Is this the world we created?
"Find me somebody to love" – but not in Zanzibar if you're gay. And not if you want to celebrate what would have been the 60th birthday of the late, great Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.
Homosexuality was banned on the Tanzanian archipelago just two years ago (there's progress for you) and local Muslims attempted to get Saturday's beach party in Mercury's memory banned, since it would apparently have given local youngsters "the idea that homosexuals are accepted in Zanzibar," explained a spokesman for the association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation (Uamsho).
"We have a religious obligation to protect morals in society," he continued.
You see, this is what's such a piss-off about religions: the religious seem to think that they have some sort of monopoly on 'morals' and can define and enforce them for others. The phrase 'personal faith' means little to them, because they never happier than when they're making sure that they don't keep their faith personal.
Some people wanted to have a beach party to celebrate an artiste who died 15 years ago. So what? Are the religious so insecure in their beliefs that they need to fight absolutely anything that they don't like, even though it in no way materially threatens them (or, presumably, their god)?
Roll on the day when superstition finally dies out.
And happy birthday Freddie Mercury; you would have been 60 today – an entertainer for whom the word 'great' would not have been an exaggeration.
Homosexuality was banned on the Tanzanian archipelago just two years ago (there's progress for you) and local Muslims attempted to get Saturday's beach party in Mercury's memory banned, since it would apparently have given local youngsters "the idea that homosexuals are accepted in Zanzibar," explained a spokesman for the association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation (Uamsho).
"We have a religious obligation to protect morals in society," he continued.
You see, this is what's such a piss-off about religions: the religious seem to think that they have some sort of monopoly on 'morals' and can define and enforce them for others. The phrase 'personal faith' means little to them, because they never happier than when they're making sure that they don't keep their faith personal.
Some people wanted to have a beach party to celebrate an artiste who died 15 years ago. So what? Are the religious so insecure in their beliefs that they need to fight absolutely anything that they don't like, even though it in no way materially threatens them (or, presumably, their god)?
Roll on the day when superstition finally dies out.
And happy birthday Freddie Mercury; you would have been 60 today – an entertainer for whom the word 'great' would not have been an exaggeration.
posted by Amanda Kendal at 11:12 am
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