The latest religious news affecting the LGBT community in the UK and internationally.
An Indonesian province said Tuesday it is ordering Muslim female flight attendants landing in the region to don a hijab upon arrival — or face punishment by religious police. Muslim women in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, are required to wear the Islamic headscarf under religious law, while non-Muslim females can opt to wear modest clothing instead. (more…)
Hazel E star of the Love & Hip-Hop Hollywood TV show is apparently asking her gay fans to forgive her after saying “burn in hell just like God said in the bible”!
She made the comment in a comment on her boyfriend’s already homophobic Instagram post, which proclaimed that he said he hoped all gays would die and go to hell.
Why did this all come about? Well, some troll apparently accused her boyfriend, Rose Burgundy of being gay and he was not happy about it. Taking to Instagram he wrote, “You really want to know how I feel about gays so bad well here you go I hope all gays die and go to hell…”
Hazel-E then commented under his post saying, “Burn in hell just like God said in the Bible!”
TMZ gave the star a platform to explain herself and her remarks.
In a video, she says that she didn’t think her comment was a good idea and that she relied on the LGBT community for supporting her career. She also said that she didn’t mean the entire community – just that one troll.
She said, “OMG, my life this hair, this makeup, this glam, my world would like, fall apart without the LGBT community”
Watch as she asks for forgiveness and then tries to explain her comment away.
Ermmm… No
He went on to say those religious believers could also face discrimination suits and bullying if the bill is passed. But what about the bullying and discrimination homosexuals have faced for years? He clearly doesn’t care about the homosexuals facing this. Hypocrisy. And such a caring attitude for a religious leader. Please excuse my sarcasm.
He told worshippers that the government should “keep out of the friendship business and out of the bedroom.” Maybe he should take his own advice and keep out of the situation also. What right does being the Archbishop give him to interfere in friendship and bedroom matters?
“The state has no business telling us who we should love and how, sexually or otherwise.” In his arrogance, he is, ironically, showing support of same-sex marriage. Thank you for that Archbishop. For once, we might actually agree on a point. No one should play God and tell anyone who they can love or marry. Pun intended. The fact we still need to vote on such matters is a disgrace in itself.
This delightful human being carried on saying that it’s best for children to have a mother and a father. So Archbishop, what about the poor children who have been bought up in a single parent family because one parent died? Or the awful stories we hear of children being sexually abused by their mother and father?
I’m no genius, but that is clearly not best for children. Issues in our society are not so black and white. It’s not a simple case of stating children should have heterosexual parents, one being a woman and one being a man.
In my eyes, it’s best for children to have a role model who cares for them and loves them unconditionally and teaches them right from wrong. This could be a single parent or a mother and father or a mother and mother or a father and father.
He continued in his arrogant preaching by saying if marriage is redefined, it will be very hard to speak up for real marriage anymore. What is real marriage, Archbishop? Beg my pardon for my simplistic views, but I thought marriage was the joining of two people who love each other whilst committing themselves, for richer, poorer, in sickness and in health etc.
He said the vote had implications for religious freedom. This is actually so angering because the vote actually has massive implications for human freedom. The freedom for people to marry who they want to marry.
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The CU was banned from attending and recruiting student members at the college’s Freshers’ Fair this year after organisers said that their presence could cause harm to communities “struggling to feel welcome in Oxford.”
President of the JCR, Hubert Au, wanted the event to be a “secular environment.”
Au wrote, “Christianity’s influence on many marginalised communities has been damaging in its methods of conversion and rules of practice, and is still used in many places as an excuse for homophobia and certain forms of neo-colonialism”.
The decision was reached through discussions with the JCR Welfare subcommittee.
In the end, a general, multi-faith religious stall was allowed at the fair on the understanding that no representatives from any of the faith societies staffed it. There was a vote by students at the college, on Sunday that said the decision was a ” violation of free speech and religious freedom.” The motion prohibited the barring of official religious societies from future freshers’ fairs.
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Indonesian police have detained 58 men including several foreigners in a raid on a gay sauna, an official said Saturday, the latest sign of a backlash against homosexuals in the Muslim-majority country. Police late Friday raided a building in the capital Jakarta that houses a sauna and a gym after they received information from the public… (more…)
The Anglican Church on Tuesday disciplined its Scottish branch for deciding to allow same-sex couples to get married in its churches. The Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) voted in June to change its law on marriage, removing the reference to it being between a man and a woman. As a result the first gay wedding in a… (more…)
Peter Matthews and Alistair Dinnie have made history after becoming the first same-sex wedding to take place in a church wedding. The marriage was permitted because rules around gay marriages in churches were relaxed earlier this year – but only for churches in Scotland.
The couple Peter Matthews and Alistair Dinnie were married at St John’s Church, run by the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC).
The Scottish Episcopal Church was the first Christian church in the UK to allow same-sex marriage in its churches. The rule change was not mandated however and clergy will not be forced to officiate at those marriages if it goes against their conscience.
The amendment to canon law on marriage, which removed the stipulation that marriage is only between a man and a woman, was carried by the Synod in Edinburgh.
Same-sex marriages cannot take place in Church of England churches or at all in Northern Ireland.
Rev. Peta Evans is to join the church in Brighton as an Associate Pastor. The Village Metropolitan Community Church is a church which was created by LGBT+ Christians, their families, their friends and allies.
The Reverend’s first sermon is due to be given on the 8th October at 6 PM at the Village MCC. In 2010 Peta left Brighton to train a clergy intern in North London and now is returning to Brighton
When not ministering, Peta is a care-worker and tailor.
Rev. Peta said, “Returning to Brighton, I am excited to serve again in the community which first welcomed me and supported me in both my ministry journey and my gender transition. I would love to see the sincere passion and integrity of The Village MCC reach out even more widely to people of all ages, gender identities and walks of life.
“I am also enthusiastic about reclaiming the Bible from those who have tried to make it a weapon against those who are different, and I’m starting a group for Trans people to do just that, ReTranslation, to look at the text for themselves without past interpretations getting in the way. I have a love for Celtic spirituality, which weaves together the practical and the spiritual, finding depth and delight in all things, no matter how mundane, and for creative expressions of spirituality, which I hope to share with The Village in the coming months.”
Rev. Michael Hydes, Senior Pastor of The Village MCC said, “I’m looking forward to working with Rev. Peta. Their rootedness in Celtic Christianity and experience working in the Trans communities are just two of the many gifts they bring to their work. I know we’ll all be enriched by their participation in our church life and leadership within our community of faith.”
A Twitter user who called Alex, who bills himself “Sassy Gay Republican” went viral after establishing a GoFundMe campaign to help pay medical bills he alleges his insurance is unwilling to cover. This in itself is an all-too-common occurrence in the United States, where healthcare is not considered a fundamental right but a luxury.
A Sassy Gay Republican DRAMA in Four Acts. ?? pic.twitter.com/O3tNiTg56A
— Billy, Just Billy (@BillyArmagh) September 20, 2017
For argument’s sake, though, let’s assume everything Alex is saying is true, because it provides an interesting news angle into something the gay community needs to reckon with: the growing number of young, white gay men attracted to the far-right and neo-fascist movements.
Free healthcare just means more $ taken from your paycheck, higher taxes for funding, less hours at work to save $, and huge wait lists.
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) April 23, 2017
Before y’all seriously embarrass yourselves for calling my campaign a scam, I’ll give you this time to apologize before the truth comes out.
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) September 21, 2017
First, let’s clear something up. Debating Alex’s views on health care misses the wider point and is, in fact, a waste of time. He isn’t a hypocrite. Alex has said he is against state-funded healthcare but has no problem begging strangers online for a handout.
American conservatives opposed to public health care contend that individuals are responsible for their own medical coverage, and charity (including crowdfunding on sites like GoFundMe) is one way to do that. The argument isn’t that people shouldn’t willingly pool resources to help one another, but rather that they shouldn’t be forced to pool resources through taxation, which is what socialised medicine requires.
Regardless of what you think about the state’s role in providing healthcare (and I fundamentally disagree with Alex here), but he’s not a hypocrite. This is ideologically consistent.
Free healthcare just means more $ taken from your paycheck, higher taxes for funding, less hours at work to save $, and huge wait lists.
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) April 23, 2017
The reason millions are falling off of healthcare is because Obama forced millions of us on it, even if we didn’t want to be.#healthcarebill
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) June 22, 2017
Yet debating this one point is to miss the forest for the trees. While this whole incident raises a lot of interesting questions – about healthcare, about the role of Twitter in political discourse, about the power imbalance between celebrities and the rest of us (Chrissy Teigan helped this story to go viral) – the most jarring question is why Alex is a Trump-supporting “redhat” to begin with. How did this young white gay man arrive at such a radically different worldview to the majority of our community and why do so many other young white gay men seem to be following down the same path?
I touched on this earlier this year in an essay for my blog, The Curious American. It largely piggybacks off an article by Laurie Penny which discusses her experiences with Milo Yiannopolous – the standard-bearer for the gay hard right – and his acolytes. Since then, several other pieces have been written on the gay attraction to neo-fascist movements in the US, UK, and Germany. In an article for the New Yorker (which later appeared at The Cut), Maureen O’Connor explains that “gay men are remarkably prominent – if not exactly abundant – in the alt-right universe,” mentioning Yiannopolous, the journalist Chadwick Moore (whom I wrote about for the Independent in February), and “Twinks 4 Trump” founder and Gateway Pundit blogger Lucian Wintrich as standard bearers of this homofascist movement.
O’Connor, as I did in my essay for The Curious American, links the gay appeal of the “alt-right” (which to be clear is really just doublespeak for far-right, neofascism, and white supremacy) to a hypermasculine yet camp aesthetic. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes perfect sense that hypermasculinists such as Trump would appeal to camp, flamboyant men like Yiannopolous and Wintrich who fetishise “Daddy” (as they call Trump) and Black men (in the case of Yiannopolous).
In doing so, they knowingly play on the stereotype of Black men as “bulls” who are hypersexual and dominant – a trope that goes back to Jim Crow when Black men were painted as sexually predatory and a threat to white women and white womanhood. Meanwhile, other gay men swoon over the leader of the so-called “alt-right movement” Richard Spencer, who has been held up as a far-right sex symbol by even the mainstream media.
Still, other gay men are attracted to the far-right movements currently gaining traction in the mainstream because of an innate Islamophobia. Trump and his ilk used the Pulse massacre – in which an American-born Muslim slaughtered 49 people at a gay dance club in Orlando – to stoke Islamophobia within the gay community. It worked remarkably well, not just in the United States, but abroad. As CNN reported earlier this month, many German gay men are turning to the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party because of anti-Muslim prejudice. The party opposes same-sex marriage, yet that doesn’t matter to their gay supporters who view Islam as a violent, existential threat to themselves.
I think the saddest part about Islam is if you come out as gay, your own family & religion would rather you be dead than love you.#ShariaLaw
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) June 22, 2017
You can’t support gay people AND Muslims at the same time. This just proves you’re a fake, pandering for votes. Islam and gays DO NOT mesh! https://t.co/SeEGTq3YJT
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) June 27, 2017
While ISIS clearly has some medieval views on homosexuality and routinely throws gay men off roofs, this is like comparing Ugandan Christians (who routinely execute LGBT people) to MIke Pence, whose own evangelical beliefs are used to justify his opposition to LGBT equality. In America, the majority of Muslims think it’s fine to be gay – far outstripping their evangelical Christian counterparts.
In Britain, the picture is bleaker – just over half of British Muslims polled think homosexuality should be illegal while most Christians have liberalised their views on homosexuality since 1990. But when you look at hate crime statistics, most anti-gay violence in the US, UK, and Germany is perpetrated by non-Muslims – complicating the argument that Islam is the greatest threat to Western gays, regardless of polled views.
Which brings us back to Alex, whose tweets (two of which I’ve posted above) illustrate a deep but unwarranted Islamophobia. Whether this was the primary motivation for him to support Trump, I don’t know. After all, whilst he’s vehemently pro-Trump, he seems to oppose Vice President Mike Pence, who is notoriously homophobic and anti-gay.
I will not Support Mike Pence, a man who thinks our society will collapse because of gay marriage. He is not gay friendly. Not at all.
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) August 28, 2017
Mike Pence is no friend of mine. Trump, on the other hand, is. pic.twitter.com/A2fFVjrb1h
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) August 28, 2017
This really underscores a key point. Many of these gay men who are fascinated with the alt-right are turned off by traditional conservatism as defined by the Tory Party in the UK, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Germany, and the Republican establishment in the USA. That is a conservatism that plays on outright prejudices (making opposition to same-sex marriage a key platform, for example) whilst the “alt-right” – while nearly universally opposing LGBT civil rights – feigns acceptance and even borrows from gay culture (with the camp shtick of Yiannopolous and Wintrich and the hypermasculine ideal of others).
Indeed, Alex himself, in a filmed diatribe released following his viral tweets, says that his sexuality isn’t an issue at Trump rallies. Yet this anecdote isn’t backed up by any polling data currently available: 59% of Trump supporters oppose same-sex marriage according to a Rasmussen poll from June. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll earlier this month found only 37% of Trump voters back equal marriage.
This is for the crazy influx of haters after a few of my posts went viral. https://t.co/myTiNF2FTN
— Sassy Gay Republican (@sassygayrepub) September 20, 2017
Alex is but one young man, but he is indicative of a larger trend of white gay men moving to the far right. His sudden viral fame provides an excellent jumping off point not to debate the merits of crowdfunded healthcare but rather to ask ourselves, as a community, why so many of our young men are being drawn to a decidedly anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim movement.
This is something the wider LGBT community is going to have to grapple with over the coming years, and while I fully recognise I don’t present many answers here, I think it’s time we start talking about why young white gay men like Alex are radicalising, and what it means for the wider LGBT movement. Because right now, these alt-right gay men are driving the entire community towards a head-on collision with fascism.
Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.
Despite having one of the largest LGBT+ prides in the world, a court in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, has ruled that homosexuality is a disease and that so-called “gay cure” therapy is legal.
Judge Waldemar Claudio de Carvalho ruled that homosexuality can be treated as a disease and that conversion therapy as a means of curing it, is legal. The ruling has caused widespread condemnation and concern amongst LGBT+ people and their allies.
The judge overruled a 1999 resolution which outlawed therapists from treating homosexuality.
The appeal on that resolution was put forward by an evangelical Christian, Rozangela Justino, who was banned from practising after offering conversion therapies.
A number of high-profile organisations and people have rallied against the ruling saying that they will appeal the decision. Toni Reis, who heads the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Alliance, said the ruling was a step in the wrong direction plans to appeal at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Brazil’s psychology council says it would appeal the injunction also.
Speaking to the Guardian, David Miranda, a gay councillor in Rio de Janeiro said,
“This decision is a big regression to the progressive conquests that the LBGT community had in recent decades”.
Brazil also has one of the highest crime and murder rates against LGBT+ people in the world. In 2016 it was recorded that one LGBT+ person was killed every day in Brazil.