Being Gay is Disgusting

Well, it's official. The USA has become so religious that civil stoning has been reintroduced, just like in the Middle-East.

According to a story yesterday in the Philadelphia Inquirer, a 28-year-old man stoned his 70-year-old church-buddy for having made sexual advances towards him. He told the police that he stoned the old man because that's what the Bible says the punishment should be.

The most disturbing thing about this is that the bible is unequivocally on the side of the killer. There are no two ways about it. Lev 20 is specific with the act, the punishment and the justification. It is the ever-marching, ever-preaching religious groups that give credibility and confidence to those who would carry out such biblical punishments and, good news for Americans, most crimes in the bible are punishable by death. I wonder how far away we are from seeing a parent kill a child merely for being disobedient, citing justification in Deut 21.

Oh, but hang on, the USA has already seen real-world filicide in the footsteps of biblical Abraham (Gen 22). In November last year, Jeannine Brandt stabbed her sleeping son because God told her to.

How much credence should we really give to religious bodies who claim to be the foundation of morality, who claim that Jesus (or Allah, or Yahweh) loves everyone, while zealously insisting on being exempted from the most moral, most tolerant, most inclusive legislation in the country?

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 12 February 2011 that New South Wales Attorney-General John Hatzistergos expressed approval for a law that permits private schools to expel a student for being gay. As in other Western countries, the vast majority of Australian private schools are owned and run by religious groups.

Meanwhile in Victoria, Attorney-General Robert Clark is presently drafting legislation to reverse a recent tightening of religious-based discrimination, thus returning to religious bodies the blanket freedom that remains in NSW and other states, even before the new legislation comes into effect.

The NSW law in question is the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977. Parts 2 through 5 outlaw discrimination based on race, sex, transgender status, marital and domestic status, disability, carer responsibilities, homosexuality, HIV status and age. It also includes prohibitions for vilification of anyone covered under the Act, advertising anything prohibited in the Act and sexual harassment. On the face of it, a very thorough Act.

However, section 56 unconditionally exempts religious bodies from the whole Act in circumstances where it does not “conform to the doctrines of that religion” or it is otherwise “necessary to avoid injury to the religious susceptibilities of the adherents of that religion.” (s56(d))

So the religious are allowed to discriminate because God said they can. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to interpret this clause.

Originally posted at www.timesunion.com.

Last month in Manilla, two million very spiritual Filipinos herded around a statue of a black Jesus, attempting to touch it in the hope that it will cure random ailments.

Well, actually, looking at the statue, it seemed to me to be less a statue of a black Jesus and more a black statue of a white Jesus. It had no facial features that resembled an African; its hair was even wavy!  So it was your typical honky Jesus, dipped in black paint. This, apparently, makes it more miraculous.

The statue is dressed, as the real Jesus always was, in the garb of Richard the Lion Heart.

A recent article on Star Observer reported that several Australian MPs will be seeking opinion from their constituents regarding the issue of same-sex marriage. Members from both houses will be speaking to residents, conducting surveys and so on, to discover the 'will of the people.'

Excuse me, but why is a survey necessary to see if a particular minority demographic should be equal in rights to the majority?

It think it's fair to state that one of Parliament's core duties is to ensure equality for all Australians. The injustice of restricting from gay couples the mutual and public expression of love that marriage represents is surpassed only by the injustice involved in Parliament thinking that it needs to 'check' with the public to see if it's okay to repeal it.

Edmund Barton, Australia's illustrious first Prime Minister, said once, "The doctrine of equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman." How much further have we come since Federation?

Not far, it seems. Australian parliamentarians refusing to accept equality of a demographic moved from women in the late-19th Century to the 'Chinaman' in 1901, to the Japanese in 1919, and then onwards to 'native savages.' All of these, of course, are today considered equal, as are the left-handed students from the 50's who were caned by nuns for being possessed by Satan.

But no, let's all move on to gays, now. Let's take all that bigotry that we're no longer allowed to direct at people because of skin-colour, handedness or gender, and channel it with gusto at the poofs.

The nice thing about homosexuality is that it transcends political borders, stirring up and unifying Christian bigots on all continents. On African Human Rights Day in Zambia, according to the Zambia Daily Mail, President Rupiah Banda condemned not gay people directly, but people who support gay people, who are nearly as bad!

Naturally, Zambian Christian churches have applauded Banda’s condemnation of well-to-do people who donate to non-profit organisations and then have the gall to say that gayness is a human right. Bishop Peter Ndhlovu (no, I’m sorry, I can’t help you pronounce that) of the Bible Gospel Church says gay stuff is ungodly and more of a human wrong than a right. Ndhlovu cites the biblical book of Leviticus in support of his oh-so-righteous views, and he’s completely right. Pay no attention to the fact that the bishop is clean-shaven with a closely trimmed hair-cut, in contravention of the no-hair-cutting rule on the self-same page...

“No-one can come and tell us what human rights are,” said the bishop, forgetting, of course, that Zambia has already been told what human rights are. Twice. A long, long time ago, in a continent far, far away, the United Nations drafted a very special document that they called the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” In it, they declared what human rights were, and that they were universal.

For example, and I’m just selecting some random articles here:

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Obviously, Bishop Peter is acting in this “spirit of brotherhood” when he says that gays are, by definition, cursed. It’s for their own good, you see. If you belittle and persecute them enough, they’ll repent and either turn straight or commit suicide. Either is fine for Christian Zambia.

MEDIA RELEASE

20 August 2010

The new book:  BEING GAY IS DISGUSTING

a biblical parody by Edward Falzon

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A new book entitled Being Gay is Disgusting, which irreverently paraphrases the first five books of the Judeo-Christian Bible, has launched worldwide through amazon.com.

Australian author Edward Falzon has 'faithfully' paraphrased the first 2,700 years of biblical history, chapter-by-chapter, into a tome whose alternative title is God Likes the Smell of Burning Fat.  By removing the repetition and formality in the text, he says, "all that's left is, frankly, the ridiculous."

"Having investigated religion and the religious for many years," says Falzon, "nowadays my primary beef is that nobody seems to have read the book that they claim is their guide to life and the afterlife.  I find this wilful ignorance of one's own faith to be incomprehensible.  The Bible's a hard read, though, so I've taken it upon myself to make it more readable and entertaining, and this first instalment is the five books of Moses."

When asked what kind of backlash he expected, Falzon said, "I expect a lot!  But I only expect it from people who haven't read Being Gay is Disgusting and probably never will.  From the exposure I've had so far in non-religious, religious, straight and gay circles, I have had overwhelming support - people do seem to get the joke, particularly about why I've used that title."

What about 'that' title?  "There are laws passed all over the world restricting the rights of gays," he says.  "The UK's Section 28 was only repealed in 2003, California's Proposition 8 is brand new, and even in Australia, gay sex was illegal until 1994!  The source of these and other laws and bigotry against gays is rooted firmly in the Bible, as if anti-homosexual rules are written on every page.  But in fact, in the whole 1,500-page King James Bible, homosexuality is mentioned all of six times.  By contrast, unicorns are mentioned nine times - 50% more often.  Clearly, gay people weren't a huge priority for Yahweh.  But the way Christian groups carry on, the bible might as well be called Being Gay is Disgusting because the only laws passed nowadays that have anything to do with the Bible are about restricting the rights of the LGBT community.  It's bullshit.  So my book is part-parody and part-protest."