Passing On The Torch

It is very close to the end of another year, and the time has come again for me to reflect on the past, to take stock - and to chart a new course for my future in human rights activism. 

You may recall I started out as an activist for the human rights of the Pink Community, specifically with the SA Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) - an organization I am still serving on - and have since also become more involved with other causes attached to the cause of human rights. 

Among these was a group called ECGLA.

Lessons In Love

I love you...

The words are cheap and easily said these days, aren't they?

Mirror, Mirror

As a non-Christian, I have never understood the need some people have to indoctrinate others, or to try and force their own views on them. 

When this sort of thing takes place during a time of grieving and mourning, such as at a funeral, it just makes it even worse.

Challenges of Life

I believe where it is SAFE to do so, transgender people should be out and proud. And where it isn't safe, they should be proud if not out - and they should still work for equality, dignity and human rights so that they - and the generations that are to come - one day can be out. Nobody cares about people they don't know about, folks. 

When people don't remind folks that they really do exist, the haters, purists and bigots like to believe and pretend that they don't.

Dismantling Fear

Many transsexual people I have encountered over time have chosen to introduce themselves to friends or acquaintances as being more than "just" transsexuals. 

Instead of just being honest about having been biologically male or female, and having changed that, they invent stories about having been born intersex - presumably because in their minds, the audience will somehow view them more sympathetically that way than if they were just honest to begin with.

 

Why can't they just be honest?

 

Well, as it turns out, there may be some very good reasons why they do this.

Kicking The Crutch

The world around us is filled with people who are selfish, cocky and arrogant about their own religious beliefs. I say not these things because I resent the pride others take in their religion, but because the pride some of them take in their choice of beliefs boils over into a hatred of the religious choices of others who choose differently to them, and into persecution of those who dare to do so.

Will Somebody Please Think Of The Children?

I regularly meet a friend of mine, who is a Christian reverend, for drinks at a local coffee shop. We enjoy casual chats about religion, persecution and human needs and frailties. He mentioned to me that there is no ONE Christianity, but many, and that today there are more than 200 different formally identified "mainstream" denominations - or "churches" around the world. Ironically, each one considers itself to be the ONE TRUE Christianity, or at least, the face of it.

It Makes Sense, Doesn't It?

If you look at all the weird and wonderful new Bills being tabled in South Africa these days - there is little doubt in my mind that the Constitution and the freedoms contained within it - are clearly under assault. 

And those of us whose civil rights and equality are protected by those very clauses in the Constitution which are under assault, somehow seem unaware that we fill the sights and scopes on the weapons being directed against us by those who would chip away at our equality.

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.