Posts tagged gay issues
but seriously...
Irreverent social commentary with a Caribbean bias
3 notes &
You probably should watch this
‘We Were Here’ is the first film to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco, and how the City’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. Though this is a San Francisco based story, the issues it addresses extend not only beyond San Francisco but also beyond AIDS itself. ‘We Were Here’ speaks to our societal relationship to death and illness, our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, and the importance of community in addressing unimaginable crises.
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I started watching this last week (you can watch it here), but at the time it was too hard to finish because, quite frankly, it is unnerving to see unless you know your HIV status - whether you’re gay or straight.
Now that I know I can breathe a sigh of relief, I’ve watched it all and I think you should too.
If all goes according to plan, I’ll be specialising in Public Health soon with a focus on HIV/AIDS and, in particular, its prevalence and risk factors among sexual minorities. From that aspect alone this film was awesome, but whether gay or straight it will force some useful introspection that even the best of HIV/AIDS campaigns would fail to do.
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Jamaica: PNP wins in landslide election victory. Turns out that homophobia does not win in Jamaica.
Political cartoonist and JLP support ‘Clovis’ smears gays, PNP…
The People’s National Party (PNP) has claimed victory over the incumbent Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in today’s parliamentary elections in Jamaica. The post-result political analyses are best left for others. For me, I find it encouraging that homophobic campaigning against the PNP in reaction to its stated position on equal rights for gays to serve in parliament, and a review to repeal the buggery law, clearly made no impact on the majority of voters today.
If it’s not political suicide in Jamaica, I can’t imagine it being so anywhere else in the Caribbean.
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Pat Robertson says that God is livid that the United States thinks it’s wrong to murder gays and deny them human dignity
Secretary Hillary Clinton’s speech on defending LGBT rights abroad and the new Obama administration policy to protect people around the world who are jailed, beaten and executed for being LGBT have been met with intense uproar from the Religious Right.
Pat Robertson on The 700 Club today said that the policy was “appalling” shows that America is willing to “violate God’s principles and to make a mockery of His laws.” Robertson even warned that God will not tolerate it and “when the blow comes, it’s going to be horrible”
Read more at Right Wing Watch…
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State Secretary Hilary Clinton’s historic speech on LGBT rights. CARICOM, are you listening?
Bill Browning of the Bilerico Project writes:
Here’s the speech everyone is talking about today. It’s being heralded as a modern day “I Have a Dream” speech.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the United Nations in Geneva this morning and gave a speech about LGBT human rights in honor of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Her speech served as a solid statement following the Obama administration’s announcement this morning that it is instructing federal agencies and diplomats to protect and promote LGBT rights internationally.
This is an amazing speech which, unfortunately, may never be endorsed by any Caribbean leader in our lifetime.
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![“It’s discrimination to stop us from discriminating against gays!”
Let me just say that I fundamentally disagree with the narrow argument presented by this author i.e., that ‘tolerance doesn’t only mean tolerance for gays, but for those who choose to discriminate against gays’.
Unfortunately, the same has been uttered in the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean, with hardly enough discussion on why eliminating legislated discrimination against homosexuals - regardless of David Cameron’s views - is a moral and democratic imperative.
fyeahafrica:
UK’s aid ban on countries that outlaw gay rights smacks of double standards
Money speaks, or so the saying goes. And it came to pass that when the recent Commonwealth leaders summit in Perth, Australia, failed to adopt a recommendation seeking to end “homophobic laws” — whatever those are — British Prime Minister David Cameron sunk into an almighty sulk and issued an aid fatwa on anti-gay countries.
Forty out of 54 countries representing almost 75 per cent of the Club membership outlaw homosexuality and Mr Cameron singled out Malawi, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana as likely victims of Britain’s aid ban.
On Thursday, protests from Daily Nationreaders came fast and furious as they took issue with the denigrating policy.
For the benefit of those who may have missed their Thursday paper, a few highlights from readers’ responses to the “Question of the day” will suffice.
“They appear inclined to influence various states into homosexuality,” James Kanyi said, while Charles Nzioka accused Britain of forcing “begging countries to allow gayism in exchange for aid”.
“Better no aid but preserve your culture,” Elias Muindi said, while Harun Maina called the pro-gay policy neo-colonialist.
And in a stand-alone letter to the editor on the same day, regular contributor Alexander Chagema told the West to “feel free to practice moral decadence if it chooses to but must stop exporting it to Africa”.
It was disturbing, he said, that “decades after the fall of the British empire, overtones of its imperialism still linger in the Commonwealth”.
Chagema’s observation that Britain had ceded its position as “master of the world to being America’s altar boy” is harsh but apt inasmuch as America is the key proponent of tolerance — an amorphous principle that’s steeped in hypocrisy and double standards.
In the current debate, Britain is applying a double standard as regards tolerance because it is invoking the principle to suit the tiny but highly noisy gay rights lobby, even as it blocks its ears to questions about the right to life of millions in developing countries, whose survival is threatened by the pro-gay policy.
I insist that the gay lobby is driven not by Wanjiku, whose concern at this time is to survive a particularly harsh economic climate, but by an elitist minority, whose agenda is to subvert not just the Christian mores that shape the lives of more than 80 per cent of Kenyans, but also the cultural norms of most Africans.
Only recently the Nation carried a story of the impending break-up of a much-hyped gay wedding that was received with high accolades by the gay lobby only a couple of years ago.
Even as one of the partners indicated he had doubts right from the start, meaning the whole union was a sham, there was deafening silence from the gay fraternity at the break-up. Truth is, it was doomed to fail because it was not a marriage to start with.
In spite of the unfortunate claw-back clause in the Bill of Rights that proscribes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, our Constitution only recognises marriage between a man and a woman.
Tolerance should be reciprocal, and even as Britain calls anti-gay laws “intolerant” and wields the aidrungu to cow them into reversing their stance, it should practise what it preaches by tolerating countries that have issues with same-sex unions.
[read more]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu5jxi3umI1qcerqgo1_500.jpg)
“It’s discrimination to stop us from discriminating against gays!”
Let me just say that I fundamentally disagree with the narrow argument presented by this author i.e., that ‘tolerance doesn’t only mean tolerance for gays, but for those who choose to discriminate against gays’.
Unfortunately, the same has been uttered in the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean, with hardly enough discussion on why eliminating legislated discrimination against homosexuals - regardless of David Cameron’s views - is a moral and democratic imperative.
UK’s aid ban on countries that outlaw gay rights smacks of double standards
Money speaks, or so the saying goes. And it came to pass that when the recent Commonwealth leaders summit in Perth, Australia, failed to adopt a recommendation seeking to end “homophobic laws” — whatever those are — British Prime Minister David Cameron sunk into an almighty sulk and issued an aid fatwa on anti-gay countries.
Forty out of 54 countries representing almost 75 per cent of the Club membership outlaw homosexuality and Mr Cameron singled out Malawi, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana as likely victims of Britain’s aid ban.
On Thursday, protests from Daily Nationreaders came fast and furious as they took issue with the denigrating policy.
For the benefit of those who may have missed their Thursday paper, a few highlights from readers’ responses to the “Question of the day” will suffice.
“They appear inclined to influence various states into homosexuality,” James Kanyi said, while Charles Nzioka accused Britain of forcing “begging countries to allow gayism in exchange for aid”.
“Better no aid but preserve your culture,” Elias Muindi said, while Harun Maina called the pro-gay policy neo-colonialist.
And in a stand-alone letter to the editor on the same day, regular contributor Alexander Chagema told the West to “feel free to practice moral decadence if it chooses to but must stop exporting it to Africa”.
It was disturbing, he said, that “decades after the fall of the British empire, overtones of its imperialism still linger in the Commonwealth”.
Chagema’s observation that Britain had ceded its position as “master of the world to being America’s altar boy” is harsh but apt inasmuch as America is the key proponent of tolerance — an amorphous principle that’s steeped in hypocrisy and double standards.
In the current debate, Britain is applying a double standard as regards tolerance because it is invoking the principle to suit the tiny but highly noisy gay rights lobby, even as it blocks its ears to questions about the right to life of millions in developing countries, whose survival is threatened by the pro-gay policy.
I insist that the gay lobby is driven not by Wanjiku, whose concern at this time is to survive a particularly harsh economic climate, but by an elitist minority, whose agenda is to subvert not just the Christian mores that shape the lives of more than 80 per cent of Kenyans, but also the cultural norms of most Africans.
Only recently the Nation carried a story of the impending break-up of a much-hyped gay wedding that was received with high accolades by the gay lobby only a couple of years ago.
Even as one of the partners indicated he had doubts right from the start, meaning the whole union was a sham, there was deafening silence from the gay fraternity at the break-up. Truth is, it was doomed to fail because it was not a marriage to start with.
In spite of the unfortunate claw-back clause in the Bill of Rights that proscribes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, our Constitution only recognises marriage between a man and a woman.
Tolerance should be reciprocal, and even as Britain calls anti-gay laws “intolerant” and wields the aidrungu to cow them into reversing their stance, it should practise what it preaches by tolerating countries that have issues with same-sex unions.
18 notes &
Bill Maher: It Gets Better
Bill Maher says he knows what it feels like to be bullied in his It Gets Better video.
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I want you to watch two films…
If you don’t watch anything else this weekend, I’d suggest watching the South African film Skin and the Bahamian film Children of God, which deal with race and sexuality respectively.
The former is the true story of Sandra Laing, a South African woman with black features born to a white couple in the time of apartheid. The latter Kareem Mortimer production, though wrongly classified as a romantic drama, does a good job in representing the nature and social impact of homophobia in the Caribbean and the centrality (and hypocrisy) of Christianity to the culture of homophobia.
I won’t review either, I’d much rather hear what you think.
PS. If you are unaware where to stream these online, I may be able to tell you off the record.
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This is heart-warming. ABC Primetime staged a scene in a Texan restaurant in which an actress bashed actors pretending to be gay parents, in order to test how regular people would respond. The results were shocking. A similar set up, this time with racial bashing in a New York restaurant, was similarly surprising.
Yay for humanity.
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“I smell the homosexual agenda…”
According to someone named Lester Carter in the Daily Nation,
Barbadians need to be wary of the pressure being put on this country by certain international agencies. HIV/AIDS is a serious problem in Barbados, but I must ask: is stigma and discrimination really hindering the fight against this pandemic?
Why is there a paradigm shift from the true causation of the spread of this disease to “red herrings”? I smell the homosexual agenda nearby.
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Eddie Long Accusers Risk Losing Settlement Money By Speaking Out
via MagicATL
For the first time since settling sex abuse lawsuits with Bishop Eddie Long, two of his accusers are speaking out about the case in an exclusive interview with WSB-TV.
By speaking out about their alleged relationship with Long, Jamal Parris and Spencer LeGrande risk losing the unspecified money they were awarded in the settlement.
The young men told WSB-TV that it was never about money and was always about the truth, and they feel like their whole story still hasn’t been told. The two said they are planning on writing a book about their ordeal.
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Jamaicans diss anti-homophobia PSA
An awkwardly-produced but nonetheless positive PSA against gay discrimination has, unsurprisingly, been panned by Jamaicans, and is allegedly not being carried on national TV in that virulently homophobic Caribbean country.
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I was walking through the lounge, and someone shouted out ‘shim’ and ‘it’ […] I have been called a dyke by students. Usually I ignore it, as people are just ignorant. But it hurts to hear them call me an ‘it’
(Source: redforgender)
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Creflo Dollar: Eddie Long is saved, those who criticise him are not.
Bishop Eddie Long has settled out of court on a lawsuit brought against him by boys who alleged that he sexually abused them while under his care. Now his popular televangelist friend, Creflo Dollar, has joined the fray and reubuked Long’s former parishioners for leaving his church. According to him, Long is saved - you on the other hand, have a long way to go.
This sermon makes me profoundly sad and even more resentful of this popular brand of Christianity, its tacit approval of abuse by ‘holy’ people, and its demonisation of their victims. The brainwashed masses in this congregation nauseate me, and the words coming from Creflo Dollar’s mouth are as evil as they are destructive.
The video is annotated, and there is more commentary at The Root and on CNN’s Belief blog.
