Tuesday 28 July 2009

MaltaToday: Here come the morality police

http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/07/26/claudine.html
26.7.9 by Claudine Cassar

It is an amazing fact that some people believe that they have the God-given right to stand in judgement over their fellow human beings. These people go around with a holier-than-thou attitude, and think that they are somehow entitled to force their own set of moral codes on other people – including complete strangers whom they do not know in the slightest.

This week I came across an extreme example of such behaviour – people who mask their intolerance and bigotry behind a cloak of piety.

One of my friends is in a same-sex relationship and lives with her girlfriend. They share an apartment and recently updated their doorbell label to show both their surnames. This was apparently an affront to the people of the neighbourhood, who embarked on a campaign to show their displeasure at the turn of events.

The lady in question is not one to take things lying down – when anonymous letters started showing up in their mailbox, she scanned them and made them available for all her friends to see on Facebook.

I read them, and frankly they were sickening – “what a shame to see such an appalling postal name in a religious family-oriented neighbourhood”; “refrain from continuing your obscene behaviour”. Other missives followed, warning them that they would lose their soul and burn in hell, unless they changed their way of life – and their offending doorbell label.

The anonymous homophobes saw nothing hypocritical about posting letters in someone’s mailbox in the dead of night, when nobody can see them, promising to “pray so that God will heal you both”. It did not strike them as malicious and ‘sinful’ to insult people, and hurt their feelings. Makes you wonder who needs to be healed, doesn’t it?

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