Wednesday 1 August 2012

Times: Seeing into the gay future

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120703/opinion/Seeing-into-the-gay-future.426992
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 by Kenneth Zammit Tabona

“On a clear day you can see forever”, claim the lyrics of this iconic song from the musical, play and film that have haunted us since 1929 when the play by John Balderston appeared on Broadway. Roughly speaking, the story concerns a reincarnated woman with extrasensory perception; something that the leaders of this country require in great abundance if they wish to survive the maelstrom of problems that face us.



With no parliamentary shindigs we can relax for a bit and wonder whether the couple of honourables who really do not deserve the name will dream up some new distraction to flummox the Prime Minister and prove to us all that, indeed, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

Our concerns were all about Malta resisting the proposed EU-wide suggestion that pensionable age should rise and with it our contributions to the revival of the eurozone that, in my humble opinion, looks rather like throwing our hard-earned money into the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Also, because of Gay Pride last Saturday, we had the Leader of the Opposition issue a hand on heart video about gender equality and how his government is not interested in poking its nose into people’s bedrooms while Chris Said, on the part of the government, presented the smokescreen cohabitation Bill to Parliament.
I do not need ESP to realise that the gay lobby can be determinant in a forthcoming election as, today, there is no stigma to being gay and the trend, quite rightly, is that gay people are and will forever remain an integral part of society. It has taken Maltese politicos long enough to realise the value of the Gay Euro!

There is no longer any need for a gay person to live in a furtive ghetto full of secrets and lies. Yes, the last frontier in social reform will, in fact, be the acceptance and integration of the gay world into the mainstream without fuss and bother and without religious maxims being shoved down our throat by people who have no clue what it is like to be born gay, live gay and have homophobia thrust upon them.

I maintain, as a believer, that if Man were made in the full image and likeness of the Creator then the perfection of the Deity fully embraces a state of being as one simply cannot call being gay a condition that has been part of humanity since Day One.

It may not be in everyone’s ESP to understand what the purpose of being gay is in some Divine Plan of their devising, however, we do know that there is a propensity for gay people to be more creative, more artistic, more literary, more poetic and more colourful than the straight drones in the hive.

Let this not be taken as a general rule but a perception for, as society’s attitude to being gay relaxes, more and more different gay types seem to emerge from the shadows of enforced obscurity into which they were made to hide in before.

Also, lest the “straight drone” image stick, let me say here and now that the term “metrosexual” was not coined for nothing as more and more heterosexuals feel that they can express their creativity without compromising their sexuality.

The divorce trauma we experienced last year has shown that, for starters, religious considerations have little or no influence on the way we think and that the world has galloped ahead immeasurably from the contradictory and obscure doctrines that were devised to keep the Church supreme for the last 2,000 years; a doctrine that, in the very words used by Joseph Muscat in his recent video, invaded the privacy of one’s bedroom!

When I say contradictory I mean it. Imagine being told by a priest who is unmarried, chaste and childless, that as a gay person one must live the same way simply because somewhere in one’s DNA the gay gene precluded attraction to the opposite sex!

Imagine being told that one is “intrinsically evil” when a plethora of members of the same Church, have, for centuries, been sexually abusing little boys!

This is why I tend to largely ignore the mutterings of the Catholic Church in this regard. Sadly, the concerted anti gay PR campaign that the Vatican devised worldwide to deflect the attention of the world from its galloping paedophilia backfired. Had it not, I would not be at all surprised if, today, the great and the good would have been literally or metaphorically burning people like me at the stake.

It was in fact the gift of ESP given to us by the late lamented Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and augmented by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, that enabled the civilised world to come to its own conclusions regarding the true nature of mankind and reject archaic pronouncements about gay people such as being dangerous pollutants in the rainforest and ask the Catholic Church to put its own house in order before casting the first stone.

I still wait for the day when I will see a notice affixed to the church door that will advertise Lenten Sermons for gay persons, single persons, widows, separated persons, divorced persons etc., identifying them as a valid part of society. My ESP tells me that in the not too distant future, I will.

Maybe I am the eternal optimist but we live in a time when information technology has changed our world so completely that we can, at the touch of a button, be gifted with being able to see forever on a clear day.

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