In an recent television interview, the spokesperson for Al Jama-ah, Advocate Shameemah Salie made several statements and claims that were terribly misguided, lacking in any basis of truth and… she was so wrong, actually, that it is virtually impossible to even conjure, in jest, the Epicurean idea that there are intellectual gains to be had from being wrong because you have the opportunity to learn something new.

Almost everything Salie said was either without substance, contradictory or terribly disingenuous. And I am not referring to the way she pivoted and deflected questions in a way that would make Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s most loyal defenders, cringe.

It is not so much mendacity that shaped Salie’s responses, but precisely the disingenuousness and an absence — or avoidance — of the coldest facts about her political party, the religion upon which it rests, and the glaring contradictions.

Taken altogether the answers she gave were the cynosure of “political lying” that grew in strength and size with each utterance. We can grab hold of anything and everything Salie said, and get your hands filthy with the muck of mendacity. From that point onward, nobody would (even) deign to take Salie seriously.

Minority political party throws shade on minority groups

Salie’s main claim, presented as “the feeling of the majority,” was that the LGBTQI+ community, which she said — correctly — were a minority, were forcing their beliefs, values and lifestyle onto others.

Seriously now? Al Jama-ah is, in truth, itself a minority in Parliament and in politics. By her own logic, nobody should allow the Islamic party to foist its beliefs, values and way of life onto others.

Let us stay with this. I am almost completely certain that the LGBTQI+ community does not want everyone to become gay. I would wager a large amount of what is in my small bank account (it’s somewhere around R900), that Al Jama-ah would want more people to become members of the country’s Muslim party.

Also, the LGBTQI+ community is not going around signing up “gays”. Being gay is not a choice, like, say being a Muslim, Christian or Jew. You can always change your religion. Religious conversion is almost always out of choice. Unless you believe in supernatural beings that can speak your mother tongue…

As for being gay, you don’t someday wake up and say, “I think I want to be gay.” Homosexuality is not a disease, nor is it a mental disorder, or some debilitating affliction that can be cured. A significant body of scientific research has shown that “same-sex attraction is at least partly genetic and biologically based”. (I am actually a bit disappointed that I have to explain this; it is really elementary-school level stuff that a whole advocate should know).

Constitutional rights apply to everyone

Another point Salie made is that “everyone, we agree, should enjoy the constitutional rights of our country. Groups should not take advantage of imposing their rights and ideologies on others and interpret rights in a biased manner.”

This sounds good, but it is intellectually clumsy. First, the LGBTQI+ community as a “group”, can and should, necessarily, “enjoy the constitutional rights of our country”. Second, as far as I know (I have been following this issue in various ways for more than three decades), gay people have never sought to “impose their rights and ideologies”. Homosexuality is not an ideology.

Three, as for interpreting rights in a biased manner, I would say that Salie is doing the exact thing, and we all, each one of us, interprets rights with some kind of bias. If you’re Jewish, Christian or Hindu, you might well look at the Bill of Rights, and how it affects you, your family and community.

Salie insisted, in the interview with Stephen Grootes, that the LGBTQI+ community was a minority “who is imposing an agenda and a narrative on the majority, and this has been subtly happening for a while now, and now it’s being pushed onto our family structures and on the rights of parents and families to educate their children, especially with regard to the religious beliefs, the traditional and the cultural beliefs of families… are being impacted by a minority group.”

This is getting repetitive and tedious.

Educating children to better understand the society and the world in which they live is rarely a bad thing. Making children aware of people around them, and letting them know, understand and celebrate diversity is, also, rarely a bad thing (I have a habit of saying “almost always” or “rarely” because I always leave room for error).

The alternative is, of course, that you can shield your children (at home) from the outside world, but someday they may run into someone who does not look like them, who does not speak the same language, who dresses differently, and whose skin is darker or lighter… It’s probably a good thing to let your children know that what goes on in the neighbour’s bedroom is none of their business.

I have read a few books and visited 65 countries from South Korea to Patagonia, and I have never come across a gay person, nor have I read anywhere, of a gay person who wanted to change the “family structure” or alter “the rights of people”. If anything, people in the LGBTQI+ community simply want to be recognised, allowed to live their lives, enjoy the privacy of their bedrooms, and be protected from homophobes.

As citizens who enjoy constitutional rights, this is the least that they want. I am aware, of course, that as a “straight person” I cannot fully represent the LGBTQI+ community. I do, nonetheless, believe that this is not about gay people; it is about what society we want to live in. I don’t want to live in a country, or be part of a society that discriminates and excludes people because of their personal choices.

Sodom and Gomorrah

There is a lot more in Salie’s statements that really falls flat. Most of all, she parades her offensiveness through a type of certainty of false certainties. She peddles falsities and then authenticates them with more falsities. Her parting shot came out of left field. “At the end of the day,” she said “we’re already living in Sodom and Gomorrah [bywords for debauchery] and you know that. The murders, the rapes, the LGBTQI+ community…” 

Let those last few words sink in, dear reader, and you will be forgiven for driving a hammer through your computer monitor (metaphorically, of course).

I cannot, in good faith engage with all that stuff about “murders” and “rapes”… We can, of course, go on and on about how the reportedly human, kind, generous and munificent god brutally slaughtered people.

Or we can raise questions about when Lot’s two daughters conspired to have children of their own and made their father drunk with wine to the point where he was unaware that his daughters were sexually abusing him (Genesis 19:35). These things will be justified by fundamentalists and evangelicals.

I’m not sure that the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah was meant to signal the end times, or whether it was something that actually happened. There is enough literature to suggest that Salie’s “Sodom and Gomorrah” reference is comically false, or simply the product of some adventurous daydreamer.

Much of the biblical account, as history, is really just stories written by men, and passed down by men…. Here I want to present a challenge to Salie. Present evidence that the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah, that the places actually existed, and that the story is irrefutably true. If she is unable to provide this evidence, the type of eschatology she suggests is just jibber jabber.

As for the suggestion that the LGBTQI+ community is seeking to expand, well there is at least one religion that is permanently proselytising. It is a Muslim’s duty to da’wa, to seek converts. There is no such da’wa in the LGBTQI+ community. They simply want to be heard, accepted and enjoy the protection that everyone else in society takes for granted. DM