning and were drawing up a petition about it. I was stunned. Could people really be so small and anal about such things? 

Apparently so.

Never Say Never

Anyone notice how closely the government's new demand on the mining companies to hand out shares to local communities in their areas (and failure to comply will lead to asset seizures), resembles nationalization?

Business is business. At least, I always thought it was. 

 

The mining companies lease or own the land, and they keep to government prescriptions on how to mine safely etc etc. Being told to just hand over part ownership of their operation to "the people" is neither fair, nor part of a free-market system, nor a democracy. Nor is just issuing an ultimatum to comply "or else". This is more in line with communist-fascist or socialist ideology.