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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Banishing All Bullies!
I have to comment on a missing element in the article and, presumably, in the report itself. WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?!? Where are the parents whose children are being tortured by their peers and where are the parents of the torturers? There is the true crux of the problem. If parents of gay children cared about their kids they'd be on the school boards like flies on honey. And if the parents of the other children weren't teaching bigotry and supporting prejudice against homosexuals where would their children get license to torment their fellow students? How horrible that homosexual children have no haven in their homes! I well recall my father's antipathy toward his "sissy" son and my mother's disgust whenever I feigned illness to avoid going to school. It's no wonder gay kids have a higher rate of suicide. Where do they turn? I hope everyone who reads your article today recognizes the need to do something to address this situation. Write to your school boards. Support local gay youth projects. Write to local elected officials. Write to local anti-gay churches that reinforce parents' homophobia. Ask them to help all the kids. Even if we have no children of our own we have an obligation to help our kind survive and thrive.
Regards, This Woman in Egypt Needs Your Help On the 6 March 2001 a weekly newspaper published an interview I had given a few days before I left for a long lecture tour in Germany, France and the United States. In this interview I reiterated the views I have defended in all my writings during the last forty years and pronounced publicly in many parts of the world including the Arab Region. In these views I link questions of sex and gender to politics, economics and culture at the local and international level and strike at the roots of all forms of exploitation and oppression whether class, patriarchal, racial, national, or religious Those who are in power have always tried to silence my voice. These attempts to silence me have increased steadily in the past years which have witnessed the predominance of capitalist neo-liberal forces and their allies including religious fundamentalism. In the interview which I gave I repeated my opposition to the veiling of women which implies that women are only bodies, to polygamy, to inequality in inheritance rights and insisted that all of these were in contradiction with the true spirit of Islam and the correct interpretation of the Qoranic text.
The case is appearing before a personal law court ( Shariat Court ) on the 18 June 2001.But since all cases must be raised by the General Prosecutor himself according to the amendments made to the law of Hizba, the same lawyer sent a request to the General Prosecutor asking him to have me tried on the same grounds. If the General Prosecutor agrees I can be tried and sentenced to a period of imprisonment for attacking religion or separated from my husband by Hizba on grounds of apostasy. We are waiting to see what will happen. What you are all doing is wonderful and we are very thankful to you. Expand it more and more until it becomes an irresistible wave .You will be defending the human rights and dignity of many men and women in our region and all over the world. Send your protests: To: Farouk Seif Al Nasr, the Minister of Justice, Lazoughly square, Cairo, Egypt; To: Maher Abdel Wahabthe General Prosecutor, The High Court, July 26 Street, Cairo, Egypt ( Fax 202 5757165 ); To: Hosni Mobarak President of the Arab Republic of Egypt; To: the First Lady Suzanne Mobarak with copies of everything to the respective Egyptian embassy in your country. Nawal El Saadawi Roman Catholic Bishops Disagree A public disagreement is brewing between Catholic bishops in the United States, and around the world, over giving Communion to Gay Catholics wearing the Rainbow Sash.
This Pentecost gay Catholics wore the sash in Cathedrals in Melbourne, Chicago, Minneapolis/St Paul and in Rochester NY. However, in contrast with Cardinal George in Chicago and Bishop Denis Hart in Melbourne, Archbishop Harry Flynn of Minneapolis authorised the giving of Communion to sash wearers, as did Bishop Matthew Clark in Rochester. This is the first time Rainbow-Sash wearers have been given Communion in any Cathedral anywhere in the world. One conservative Catholic man in Rochester argued with the priest after the mass where Communion was given, and said he had videotaped the service and would appeal to the Vatican. The giving of Communion is a breakthrough for justice, inclusion and common sense. If the Church is to have any relevance in the twenty-first century, it must open its mind and start listening to what the people of our time are saying. Archbishop Flynn and Bishop Clark have only done what many bishops privately admit must be done - they have welcomed people with dignity and respect and opened the possibility of a new kind of dialogue and a new kind of Church. It's about time!
Michael B Kelly 
© 1997-2002 BEI |
I read the article in today's 'zine about the Human
Rights Watch findings about schools and gay
children. It brought back memories of my own
childhood that are over 40 years old but are as fresh
to me now as the torture the students in the study
are going through today. Will it never end?!?
Homophobic Archbishop George Pell