11:54 PM
Editor
(In
response to a message: “In order to avoid a civil unrest among the
citizens of the Maldives, please report the event ‘Dhivehi Gay Pride
March’ for the purpose of bringing it to the Facebook Management’s
attention and urge the organizers of the event to call it off as it is
in violation of the Islamic Shari’ah and Law.”)
This is
the essential problem with “Islamic Shariah and Law.” So much of our
religion says that no person may judge another in matters of religion;
that only God can judge, so when people set themselves up as religious
lawmakers and judges they effectively make themselves partners of God.
Of
course the state holds all the cards so any theological argument falls
by the wayside in the face of practical safety considerations. Is this
in fact worth the risk of violence and imprisonment? Any serious
struggle for freedom has to face those risks. Having been beaten and
arrested, many of my friends and I are in very illustrious company with
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi – but I don’t necessarily
recommend it. We have legal assurances in the US that may not exist in
the Maldives. You can only decide for yourselves when the risks are
worth taking.
If you do go through with this heroic act I
do hope that you will honor your own culture and our religion and NOT
make it like an American GLBT Pride Parade, at least not like a
contemporary one. I was at the first “Stonewall March” in New York in
1970, the year after the Stonewall Uprising and we simply marched. Some
were in drag, most were not, and we kept our clothes on. There is,
after all, a difference between pride and shamelessness. Over the years
the whole affair, in a typically American pattern of commercialization,
has become a crowded affair of commercialized sexuality, pornography,
and alcohol. Vendors (more straight than gay) crowd the “rally” to sell
trinkets and promote large companies that have done nothing to advance
our cause, but pay lip service to “equality” just because our money is
just as much desired as any heterosexual’s.
Bare breasts
and bare butts show off bodies that are worked out and sculpted in what
might be seen as an apollonian ideal, but few of these musclemen know
what “apollonian” means. They are aspiring to the “standards” set by
pornographers, and the peer pressure to “measure up” pushes young gay
men to focus on their bodies, to ignore their souls. Steroids are
commonly used to build muscle, but those have very dangerous effects on
the internal organs and the inner spirit. Drug addiction and alcoholism
are very high in our community as crutches for men and women who pursue
shallow ends and ignore their deeper, spiritual needs.
Our
American gay community has been much shaped and developed within the
context of American capitalism, a milieu of sexual exploitation and
dehumanization. We see the same thing among heterosexuals, but a “gay
community” defines itself by sexual values. We are often cut off from
our families and/or otherwise have to define ourselves without the
continuity and baselines others take for granted, so we SHOULD think
hard and seriously about what our community should be. The early gay
liberationists of the 1970’s did that, but AIDS killed our best and
brightest and that leadership lay dead and buried as the exploiters took
the lead.
You have an opportunity to create something
truly different and new. I pray that your Maldivian GLBT community will
not blindly mimic our commercialized frenzy for instant gratification,
but rather will work on integrating sexuality and spirituality in a
healthy, positive way. Respect for your traditions and religion is
absolutely necessary, not in a hidebound slavish repetition of what your
grandparents did, but in a thoughtful way that appreciates where you
have come from, allowing those traditions and values to grow, to be a
basis for more freedom and personal responsibility, not the chains that
prevent that growth.
The American GLBT community has many
great strengths and accomplishments, but we also have many flaws, very
deep problems. Please, look critically at both and take this
opportunity to learn from our successes and our mistakes. Perhaps you
can create a community that can teach us how to be better than we are –
InshaAllah!
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This post is in memory of Jack Fertig who passed away on 5 August 2012. He will always be in our memories and hearts.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'oon!
Read more about Jack Fertig
Posted in: Opinion
