Die volgende is geskryf deur André Bekker aan Pierre de Vos na aanleiding van sy brief in die Daily Maverick, The religious fig leaf that conceals the justification of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community (kyk onderaan die brief).

Pierre de Vos het ook ’n jaar gelede gesê dat alle erfporsies aan familie óf geskrap moet word óf baie swaar belas moet word. Kyk:

• Boedel oorgee net begin (17 Junie 2020)
• Privilege and Inheritance: Time to disrupt intergenerational transfers of wealth
• Getting rid of people’s right to inheritance in SA: 5 questions with constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos

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Open Letter to Professor Pierre de Vos

By André Bekker

21 June 2021

Your Daily Maverick opinion piece, The religious fig leaf that conceals the justification of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community, dated 2 May 2021, has reference.

It is regrettable that LGBTQ people are violently attacked or murdered in South Africa in hate crimes, and it is condemned in the strongest terms.

It is also shameful and regrettable that religious people are at times guilty of unjust, unloving and hateful behaviour towards members of the LGBTQ community, and such behaviour can never be condoned.

Placing myself in your shoes, I understand why you have such a strong negative attitude towards religion. Yet, I do not believe that religion can be regulated out of existence. I, for one experience my religion as a way of living. It is part and parcel of my daily life. It informs my very existence.

An attempt to regulate my existence, will result in me accepting God’s authority above that of the state. No warning, fine or jail sentence, yes even death itself, can deter me from my deeply held, sincere heartfelt believes and convictions.

I understand that you would like everybody to accept everything about the LGBTQ community, without questioning it. Unfortunately it is not realistic nor possible. In the same manner that you have objections to religion, the religious community has objections towards certain aspects of the GLBTQ community. Our differences do not make us haters nor do it encourage hate. Would it be fair to accuse you of religiousphobia just because you disagree with the religious world? Would that not be intolerance?

Though gay activism has created a false reality that people are born gay and cannot change, we all know that science never backed it, and is still not backing it. What is clear though is that sexual orientation is flued and people are changing spontaneously as well as by means of therapy and religious experiences.

I am one of those who have changed through a combination of therapeutic interventions and religious experiences, with religion having the greatest impact. As a former homosexual, who shared in the gay lifestyle till the age of 34, another reality unfolded for me from what gay activism initially indoctrinated me with. It lead me to effectively exercise my right to obtain the highest standard of physical and mental health, and it lead me away from the gay lifestyle.

From my early teens I was conscious of the fact that I was exclusively attracted to other males. However, in my heart I naturally knew that it was not normal nor right. I discovered that what psychologists referred to as internalised homophobia is nothing else than my own conscience, which is like a law written in my heart. It causes conflict inside of me and conviction of the wrongs I am doing through thoughts, phantasies and behaviours.

As I got older, I gradually was living like a person who could not see right from wrong. My conscience was getting destroyed. God left me to work my own wicked will. This was a tendency I noticed happened to many others too.

Graciously I came across a passage of Scripture which warned me that people who involve themselves with homosex are unrighteous. It explained that neither will men who let other men use them for sex, nor will men who have sex with other men inherit the kingdom of God. My conscience agreed with God’s word.

Eventually I understood that God created humans as two distinct complementary biological sexes, which causes homosex to be against nature, and sex between a man and a woman natural. It made perfect sense, knowing that same sex partners were incompatible to have sex with each other, having the same biological design. Consequently they cannot be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth in any natural manner. I had to acknowledge that man was meant to function according to its design.

This same passage of Scripture had a ray of hope for a sin burdened soul. I read, “These were some of you.” It continued telling of people who lived as gays, who were washed clean from their unrighteousness. They were made to belong to God. They were declared innocent by God, and were placed in a right relationship with Him. This was done by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. The God Christians serves. What Good News to a guilt ridden sinner, craving for love and happiness, who was experiencing an emptiness so great, which no one or anything could fill. A sinner who was suicidal and had no purpose for living.

It caused me to believe in Christ, become one with Him, and it resulted in me being a new person. I left my old way of living behind. I am now allowing God to continuously transform me by changing my mind completely.

I do not hate a person from the LGBTQ community, if I share with him another reality. He is free to accepts or rejects it. The choice remains his. The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association acknowledge the higher mental and physical health risks the gay community faces. Is it then unloving to show a person the way to better health? If a person can obtain eternal life instead of eternal death, is it unloving to introduce him to such a spiritual possibility?

Professor De Vos, religion and religious people are not your enemies! Religion has the potential to transform you. At the same time you have the right to remain who you believe you are, if that is what you choose.

Former homosexuals and their supporters from the religious community are equal before the law and is born with equal dignity and rights gay people and their supporters enjoys. In a diverse society mutual tolerance is imperative.

Be tolerant and allow former homosexual and their supporters to exercise their right to freely associate and assemble as like-minded people, who exercise their freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Allow them to have a right to freedom of opinion and expression which enabls them to seek, receive and give information and ideas of any kind.

Mr Mandela eloquently said “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Kind Regards

André Bekker

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The religious fig leaf that conceals the justification of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community | Daily Maverick

Over the past few weeks, at least seven gay men and lesbians have been brutally murdered in South Africa in what appears to have been homophobic hate crimes. This statistic does not begin to capture the magnitude of the hate and violence faced by some LGBTQ people in South Africa. This homophobic and transphobic hate (if not always the violence that flows from it) is often justified on religious grounds. But religious beliefs can never justify homophobia and transphobia. It is time for religious leaders and all believers to reject the use of religion to justify bigotry.

We do not know how many LGBTQ people are violently attacked or murdered in South Africa each year in homophobic or transphobic hate crimes. The South African Police Service (SAPS) does not keep statistics on hate crimes, and even if it did, many homophobic and transphobic hate crimes would not be classified as such because of the reluctance of the authorities to acknowledge the homophobic and transphobic motivation behind many of these attacks. (Similarly, authorities seem to be reluctant to acknowledge that attacks on many foreigners are fuelled by xenophobia.)

We do know that several LGBTQ individuals have been brutally murdered over the past few weeks because some news outlets have reported on at least some of these murders. The victims include Bonang Gaele, Nonhlanhla Kunene, Sphamandla Khoza, Nathaniel “SpokGoane” Mbele, Andile “Lulu” Nthuthela, Lonwabo Jack, Buhle Phoswa and Lucky Kleinboy Motshabi. These murders sparked nationwide protests from some members of the queer South African community, who are demanding justice for those murdered because of their queer identity.

There is a real and justifiable fear that not all these murders will be properly investigated and that some of the perpetrators will never be prosecuted and convicted. Fewer than 20% of the estimated 21,000 cases of murder committed in the country annually end up in court, due to poor investigations and botch-ups by prosecutors. Additionally, homophobia and transphobia within the ranks of the SAPS, and police indifference towards the lives of black South Africans who are not wealthy or famous, make it even less likely that all these cases (and all the cases that may not have been reported) will be tackled with the necessary urgency.

But even if the perpetrators of the reported murders are all brought to book, the assault and murder of LGBTQ individuals are likely to continue, because in South Africa our lives do not matter, or matter less because of our sexuality or gender identity. (Of course, how little or how much our lives do matter depends to some extent on our race, class, and gender identity, with middle-class, cisgender, white men far less likely to be the victims of violent attacks, protected as we are by our social and economic status and privilege.)

One of the most powerful sources of homophobic and transphobic hatred in our society remains the homophobia and transphobia endorsed and promoted by religious groups in the name of their religion. In extreme cases, religious leaders wilfully encourage hatred and physical attacks on members of the LGBTQ community.

A notorious example is that of “pastor” Oscar Bougardt, who cheered on the news that members of the Islamic State (Isis) in Syria had executed nine men and a boy for homosexuality. Bougardt commented online that, “We need Isis to come to countries that are homosexual-friendly. Isis please come rid South Africa of the homosexual curse.” This was in breach of a previous court order and Bougardt was subsequently found to be in contempt of court, the High Court ruling that his supposed religious beliefs did not justify his contempt of court.

But in most cases, homophobic and transphobic religious institutions do not wilfully encourage physical attacks on LGBTQ people. Instead, most of these religious groups provide a religious justification for the homophobia and transphobia of their members, by arguing that the duty to discriminate against LGBTQ people is an ethical imperative flowing from their faith.

None of the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church who decided that apartheid was biblically justified, shot and killed protesters at Sharpville or tortured Steve Biko to death. But they did provide apartheid oppressors with a religious justification for their crimes.

When some of their followers then invoke these religious teachings to justify verbal or physical attacks on LGBTQ people, the religious institutions quickly wash their hands of responsibility, much like Pontius Pilate allegedly did. (How one could ever respect or follow a faith premised on the hatred of others and on the belief that one’s God requires one to discriminate against others based on who they love, is not immediately clear to me.)

There are, of course, religious groups who have rejected the homophobic and transphobic aspects of their faith, but the teachings of the religious homophobes and transphobes continue to provide cover for those who wish us harm. Much like the teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church before 1990 – which claimed that apartheid was biblically justified – provided “religious cover” for white Afrikaners who subjected black South Africans to the most extreme kinds of indignities and violence, religious teachings on sexuality and gender now provide religious cover for the indignities visited on LGBTQ people.

When confronted by the corrosive impact of these religious teachings and the harm caused by them, religious leaders and followers tend to argue that because these homophobic and transphobic views are religiously inspired, and because religion is a personal choice protected by the right to freedom of religion, this must mean that their hateful and immoral views cannot be criticised. To criticise these views, so they say, is to attack their faith and thus infringes on their right to religious freedom.

This is, of course, self-serving nonsense. The right to freedom of religion does not include a right not to have your religious views criticised or even mocked, just as your right to freedom of conscience does not include a right not to have your atheism criticised or mocked. But the argument is also dangerous to the extent that it allows individuals to escape censure for their outrageous and harmful views, merely because these are couched in religious terms.

Moreover, it is not as if the argument has not been widely rejected when applied to religiously inspired racism. In 2018 in Isimangaliso Wetland Park and Another v Sodwana Bay Guest Lodge and Another, the KwaZulu-Natal High Court confirmed that André Slade, the owner of Sodwana Bay Guest House, unfairly discriminated against black people by banning them from making use of the guest house.

Slade justified this racist policy by invoking his purported religious beliefs, arguing that the Bible “required racial discrimination” because according to the Bible black people are “classified as animals” and are therefore “not people”.

Not many South Africans will publicly defend Slade because his racist views are grounded in his religious beliefs and that we are obliged to give such religious beliefs a free pass in order to respect his right to freedom of religion. (What might happen in private is, of course, another matter.) The obvious reason for this is that most South Africans will agree (at least in public) that racism is despicable and that the racist religious beliefs used by Slade to justify his racist views are also despicable.

The fact that many South Africans will not similarly agree that homophobia and transphobia are despicable, perhaps says less about their religious views and more about how committed they are to hold on to their homophobic and transphobic views. Individuals who accept that religiously inspired racial prejudices are unacceptable, accept that religion is not infallible and that some religiously inspired views are immoral and harmful. The fact that they cannot accept that religiously inspired homophobia or transphobia are immoral and harmful, constitutes a catastrophic moral failure on their part.

None of the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church who decided that apartheid was biblically justified, shot and killed protesters at Sharpville or tortured Steve Biko to death. But they did provide apartheid oppressors with a religious justification for their crimes.

Similarly, as far as we know, none of the religious leaders who endorse and promote homophobia and transphobia was involved in the murders of Bonang Gaele, Nonhlanhla Kunene, Sphamandla Khoza, Nathaniel “SpokGoane” Mbele, Andile “Lulu” Nthuthela, Lonwabo Jack, Buhle Phoswa and Lucky Kleinboy Motshabi. Yet, in sometimes subtle and not so subtle ways, their teachings provide a religious fig leaf for the discrimination, abuse and murder faced by members of the LGBTQ community.

Religious leaders and their followers who condemn LGBTQ people as immoral or sinful on religious grounds probably believe that they are putting LGBTQ people in the dock and exposing our “immorality”. Instead, they are putting their religion in the dock by exposing its immorality. It is time for such religious leaders and their followers to save their religion from the taint of immorality by rejecting the use of religion to justify homophobic and transphobic bigotry. DM