SERMONS OF THE 'ANGLICAN'

A few months ago, the good Lord appeared to me in a dream and inspired my piece: Homosexuality and the Bible. When I wrote it I promised to follow it up with a sermon but the good Lord went mteja all up on me. After months of drinking, walking and talking awaiting divine intervention to no avail, I have decided to take matters in my own hands… so help me God!
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In the beginning God made man. God put man at the centre of the universe and gave him dominion over every plant and every beast. And then God leaned back in his stellar throne; his right leg over his left one and his joint burning brighter than the lights down at the Sarit Centre or Moses’s bush. God looked over his creation and thought that it was good.

And thus God rested. (I can imagine him lounging on a silver lined cloud reading the Science page of the Heaven Trumpet trying to figure out how his E turned out equal to MC2. Or even sitting behind his desk, golden quill pen in hand and his waste basket overflowing with early drafts of his memoirs- memoirs that he would later have ghost written by an excellent array of writers and published as the world’s best selling book collection for centuries till a boy magician called Harry some-shit-or-other arrives to rival him.

I can see him struggling with writer’s block and pulling out a copy of Lucifer’s newly launched porno rag- Angel Dirt- to read under his desk. Many centuries later, an eccentric mortal by the name of Hugh Heffner would acquire all terrestrial rights to Angel Dirt, gentrify it and reprint it as playboy. And all of God’s self-appointed spokespeople would vilify him for it on their pulpits before retiring to the holy of holies with virginal altar boys.)

But God’s rest was interrupted because man, like the youth in today’s ghettoes couldn’t find gainful leisure and was starting to act all agitated.

Adam- as that was the man’s name- it seems was demanding a playmate. God being younger, available and bubbling with the thrill of novelty at his prototypes, in those days, was quick to oblige man. Besides, God had been considering a new design concept: an improved man, with more curves than a race track and less testosterone- the H. Sapiens 2.0, an upgrade to the veritable beast that Adam was.

And so God made Eve- out of Adam so his memoirs say; so madam go burn your bra elsewhere! God made Adam and Eve. So what about Steve?

Well not everything in the world was mad by God. At some point God got too busy ghost writing his autobiography and quelling Lucifer’s coup attempts to supervise what man- with his hitherto unknown design flaws (I mean God had no peer reviewer!) was up to. And so man, being like God, albeit without his infinite grace and good sense, started making his own toys driven by his most basal instincts.

But all that was a long time ago- way before Sigmund Freud and ‘Penis Envy’. I have not read Freud but I am told that, besides playing with the minds of deprived and thus seemingly depraved women, he managed to tell us everything about sex we thought we never knew. Suddenly there was a name for each of our darkest secrets. (Apart for maybe technophilia which wasn’t possible until the invention of what Dubya refers to as the Internets.)

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And Freud vindicated the “Anglicans”- or Episcopalians depending on which side of the pond you are on. He argued that we are all born homosexual and it is the much vaunted process of social learning that determines our sexual orientation when puberty comes calling. Such social learning being biased towards the internalisation of behaviour and or actions that propagates the species, it is no wonder that the only way we must turn out is heterosexual. Anything else is sub-normal and, even in a democracy like ours- illegal, nay criminal.

Criminal? I have been told that every crime has a victim- I agree. But doesn’t it logically follow, then, that there is no crime committed where there is no victim? Ergo, under what circumstances does homosexuality qualify as a punishable offence under our laws? I consider it an abuse of the civil liberties of two consenting adults to legalise against their sexual preferences. Preferences indulged in behind closed doors and thus in no way constituiting what we- society that is- define to be a public nuisance or indecent exposure.

Some self righteous individuals lacking a concrete scriptural basis for their nay saying will hide behind the clichéd: “… Homosexuality is un-African…” So what is African, their dog-collars and leather bound Bibles?

Religion and culture are mutually dependent and the cultural heritage of a people emanates from their dominant norms and values and especially the dictates- and observance- of their peculiar belief systems.
[… cont. …]




Due to Copyright issues and syndication strategies initiated for this blog, this post has been broken into two parts. The later part will be published towards the end of the week. For purposes of humouring the fun cub, we insist that we got too drunk to complete the post.