queer-ass folk

[freckles_and_doubt]

Back at work, alas. On the upside, it's pretty dead, and I'm mostly cruising the internet and answering email backlogs in a desultory fashion. I can't work out if it's an upside or a downside that the Japanese Peace Lily in my office has produced two flowers while I was away: it seems a bit of a pointed commentary on my ineffectual druiding ("look! I do better without you!").

Making Light pointed me to today's happy dose of religious bigotry, now with bonus illogic and out-of-context references to Catullus. Apparently all men are actually latently gay and permitting gay marriage will only encourage them. Mostly this speaks volumes about the latent gay urges of the writer, don't you think? Homosexuality is never such a bugaboo as when you're trying to deny it in yourself. (He's righteously and rather entertainingly hacked to shreds in the comments, I'm pleased to say).

It's making me ponder, though, and alerting the Department of Logical Extrapolation. We're in South Africa, home of a liberal constitution I'm rather proud to live under, which explicitly states that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is not permitted. By this logic, surely it's not OK for a religious figure to stand up in a South African pulpit and denounce homosexuality as wrong? by doing this, don't they "discriminate directly or indirectly" against homosexuals, most importantly by teaching and encouraging discrimination?

And if this is the case, surely it's theoretically possible to take them to court? As far as I know the Bill of Rights's provisions on discrimination are only actually translated into law in the case of employment equity and right to marriage, but the Constitution is supposed to be binding on the courts. Point 8.3 of the Bill of Rights states that "When applying a provision of the Bill of Rights to a natural or juristic person in terms of subsection (2), a court ­... in order to give effect to a right in the Bill, must apply, or if necessary develop, the common law to the extent that legislation does not give effect to that right". If someone tried to sue a church for frothing anti-gay sentiment, the court would be obliged to create a precedent based on the constitution in order to deem whether this was a crime.

So I'm interested in why this hasn't happened yet. Am I misreading the constitutional notion of "discrimination", so that saying that gays are evil isn't actually discrimination? because, ye gods, it really is. Or does no-one call them on it because of the usual failure of political will in the face of large-scale and dearly-held beliefs? I cannot sufficiently state how happy it would make me to have every narrow-minded fundamentalist church in this country slapped with the requirement to shut the fuck up with regard to their personal bigotries about homosexuality, because "it's my religion!" cannot trump "it's illegal". But that's going to happen like an academic post in science fiction is going to fall into my lap tomorrow. More's the pity.

Comments

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Goodness me, I just read that gay marriage thing. I had better let my sister know that she has been wrong all these years on ... gosh, so many counts.
Also, I see there is a postscript, which continues the (rather desperate) discussion. Our Man in Homophobia bemoans the existence of the cruel commenters and blames their presence on another blogger, whom he then slags. OMiH says that *he* (unlike the slagee) "would never publish anything that I wasn't comfortable with my kids reading". Okay, so homophobia is okay for kids to read, then.
Not on my planet.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The postscript rather amused me because he absolutely, categorically and completely doesn't in any way address the actual criticisms levelled at him, he simply goes off on a ranting personal attack against the person who linked him. He's kinda the textbook lack of actual rhetorical logical.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Don't you just want to smack him for his shallow view of women? The little lady, sitting on the porch rocker, waiting for Jimbo to come ask her to marry him, only he won't because he's shacked up with Billybob. The horror. The sighs. The pining into old age, bereft because she doesn't have a Man. She should just go find herself a Mary-Sue and live happily ever after.

Also, I don't see how legalising gay marriage will lead to gay promiscuity. Isn't one of the ideas of marriage (often?) to promise fidelity? Am I just naive? (well, the answer to that one is yes, I already know that. Hmm.)

Gah.

[(Anonymous)]

That's what drives me nuts about the anti-gay marriage brigade. They claim to be protecting family values... by, er, denying people the right to form a family? How does that work?

scroob

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's about the legal definition of "discriminate". You may have to show some specific practical disadvantage caused by it. That doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a groovy lawsuit waiting to happen, though.

Tangentially, I would really enjoy it if there were some legal route to force hatemongers (or any other kind of dumbmongers) to provide evidence for their claims, failing which they'd be officially labelled as rubbish. I know, sounds a lot like science, and the idea that that should form the basis for public policy is of course hopeless fantasy.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the best you could get out of this is a hate-speech thing, which is notoriously difficult in the context of religious expression.
IIRC discrimination in the legal sense requires some pretty specific things, eg, demonstrable disadvantage or denial of service opportunity in a specific environment in which the discriminator has the power to do such things. Being a prick in the public sphere doesn't count I think.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

someone had posted there a really good translation of Catullus #32

And now sadly it's gone. Philistines. O tempora o mores!