by B. R. GOWANI
The dead religions don’t have much of an influence in today’s world. The living religions, however, have a hell of an impact on peoples’ lives, even in countries where state business is run in an almost secular fashion.
Due to authoritarian governments, low literacy rates, too big a role of religion, the increased presence of and violence by the Islamic fundamentalists, and educational backwardness, any kind of support for the gay people’s right in Muslim countries is almost nil, forget their right to marry. But the gay (that includes lesbians, homos, transgender, etc.) love and relation have been with us human beings since time immemorial. And yet, in the Twenty-first century, the governments in Muslim countries are neither willing to allow or acknowledge this normal activity. Muslims do indulge in this activity or else the Muslim scripture Qur’an wouldn’t have mentioned it nor would the Saudi Arabia or Iran be beheading and killing people.
What is more surprising is the attitude of many people in the Western countries viz a viz the LGBT community. These are the scientifically and technologically highly advanced countries where people have been granted many rights. However, these countries have been late in granting rights, not all of them, to the LGBT community.
The United States is famous for religious nuts and homophobes. Just last December, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia compared homosexuality with murder:
“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd.’” “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”
The only thing Scalia did through this example was to prove how absurd he is.
The Europe, as if trying to catch up with the US, has recently seen some heavy and militant anti-gay protests. Lord Norman Tebbit, former chairperson of the Britain’s Conservative Party, is worried about the heir of the British throne:
“When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?’
“It’s like one of my colleagues said: we’ve got to make these same sex marriages available to all.
“It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not? Why shouldn’t a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn’t two elderly sisters living together marry each other?”
But most surprisingly it is France, quite a liberal country, which has witnessed some large right wing anti-gay protests in recent months. On May 26, Paris witnessed one of the largest protest with hundreds of thousands of participants. One of the banner, a 30ft-wide, proclaimed: “No to a change of civilisation.” One of the placards read: “We want a job, not gay marriage.“
In April, the French parliament passed the bill, granting the gay people the right to marry, by a vote of 331-225. Part of the vehement protests against the government of President François Hollande has also to do with the bad economic condition.
France’s top Catholic bishop Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, without invoking Sodom and Gomorrah, mentioned in the Bible, puts his opposition in a very diplomatic manner:
“This is the way a violent society develops.” “Society has lost its capacity of integration and especially its ability to blend differences in a common project.” “Forcing it [the bill] through can simplify things for a while.” “To avoid paralyzing political life when there are grave economic and social decisions to take, it would have been more reasonable and simple to not have started this process.”
But one wonders, if the right of marriage granted to the gay people is taken back, is the economy going to improve? No.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com