Quotations
JEWISH AND GAY LESBIAN GROUP - EMAIL 27.9.11 (FULL VERSION).
The Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group are proud to support your cause. Please find below a speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu which sums up what we all believe.
Kind regards
Peggy
President JGLG
By Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In Africa, a step backward on human rights
Friday, March 12, 2010
Hate has no place in the house of God.
No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity - or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity. It is time to stand up for another wrong.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counselling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.
Uganda's Parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi. These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.
Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.
And they are living in hiding - away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen, and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are
made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.
"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin colour, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his
light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?
The wave of hate that is underway must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.
The writer is Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
Wise Words
Don't accept the world as it is. Dream about what the world could be – then help make it happen.
In whatever field of endeavour you work, be a change-maker for the upliftment of humanity.
To quote my fellow sodomite and socialist Oscar Wilde:
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell on being an honorary doctorate for his human rights work by Sussex University recently.
For full details of his acceptance speech click on:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/07/26/be-sceptical-and-daring-peter-tatchells-honorary-doctorate-acceptance-speech/
1.8.10.
On Pride
by Matthew Todd in Attitude Magazine
For some, there's an age-old problem about whether it's weird to bang on about being "proud" of your sexuality and whether drag queens and leather chaps send out the wrong message to the straights (blub, poor them), but Pride will always be an essential rite of passage experience. Pride can be intense and can remind you of what you can't do for the other 364 days of the year....
In a time where being gay can still get you killed in Trafalgar Square, there is nothing quite like walking down the street hand-in-hand with a friend or honey, surrounded by people who all feel the same way you do. So relax and, in the words of the remarkable musical "Hair", let the sunshine in.
Liberated?
At a time when women are questioning where the Women's Liberation Movement should be going, perhaps Lesbians and Gay Men should be similarly reviewing the situation. The battles we fought were hard, but what have we done with the victories? Are we liberated?
The article below, by Cosmo Landesman, which appeared in "The Sunday Times", poses one of the problems and we agree with him. The LGBT community has special and positive things to offer.
30.3.10
40 years on
"What happened to the gay revolution sparked by the Stonewall Riots of 1969? Over the last 40 years, the trailblazing idealism of the gay liberation pioneers has all but vanished. Such a shame. We queers seemed to have abandoned rebellion for uber-respectability; assimilating and conforming like Stepford Wives. Oh dear."
Peter Tatchell in August's "Fyne Times", where you can read the full thought-provoking, significant article "After Stonewall."
The Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group are proud to support your cause. Please find below a speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu which sums up what we all believe.
Kind regards
Peggy
President JGLG
By Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In Africa, a step backward on human rights
Friday, March 12, 2010
Hate has no place in the house of God.
No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity - or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity. It is time to stand up for another wrong.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counselling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.
Uganda's Parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi. These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.
Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.
And they are living in hiding - away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen, and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are
made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.
"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin colour, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his
light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?
The wave of hate that is underway must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.
The writer is Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
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