The Guardian didn’t do a shitty thing; they did a shitty job. Fleeing from journalistic intelligence, skill and artfulness, they saw the kernel of a legitimate news story, wrapped it in cultural conformity and late afternoon testosterone, then dropped that obzocky boulder into dirty water. The splatter soiled; the shame …
Read More »Media Monitor: Go brave, Guardian Media; just keep right on maccoing Michelle-Lee
As a once respected media house, the Guardian may well believe maccoing to be its thing. But as a former journalism lecturer, I am very sure it isn’t mine. I am not, therefore, in the least interested in knowing who Michelle-Lee Ahye’s partner is. Or his or her sex. Or his or her gender. …
Read More »Dear Editor: Fear factor; the Guardian’s disturbing headline story on Michelle-Lee Ahye
“Irrespective of where one stands on LGBTQ rights, the story was shameful. It demeaned one of our island’s greatest athletes [Michelle-Lee Ahye] for no countervailing journalistic purpose. Not only was the premise of the story flawed, the merits of it too.” The following Letter to the Editor on today’s Trinidad …
Read More »Dear Editor: Recognising human rights of others is not a zero-sum game
“What we often fail to realise is that human rights are not a zero-sum game and recognising rights on the left does not remove rights on the right. “Recognising the human rights of former slaves to be free did not diminish the human rights of the former colonials to freedom. …
Read More »BOOM! Bye bye, buggery laws; High Court declares sections 13 and 16 unconstitutional
Justice Rampersad: “The claimant, and others who express their sexual orientation in a similar way, cannot lawfully live their life, their private life, nor can they choose their life partners or create the families that they wish. To do so would be to incur the possibility of being branded a …
Read More »Same-sex “soul” brothers (and sisters); gay/lesbian interactions in Africa and the Diaspora
The issue of homosexuality and same-sex relationships as it pertains to people of African and Indian descent is an extremely divisive one. As I pointed out in my preceding article, regarding African people, it is as deeply contentious in Africa as it is here in the Americas. Some of that …
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 »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 »Dear Editor: Are women less equal than men? Media should leave Weekes’ private life alone!
“Men who hold high office in our society are never asked these questions by our journalists, regardless of the number of rumours that fly about on social media. That is because they are entitled to have their most private lives kept private, save and except where it seriously affects their …
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