When I read last Sunday about the government’s intention to build a housing development on lands allocated to the St Augustine Nurseries, it upset me greatly. In the days that followed, I became privy to the Acting Housing Minister’s full statement on the matter as well as the Minister of …
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 »Not Condemning: Sexual harassment is no bad skylark; it’s high time we changed our tune, T&T
John Lennon had already said it back in the last century. And when earlier this year Jimmy Fallon converted Bob Dylan’s old 1964 lyrics into a 2018 message “Your silence speaks louder than those who condone,” Trinidad and Tobago, you needed to be listening; Messrs Lennon and Fallon/Dylan were speaking to …
Read More »Indo-Trinis and “Black Power”: why Bhadase and Dr Williams agreed on issue of Indian-African unity
Someday in the future, when Trinbago nationalism becomes a common experience across our multifaceted demographic, February 1970 will surely be memorialised collectively as the month that precipitated the most significant events in the history of the two-island state since Emancipation. I am motivated to write this piece not only because …
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 »Helon was Rudder-like! St Bernard sees positive calypso change coming from the new generation
The return of the Kings and Queens to Sunday’s Dimanche Gras made for a good show. Calypso won as, although there were too many props, there was no excess of lame melodies, thank God, and no overdose of prosaic lyrics. It was refreshing to hear music back in our calypso; …
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 …
Read More »Change at the top! Helon Francis crowned 2018 Calypso Monarch; Voice finishes second
There was change at the top of the calypso pyramid last night as 24-year-old Helon Francis was crowned the 2018 Calypso Monarch with “Changes”—a powerful social commentary about Trinidad and Tobago’s need for introspection and revolution of thought to address corruption and crime in the two-island republic. Much of the …
Read More »Claude’s Comments: The agenda behind Kamal Persad’s slander and historical distortions
I have a bit of advice for Mr Kamal Persad, coordinator of the research centre of The Indian Review: if you truly wish to defend the reputation of “the Indian-Trinidadian intelligentsia” (your description), as you claim in your latest “letter to the editor” in the Trinidad Express of 6 February, …
Read More »Voice completes Soca Monarch hattrick; can emulate Rudder in Sunday’s calypso final
Aaron “Voice” St Louis can become the first Trinidad and Tobago artiste in 32 years to hold calypso and soca titles in the same season, after he beat the International Soca Monarch field for his third consecutive title last night. Voice’s song “Year for Love” held off Dexter “Blaxx” Stewart’s …
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