so, I was watching this video today. (beware its 40mins long - but very interesting)
If you do not have the time to watch it here is the Cliff-notes version:
Basically Uganda wanted to pass this Anti-Homosexuality bill in parliament which would apart from making homosexuality illegal (already is) would make it punishable by death. This was basically fueled after the visit of a preacher with a very strong anti-homosexuality view .
This is quite a horrific thought and prompted me to do some research. You can obviously imagine how much information there is on the web regarding history of homosexual expression from Europe, Africa, Americas and Asia. All depicting acts which we define as homosexual. But even though it seems that homosexuality has been around and recorded for thousands of years, it still seems to shock people. It was only recently, in 1973, that the American Psychiatric Association removed it from its manual, and therefore stopped diagnosing it as a mental disorder.
Here is a map of the world showing the current different attitudes towards homosexuality and the laws regarding it:
No information
Homosexuality legal Same-sex marriage Other type of partnership (or unregistered cohabitation) Foreign same-sex marriages recognized No recognition of same-sex couples | Homosexuality illegal Minimal penalty Large penalty Life in prison Death penalty |
Some extreme views such as that depicted in the video above show me that there is a lot of ignorance and fear in people who are not exposed to life in its entirety. If we leave out the religious aspect for a while and get back to it later, one can realize that it is all down to knowledge and exposure. I am pretty sure that most of the people that are anti-gay (or anti-blacks, anti-hispanics, anti-asian or basically anti-minority) have never actually known anyone belonging to that minority. Therefore they have never had a personal view into that persons world. It is very easy for the "white-man from an all white family in a white majority society, who sides with the major political party, enjoys only the top 40current styles, appears to do everything as everyone else" to judge and discriminate against anyone who is different to him. But with exposure to different sorts of people, one becomes more aware, that even though someone may have a different skin colour to yours, or vote for a different political party, or fall in love with the same sex as their own - they are people too. And upon getting to know them you no longer see their colour or their sexuality, but you see them as a person, a friend.
I personally know of people who have changed their attitudes towards people from minorities upon getting to know people in that minority, and this is a clear example of how prejudiced one would be. When I ask a racist person if they have ever known a black person, they say no. When I ask a homophobic person if they have ever known a gay person they say not to their knowledge. Which just goes to show that it is all based on this fear of the unknown. The fear of "it must be wrong because it is different". And as seen in the video people can easily become very emotionally attached to a belief and believe it is pure evil and do the whole "off-with-their-heads" thing...aka "the red queen syndrome" if you please.
The preacher in the video depicts coprophilia and he equates this with homosexual lovemaking. This is obviously not what the majority of gay sex is about, and definitely not what being gay is about. Coprophilia is a mental disorder which falls under the paraphilias umbrella. This is defined as: Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships). Also there is no statistical difference between the number of homosexual and heterosexual people that perform this act.
Therefore this preacher is giving bad information to a very impressionable audience, and instilling hate and discrimination. There was also talk that gay people preyed on younger children to "recruit" them into homosexuality, as if it was some elite underground club. It is known that pedophilia is another mental disorder under the paraphilias term already mentioned. And this is also not associated directly with homosexuality, and therefore another misconception.
Now getting back on the religious aspect of it all. Most of the comments passed on this video, or even on the
Times of Malta, depicting anti-homosexual points of view have a religious tinge. Now regardless of which religion you choose to follow or not follow, it is a choice. Religion is not something one MUST do, it is a choice and hence there are thousands of religions (approx 4200), ranging from
Taoism, to
Christianity, to
Islam, to
The Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They all try to give some sort of meaning to life and to how we are meant to live. With guidance and inspiration, definitions of what is wrong and "sinful" and maybe even the presence of a god or not. But again, this is all a choice that one makes to believe in such. Therefore I cannot phantom as to how people point at others and scream out "sinner", "infidel" etc. to someone who doesn't even follow their own religion - what one applies to them selves does not apply to everyone else. This has always impressed me, obviously one is allowed their own opinion as dictated by democratic basic principles, but what I cannot understand is: How can one persons religious belief, be allowed to impede another persons human-right?
The Universal Decleration of Human Rights, as depicted by the UN on 10th December 1948, is a mere guideline for countries to follow, although has been incorporated and assimilated into a number of countries legislation. Obviously since it impinges on Islamic law, the have their own
set of rights, however this does not guarantee freedom of religion or gender equality.
This just goes to show, we have so much more work that needs to be done, with regards to advocacy for the minorities and working towards social justice. We seem to find umpteen was to discriminate against one another [
Ableism · Ageism · Caste
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