“Members of the public are reminded that denying employment to someone on the basis of their religion may constitute discrimination, and is prohibited by the Equal Opportunity Act. “[…] Persons who have been subjected to discrimination in their employment, on the basis of their religion—or any other status ground—can lodge …
Read More »Master’s Voice: The rightness of whiteness; the complex nature of black and brown inferiority beliefs
In Trinbago, there is no racism, only prejudice. Well, daiz wha some people try to explain to mih after mih piece last week. Come to the US and Canada, they told me, to experience “real” racism—I have been to the US some years ago US and have experienced it first-hand. …
Read More »Garcia’s response to hijab furore “lacks veracity and mature thought;” SDMS issues legal letter to AG
“The SDMS has not deprived Ms [Nafisah] Nakhid of any substantive right, […] indeed, the right of any qualifying citizen to participate in [the State-run OJT] programme cannot equate to a right to be enrolled specifically at the Lakshmi Girls High School. “Therefore, references by the Minister of Education with …
Read More »Freya’s Advice: Is nixing of anti-buggery law pushing us closer to Second Coming?
As the courts came to a decision on whether to revoke the buggery law in Trinidad and Tobago, I was observing the goings-on in our beautiful two-island republic with great trepidation. And excitement. And as I also observe what is happening on the international front, I have reason to believe …
Read More »Battle for Souls (Pt II): Bullet, Beef and Bible; a look behind the mask of the unholy triad
In Part One, we touched briefly on my personal experience with American-born Evangelical Christian religions, their racist past and anti-tolerance messaging. We touched on how religion is historically used to erase and homogenise a culture for compliant assimilation into an empire and the impact it has on our multi-cultural nation …
Read More »Master’s Voice: Blessed are the unignorant of Scripture for they shall give LGBTQI no attitude
If my laptop had not died, I would have written this piece much earlier, not long after Akilah Holder’s 14 February article. Small ting; Jessica Joseph’s masterful response, using the same points I wanted to raise, was both an excellent rebuttal and an education resource. Those whose minds are not …
Read More »The battle for souls: How White American Evangelicalism helped Neocolonialism separate us from ourselves
I was raised in a Christian sect that was founded in the late 19th Century in the USA. It managed to find its way to the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1920’s. Though I was raised in what the great humanitarian, Bishop Desmond Tutu, enthusiastically called a “Rainbow …
Read More »Found in Translation! (Pt IV): Mosaic Law weak and beggarly; remember Jesus’ Greatest Commandment
I must apologize, I forgot to share the etymology of the word “sodomite.” Etymology is getting the backstory on how a word came to be what it currently is and to mean what it now does. A local example is when we trace the history of the word “doubles” back …
Read More »Found in translation! (Pt III); how the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah was twisted in more ways than one
There is nothing in the Torah, Old Testament, Talmud or New Testament that says the Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because the men were all homosexual. Remember the medical definition of homosexuality we are sticking to is extra-biblical, 19th Century, medical terminology for sexual orientation. It would …
Read More »Found in Translation! (Pt II): How Apostle Paul’s “soft men” ended up as “homosexuals”
Pop culture anthropologist Jessica Joseph attempts to show that the modern Bible is misinterpreted in relation to the LGBTQI movement in Part Two of her response to a Letter to the Editor from Akilah Holder: Let us then move on to 1 Corinthians 6:9 which reads: “Know ye not that …
Read More »Found in translation! The dangers of using Bible for guidance on LGBTQI movement
Akilah Holder’s impassioned column—in which she took umbrage at a gay man sharing his feelings of self-acceptance and his spiritual certainty about being loved and accepted by God—generated a lot of buzz, most of it negative and condemnatory. While I agree with those who pointed out the poor reasoning skills—the …
Read More »No Holders Barred: Get it straight! No letter in LGBTQI stands for God
On 8 October, 2013, Newsday published a letter to the editor, headlined “Say no to gay marriages” and signed by Valentine Young, with which I fully agreed. Young’s position was that the legalisation of same-sex marriages had brought God’s wrath upon the United States of America (certain states anyway) because …
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