Many Pakistanis on the internet are making fun of their government quite a bit right now:
If Pakistan’s telecom regulator has its way, millions of mobile phone users may be unable to send text messages with “offensive” and “obscene” words like crap, damn, hobo, flatulence, gay, lesbian and slime from Monday. These words are part of a list of nearly 1,700 words and terms that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has deemed as offensive, and wants mobile phone operators to filter from SMS text messages.
Operators have been directed to start blocking text messages containing these words from November 21.
[...]
The move has been greeted with ridicule and derision, particularly by Pakistan’s vociferous users of internet forums and micro-blogging sites like Twitter.
Since the PTA’s lists of offensive English and Urdu words and terms – containing 1,106 and 586 items respectively – became public a few days ago, it has become the butt of jokes on the web.
While the English list has 148 items containing a four-letter swear word, it has had many scratching their heads by including words and terms like athlete’s foot, deposit, black out, drunk, flatulence, glazed donut, harem, Jesus Christ, hostage, murder, penthouse, Satan and “flogging the dolphin”.
This sentence would not be okay in Pakistani text messages anymore:
I was drunk in the penthouse with my harem of hostages, just flogging the dolphin like I always do before I have glazed donuts, when I realized I had athlete’s foot, which is OMG so embarrassing LOL!!
Anyway. In all seriousness, though, this is not a good thing, because, as Think Progress points out, LGBT people in Pakistan have virtually no protections:
Homosexuality is “punishable by whipping, imprisonment or death” and the country does not provide any discrimination protections on the basis of sexual identity or orientation or recognize same-sex civil unions or marriages. In July, conservative Islamic political and religious officials condemned a gay rights meeting being held at the U.S. Embassy as “cultural terrorism” against the country. “Such people are the curse of society and social garbage,” the Islamic officials said. “They don’t deserve to be Muslim or Pakistani, and the support and protection announced by the U.S. administration for them is the worst social and cultural terrorism against Pakistan.”
At least they’re getting made fun of by Pakistani people, themselves.
I do want to know whether “santorum” is on the list, though.
“Please, come join us,” insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.
Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of thirty or so Charismatic Christians. “I’m sorry my hand is sweaty,” the girl said with a sheepish grin.
Those were the last words she spoke that I understood. We quickly surrounded a handful of young preachers who whooped and hollered before surrendering English for the unintelligible language of tongues. The manic participants sounded like a cross between a prayer service and a Native American tribe preparing for battle.
Eventually, they raised their hands toward the sky pointing to God, which allowed me to escape and enter the seating area at Ford Field, where Lou Engle, founder of The Call, had gathered 27,000 fundamentalist Christians from across the nation on 11.11.11, a date that came to him in what he believes to be a divinely inspired vision. The majority of the crowd was Caucasian, however a significant number were African American. There was a large youth component, but the age of participants reached across the spectrum.
While I can’t speak for the entire conference, which was a 24-hour call to fast and prayer, I did spend 14 hours at Ford Field watching sermons, surveying sideshows, videotaping the gathering, and interacting with the hyped-up crowd. So, my observations, while not complete, do offer a significant snapshot of the 11.11.11 Detroit rally.
In a press release prior to the event I wrote that I expected 11.11.11 Detroit to be a “gay bashing” and “Muslim trashing” extravaganza.After all, The Call had chosen Detroit as its rally site in an effort to convert the region’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims.
The Associated Press reported that Apostle Ellis Smith, Engle’s local “point person” for The Call, referred to Islam in a sermon leading up to the revival as a “false,” “lame” and “perverse” religion.
Engle had previously held an infamous event in Uganda that whipped up anti-gay hysteria. In 2008, the electrifying preacher organized a rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium in support of Proposition 8, a successful measure to prohibit marriage equality in California.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
Indeed, most of the aspersions on Friday evening and Saturday were deliberately cast though euphemism. Homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but was instead lumped together with other “sins” under the umbrella of “sexual immorality.” Other times, speakers camouflaged their anti-gay agenda by simply saying they supported “traditional marriage.” During the entire time I observed the event there was not one reference to healing homosexuality and no “ex-gays” were trotted up on the stage to tell tales of how they “prayed away the gay.”
However, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apostle Smith claimed that at the event, “a lesbian came from the homosexual community and said she has never experienced such love. And she is now working to change her lifestyle.”
(I’m sure this alleged lesbian was very stable and well adjusted because it is common for healthy and secure LGBT people to spend weekends attending revivals that consider them demonic.)
The conversion of Muslims was also downplayed and “Dearborn,” referring to the Detroit suburb with perhaps the nation’s largest Muslim population, euphemistically replaced the word “Islam.”
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
Its real aim was to peel African American support away from the Democratic Party in a swing state during a critical election year. Not only is President Barack Obama’s reelection at stake, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is locked in a tight race that includes social conservative and former GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra. This cynical revival was not about “values” — it was about votes. It was not about worship, but winning office for Republicans by promoting what writer Ed Kilgore called in The New Republic, a “big-God, small-government creed.”
The amazing part was that the audience seemed totally unaware of the underlying motives and machinations. After all, the words “Democrat” and “Republican” were never spoken and there was only one local politician identified on-stage. It seemed that even some of the minor speakers might not have been privy to the overarching strategy. Nonetheless, a brilliant display of political subterfuge was unfolding as the oblivious crowd bopped to Christian rock with their hands swaying above their heads.
This is not the first attempt of white fundamentalists to lure black voters away from the Democratic Party. Immediately following the 2004 presidential election, social conservatives made a strong push to lure African-Americans. Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, The Traditional Values Coalition, hosted a right wing meeting of 70 black religious leaders in Los Angeles.
“In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush,” said Al Sharpton at First Iconium Baptist Church. “They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”
Unbelievably, at the Los Angeles meeting Sheldon played an anti-gay video featuring disgraced Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Remember, Lott had to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he publicly pined over Strom Thurmond not winning the presidency as a Dixiecrat. African-American columnist Leonard Pitts put Sheldon’s power grab in perspective:
“Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a position that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong….which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.”
Still, the attempt was gaining some momentum until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, which badly frayed the burgeoning unholy alliance. The effort was further hampered by the emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic standard bearer.
In this renewed effort in Detroit, Lou Engle and his minions were smart. They wisely figured out that direct attacks on the Democratic Party would not fly, nor would all-out verbal barrages against President Barack Obama, who still has strong African American support. They also understood that the baggage surrounding white Evangelical racism would have to be addressed and surmounted before real progress was made.
To overcome these obstacles and recruit African Americans to vote for the GOP they devised what seems like a five-part strategy.
1) Pick a key swing state with a beleaguered city that had an economically disadvantaged African American population
2) Create an emotional spectacle where tearful white people pleaded for forgiveness and repented onstage for past racism
3) Sharply define new wedge issue(s) and create a racially-based conspiracy theory that could ultimately be used against the Democratic Party
4) Exploit these emerging wedge issue(s) to the point they become more important than fixing the economy
5) Redefine voting criteria so candidates are primarily judged by where they stand on these wedge issue(s) – with the ultimate goal of leading many African Americans to conclude that they are best represented by the conservative GOP.
Lou Engle understands that much of Michigan is conservative. If he were able to peel off fifteen or twenty percent of Detroit’s black Democratic vote, he might be able to turn the state solidly red. The main wedge issue he selected to accomplish his plan is abortion. For good measure, he helped weave a conspiracy theory: Sinister white bigots who run programs like Planned Parenthood were using abortion to reduce African American birthrates.
“What Birmingham is to the civil rights movement, Detroit is to abortion,” bellowed Engle at the event. “Detroit has a calling…blacks and Latinos could lead the parade of history.”
Engle’s message was aided by a parade of socially conservative African American ministers. One preached that black people must choose “BC (Biblical Correctness) over PC (Political Correctness).” The subtext was that the pro-life GOP is on the side of the Bible and thus should be the party of African Americans. Another pastor was even more explicit when he declared that African Americans had a choice: “God’s way or a political party’s way.” (Read More)
The Malaysian gay-rights coalition Seksualiti Merdeka was set to hold its fourth annual festival in Kuala Lumpur. But on Nov. 3 police ordered the group to cancel.
…deputy inspector general of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, according a translation by Bernama…”When [Malaysians expressing themselves] crops up and threatens national security,” he said, “we have to take action.”
Such arbitrary halting of legal gatherings by the police is not new in Malaysia. Human Rights Watch has pointed out abuses by Malaysia of its own constitutional freedom of assembly that arise from a 1967 law giving police broad powers to restrict assemblies. Malaysia’s constitution also pays lip service to freedom of religion, but apparently some religions are more free than others. Islam is the majority religion in Malaysia, and Muslim leaders there have been calling for a shutdown of Seksualiti Merdeka while making the usual slurs and comparisons to animals.
Abu Bakar is also reported as saying “the law in the country did not recognise any deviationist activity that could destroy the practice of religious freedom.” Notice that “religious freedom” for some people quite literally consists of the freedom to tyrannize other people. We see this over and over in the United States, where a favorite tactic of the Religious Right is to claim that its freedoms are being violated–the freedoms to badger public-school children to pray, force women to give birth, demand that gay people turn straight or remain celibate, and so on.
As a practical matter, apart from the fact that this festival has been held peacefully three times already, what makes this police decision even more obtuse is that no public parade was planned. Parades can occasionally get unruly, but this festival consisted of “forums, talks, and workshops,” as well as book launches, all of which were to be held at an art gallery. Book launches in art galleries tend not to pose a threat to public order, national security, or anything else except ignorance.
In Malaysia, penetrative anal and oral sex are punishable by whipping and up to 20 years in prison. Seksualiti Merdeka members have faced adversity already. A video campaign modeled on It Gets Better led to death threats to at least one of its brave posters.
According to its website, Seksualiti Merdeka represents a group of NGOs that include Amnesty International and the United Nations. As of this writing, neither of the above groups appears to have made a public statement condemning the Malaysian police action.
One of the things that has often bugged me over the years, as I’ve studied the effects of fundamentalist religion on the world and on the LGBT community, has been the knee-jerk anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by some gay people. It’s, of course, not been limited to the gay community — the United States, as a whole, has a knee-jerk anti-Muslim problem. What I’ve noticed, though, is that, of the three Abrahamic religious traditions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — you have three distinct religions in three different places when it comes to being welcoming to all people.
Judaism is the furthest along, perhaps because it’s the oldest. With the exception of a few fringe, insane rabbis who consider gays the cause of all the evil in the world, the American Jewish community is pretty progressive and pretty welcoming to gays. Christianity is in the middle. On a media level, Christianity is still too often represented by fundamentalist wingnuts like Tony Perkins, who use their platforms to advance the lie that their medieval, hateful views are representative of average Christians. But within Christianity, there are indeed millions of people advocating for a loving, inclusive, welcoming version of Christianity.
And then there is Islam, which arguably has the longest way to go. But here is the thing that a lot of people probably don’t understand. Though there are certain teachings which still predominate, American Muslims have a similar problem to American Christians, which is simply that the Islamic equivalent of Tony Perkins gets up and spouts hate and religious teachings that are, quite simply, not what many or even most American Muslims believe. However, the average American knows more, culturally, about Christianity than they do about Islam, so it’s easier for Americans to see the diversity in Christianity than to see it in Islam.
Ani Zonneveld, a Muslim-American singer-songwriter and activist, is trying to change that, and she’s profiled in an MSNBC piece this morning:
Like other aspiring reformers before her, Ani Zonneveld takes positions that make her unpopular with her religion’s spiritual leaders, in this case America’s Islamic elders.
Not only does she lead prayers — a task normally reserved for men — but she is an outspoken advocate for gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims. Later this year, she plans to officiate at the Islamic wedding of a lesbian couple, which is perfectly acceptable by her reading of the Quran.
“The community we are building is very different from most of the mosques you would walk into,” said Zonneveld, a 49-year-old Malaysian-born singer-songwriter. “We are very inclusive of all Muslims, gay Muslims, mixed-faith couples. … We also don’t segregate (the genders) when we pray, and we allow women to lead prayer. Our values are very egalitarian and we really live those values out.”
Her organization is Muslims for Progressive Values, and the piece points out that their advocacy for LGBT people separates them from the pack. Every movement has to have its pioneers, you know, and the movement for equality within Islam has to start somewhere, and it seems that Ani is taking on that role.
Several other Islamic leaders are interviewed and quoted in the piece, and you can see a bit of the diversity we’re used to with Christianity. You have the “gay is an abomination” set, you have the “it’s a sin, but we love everyone” set, and all other somewhere-in-betweens. Also interviewed is the United States’ only gay imam [yes, there is a gay imam in the United States!]. Ani touches on the problem of having the most conservative leaders speaking as if they speak for everyone here:
“The vast majority of American Muslims believe in an Islam that is so different from the people (who have been) representing us,” said Zonneveld. “It would be like if you had an ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi representing all American Jews; they would be up in arms. … It would be complete misrepresentation of the American Jewish community.”
Anyway, the word needs to get out about the work Ani Zonneveld is doing, and we all need to do a better job of assisting the reformers among us, with whatever set of circumstances they have to deal with. There is a lot to be done yet, in the Islamic community, to create a climate of welcoming and love for LGBT people, just as there is a lot to be done yet for kids living under the thumb of American Fundamentalist Christianity. To find out more about Ani’s organization and their ten guiding principles, click here.
Brunei is a wealthy, developed country on the island of Borneo that borders Malaysia and is a near neighbor of Indonesia. It appears about to adopt sharia criminal law (in the words of its sultan, “What else are we waiting for?). Right-wingers living in the relatively moderate neighboring countries may find this an inspiring development.
Concerned about a drama that depicts Jesus as gay, a diverse collection of the city’s religious leaders has banded together to denounce the play, scheduled to begin next month at the San Pedro Playhouse.
“Corpus Christi,” written by Terrence McNally, has ignited controversy in other cities for its coming-of-age story about Jesus growing up in that South Texas city during the 1950s. In the play, Jesus is curious about same-sex attraction, is bullied and later presides over a gay wedding at which he’s dubbed the “King of Queers.”
The religious leaders — ranging from a rabbi and an imam to Protestant regional overseers and Catholic bishops, all of whom belong to the San Antonio Community of Congregations, a local interfaith organization — plan to voice their disapproval of the play at a news conference scheduled for 1:30 this afternoon at Main Plaza.
You know, they could always just not go to the play.
Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of the Rodfei Sholom Orthodox congregation said he would stand today in solidarity with fellow religious leaders mainly to object to the offensive language in the play.
“It’s just a vulgar piece of literature, if you want to call it that,” he said. “I read excerpts, and it wasn’t so much the homosexuality. It’s just that it’s art without any responsibility to the sensitivities of others.”
Art that doesn’t respect peoples’ sensitivities?! Horrors! As usual, these characters seem to believe that religion should be above criticism, unorthodox artistic interpretation, or any sort of commentary that might put it in a bad light. The piece mentions that the group includes an imam, but this is why I always think it’s a bit funny when fundamentalist whack-jobs of other religions scoff at conservative Muslims for getting angry about depictions of Muhammad. This is the same thing. Unfortunately, the First Amendment in the United States of America doesn’t include the right not to be offended by anything, ever.
[Warning: This piece is completely freaking long. I have tried to make it enjoyable. If you don't like that, read something different.]
I have been arguing with myself over whether to post on this screed by someone called “Jim O’Neill,” because to do so could be very time consuming. First of all it is so long-winded that to address its points could take the entire day. Even simply mocking the piece, paragraph by paragraph, could take an hour. What we have here is a guy who seems to have gone quite far off his rocker, who believes that obscure, fringe sources and unhinged hatemongers like NARTH and Scott Lively, who are rejected by the entire scientific and mental health communities, are somehow the only ones telling him the truth, and who truly thinks he has found a nugget of an idea in stating that the “homosexual agenda” is actually the same as the “Islamist agenda,” because both [he says] are misogynistic! Uh, yeah. All you lesbians? You hate women. So much. And all you gay men who shout “divaaaaaa!” at the ceiling any time a woman does something “fierce,” are also he-man woman haters. Also, apparently liberals don’t care about female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. Actually, I learned all about that issue from liberal sources. Anyway, but first, before we enter the biggest vortex of stupid I’ve ever encountered [and this is in a world that contains Peter LaBarbera], let’s look at his bio, because it’s funny:
Born in June of 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim O’Neill (constitutionalwrites.com) proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two. A member of MENSA, he worked as a commercial diver in the waters off Scotland, India, and the United States. In 1998 while attending the University of South Florida as a journalism student, O’Neill won “First Place” in the “Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii AEJMC Research in Journalism Ethics Award.” The annual contest was set up by Carol Burnett with the money she won from successfully suing the National Enquirer for libel.
He is in MENSA, you guys! You know, I have had the opportunity to join MENSA, and have never done so, mostly because I don’t care, but even if I did, you would NEVER see my “MENSA membership” in my bio. I mean, my goodness. But also, he was a Navy SEAL! Now, as we all know, Navy SEALs are trained to be bad-ass and do things like shoot Osama bin Laden in the face, but this does not tell us anything about their perceptive capabilities when it comes to subjects like homosexuality, now does it? Indeed, there are gay Navy SEALs! This would freak Jim O’Neill out, a lot, as you will see.
Also, your fancy pants college journalism award is named after a campy gay icon, so there is that.
Anyway, let’s jump into the vortex of stupid, but we’ll try not to stay too long. The supposed thesis of this word salad is that gays should not be able to serve in the military:
There is a tendency among many Americans, even some on the Left and in the gay community, to write the Islamic world off in a way, to essentially suggest that because they are often far behind the West when it comes to things like LGBT acceptance, that Muslims, as a people, should not be trusted. Likewise, the American Right entertains a fantasy that somehow includes “far leftists” and “radical Muslims” being in alliance with each other. They believe they are making a winning argument when they huff questions like “yeah well, ya know what they do to gay people in Iran?!” Far from making a winning argument, they are not even making a point, but that’s the American Right for you. As with so many issues that require critical thinking and nuance, the truth is a bit more complicated.
Take this, for instance: Syria is one of the latest among Arab nations experiencing fevered anti-government protests, and the protesters’ story is becoming more known thanks to a girl who calls herself “the ultimate outsider”:
[Amina] Abdullah’s blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, is brutally honest, poking at subjects long considered taboo in Arab culture. “Blogging is, for me, a way of being fearless,” she says. “I believe that if I can be ‘out’ in so many ways, others can take my example and join the movement.”
[...]
“Unfortunately, for most of my life being aware of Syrian politics means simply observing and only commenting privately.”
That changed when protests broke out and Abdullah joined them, blogging about her experiences.
[...]
The blend of humour and frankness, frivolity and political nous comes from an upbringing that straddles Syria and the US. “I’m the ultimate outsider,” she says. “My views are heavily informed by being both a member of a small marginal minority as an Arab Muslim in America and as a part of a majority as a Sunni in Syria, and of course as a woman and as a sexual minority.”
Homosexuality is illegal in Syria and a strict taboo, although the state largely turns a blind eye. “It’s tough being a lesbian in Syria, but it’s certainly easier to be a sexual than a political dissident,” she says. “There are a lot more LGBT people here than one might think, even if we are less flamboyant than elsewhere.”
So there you have it: the revolution in Syria is being live-blogged by a woman, a dual citizen, a Muslim, a lesbian. Much of the Islamic world may be far behind the West on these issues, yes. But there are glimmers of hope on the horizon, and Amina is certainly one of those.
It’s useful to point out the similarities between the fundamentalist Christian worldview and that of religion-fueled Third World societies around the world. I’ve suggested in the past that many right wing Christian leaders really ought to convert to Islam and move to Iran, seeing as the societal mores are more in line with their way of thinking. They won’t miss the “Jesus” part of their current religion, because they really pay no attention to the “Jesus” part in the first place, aside from the fact that they’re glad he’s sending them to heaven and everybody they don’t like, to hell.
Malaysian authorities have admitted sending 66 teenage boys thought to be gay to a camp to learn “masculine behaviour”.
An official from Terengganu state said the boys, aged between 13 and 17, were identified by teachers as having effeminate mannerisms.
This week, they are being sent on a four-day “self-development course” in the hope of dissuading them from being gay or transgender.
State education director Razali Daud told The Associated Press that the camp was designed “to guide them back to the right path in life before they reach a point of no return. Such effeminate behavior is unnatural and will affect their studies and their future.”
The article states that the kids weren’t compelled to go to Muslim Pray Away The Gay Camp, but were invited, which is pretty much in line with Alan Chambers’ philosophy of only destroying those who are willing to destroy themselves.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
