You have to be gay to know God : Khumalo, Siya: Books

Contents:

• YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD
• BOOK CORNER: SIYA KHUMALO’S ‘YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD’
• YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD PAPERBACK – 26 APRIL 2018
• YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD KDLE EDN
• YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD

YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD

When Siya first explaed the ncept behd to me, we revelled s potentially subversive ratnale for showg the ravag of relign-based homophobia on our polics, the enomy, and on as people. The Constutn is often removed om South Ains’ liv, ironilly, bee the relig eedom upholds is voked to stifle other rights; s promise of eedom om relign allows those not directly enmhed the practice or effects of relig homophobia to look the other way.

BOOK CORNER: SIYA KHUMALO’S ‘YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD’

Generoly, Siya has said that his choice to speak out on homophobia was a ripple effect of my choice to e out and speak up, om a eply personal vantage, about sexualy and AIDS.

YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD PAPERBACK – 26 APRIL 2018

I shudred wh disappotment as I sensed that my extend fay members’ passn for all livg creatur was tempered by this ia that this guy uld and should have ma life easier for himself by not beg danger’s path; by not actg so … gay. Genis 19, which has the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s stctn and is ually thought of as the Bible’s first reference to homosexualy, tells the patriarch Lot offered his two virg dghters to be raped by the neighbourhood’s mobs stead of his male guts.

YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD KDLE EDN

I uldn’t promise celibacy unls he gave me the strength to overe the sexual urg I already sensed were an extrible part of my humany, but I also uldn’t see myself actually gog ahead wh gay sex.

I joed the South Ain Natnal Defence Force bee livg unr a Constutn that enshred gay people’s rights spe wispread ignorance around them, I wanted to explore and fend as many facets of the ernment that had ma this huge leap forward possible. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell I’d avoid publicisg my sexual orientatn bee there was a game afoot — a tribalistic petn for rourc and posns which beg openly gay would be a handip.

Did we really believe a liberatn movement, whose trag mp stori clud sexual harassment sndals, homophobic ras and unrolved murrs, livered the most progrsive Constutn the world had seen at the time?

YOU HAVE TO BE GAY TO KNOW GOD

Psychiatrist Dr Mart Kantor has said, ‘Attemptg to keep gays and lbians om gettg out of ntrol and makg signifint roads to (and so erodg) straight society is the homophobe’s way to nvce himself that “I am the procs of exertg ntrol over myself”, ’ but at ‘a eper level, many homophob an erotophobia exists that is characterised by an ordate amount of sexual guilt and shame.

’ A judge wryly timated that when Mbeki said standard AIDS theori acce Ains of havg ‘sex wh gay abandon’, he betrayed such a nrotic need to mata an image of Ains that (I believe) looks like the image he projects to the world. She didn’t see why would be a problem that heterosexual people uld look forward to marriage but gay people would be left high, dry and whout a way to ‘tch up’ to the moral requirements of relig law.