A Georgian journalist died alone in his apartment after filming the local Equality March awhile ago. His face was broken by some random traditionalist protesters, and he overdosed painkillers subsequently, which qualified as driving to suicide.
It is a sort of necroposting on my behalf to rise this issue, but it must be done now. I drafted the article immediately after the tragedy took place and set it aside, letting myself calm down. Then, Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, so I couldn't focus on finishing it.
What I think about it
The LGBTQ+ haters commit a grave mistake of confusing pedophilia with homosexuality. I surely know the reasons: they are brainwashed by their authorities' propaganda, they ask no questions, and are thus totally unable to see though the cynical lies.
Let us open up Wikipedia to clarify the terminology in the first place, like diligent scientists.
Pedophilia is irresistible "sexual attraction to prepubescent children". The age of prepubescence is usually defined as preceding 13-14 years, so there is the legal definition of "children". Persons in their 14-16 are still regarded as "underage" or "teens", and engaging in sexual relations with them may incur legal persecution.
In other words, the maturity threshold in most societies is set at 16. It is assumed that a given person is able to give informed consent and engage in sexual relations with whoever they want at this point, male or female, including those significantly older that themself. And yes, the person in question can wave their ID all over the place to prove reaching the age of maturity.
Lower that threshold and you risk inviting child sexual abuse and human trafficking in your society.
Homosexuality is "romantic [or] sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender".
Pederasty is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy. There is no need for specific legal punishment for pederasty because it is already punishable as a case of pedophilia.
I mentioned that last term because it is often mindlessly thrown around as an insult in CIS countries. It is vaguely synonymous to calling someone a jerk.
Now, the definitions make it absolutely clear that there is no relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. But the ignorant far-right traditionalist blend the three terms together:
- Attack the Pride because it supports equal social treatment for the same-sex couples (homosexuality).
- Derogatorily call the Pride members and supporters "pederast" or shortly "pidar". Which, by the way, happened right on the state-backed Russian TV channel after someone put a rainbow flag in Kyiv, on the Motherland Monument.
- Falsely accuse the Pride members and supporters of pedophilia.
This flag has caused a lot of unhealthy debate
It is so absurd I can't believe I have to explain it. Do you see how many things are wrong with their attitude and the level of their education?
Dear far-right traditionalist, if you are reading this, please hear me out. It is extremely hard to maintain a respectful attitude to you because of these misdoings. Your fellow associates physically injure, bully, and kill people as a result of malevolent manipulation. Or their own inherent inclination to evil. How is a healthy part of society supposed to react to that?
The "traditionalist" group in Ukraine are represented primarily by Orthodox, Catholic, and Uniate Christians, of whom the Orthodox appear to be the most conservative and aggressive. Georgia is culturally associated with Orthodoxy, too. And you see where it led.
I could pick just about any other tradition and safely assume that they generally oppose constructive social change. The stability of their customs ensure orderliness and give them the feeling of safety and unity. I perfectly understand that. What I do not understand is their hypocrisy when it comes to unprovoked violence. They pick one holy book verse to justify their atrocities and another, to condemn any littlest attempt to call them out, truly not noticing the log in their own eye.
Is the immutability of tradition all that good though? You know, pedophilia used to be traditional, too. Old Testament Bible approves of it. How old was Virgin Mary when She conceived Christ? 12 to 16. Let me rephrase it for Christians who are particularly zealous about fighting child sexual abuse (in all the wrong places): Your God is a pedophile in legal terms.
It is only in 2014 that Romanian Gypsy King ruled that the age of 12 would no longer be considered appropriate for marriage. They more were true to keeping the biblical tradition that the people of The Book themselves and wise enough to finally cast it away.
Pederasty, too. It is a Greek word and one of significant cultural traits of ancient Greece in the time of Plato. If not for the efforts of revolutionaries (like the ones who join the Equality Marches now) pedophilia would have stayed a traditional, religiously observed, custom.
Certain traditionalist societies do religiously observe pederasty, no questions asked, just for the sake of preserving the tradition, right to this day. Not at all for the sake of personal pleasure and empowerment, uh-huh.
What is the root of the sick obsession over child sexual abuse and homophobia that you find in Christinuts and the radical rights these days? Is it not somehow connected to the dark transgressions of their own priests?
As a part of their social duty, priests are commonly involved in unsupervised work with children. Orphans, notably. You know what I'm implying. There are plenty of scandals around the guilty pleasures of clergy [1][2][3]. I don't even need the mainstream media to form my reality bubble as long as I know about the lamentable results of the Stanford experiment and the tragedy of Abu-Graib.
Here is why it makes perfect sense: the imbalance of power virtually always leads to the power abuse. Take a moment to think about it if does not appear obvious. Recall situations from your own life. You surely had an opportunity to abuse power yourself, whatever tiny bit of it you had, only that it's hard to notice and admit it.
Churches, prisons, army barracks. Always, a strong vertical hierarchy, power imbalance, power abuse, sexual domination. The latter invariably involves homosexual intercourse if a social structure is same-sex.
Sexual harassment also takes place in educational establishments, a lot less likely, because the hierarchy is not that strong in there. The power dynamics is the same: a disturbed tutor is socially empowered while a student is socially insecure.
I served 1.5 years as a monastery novitiate, and I certainly came across this kind of power dynamics more than once, including a fair deal of dirty touching, and bargaining for sexual activity from one high-ranking brother. As I later discovered, that brother had been a victim of sex abuse in army, which explains why he got traumatized and fixated on homosexual relations.
One last stroke to complete the picture: our far-right comrades love vertical hierarchies, don't they? To be clear, I don't mean the far-right as in "deregulated, free market economy proponents", I mean "the proponents of authoritarian society structures". (Refer to the Political Compass and find out where you are, by the way.) They are all about the strong individual, strong family, strong country, strong leader; the only one right system of values that must be reflected in the said leader, perpetuated in generations without change, and instilled upon every citizen of their country and possibly beyond.
The far-right have also been the best friends with the Church for more than a millennium. The Church is the treasure trove of all sorts of values, the more contradicting, the better. One living example that is the quintessence of Church-backed authoritarian society (or state-backed "believer" society) is modern Russia.
This is the banner of Holy Roman Empire. The last Christian revolutionaries were subdued sometime after 300AD and the Empire proudly adopted Christianity as a gluing substance for their ethnically and culturally diverse population.
And this is the Russian Federation coat of arms. What a striking resemblance. In all seriousness, they build their state ideology basing on a claim that Russia is the last Christian Empire, The Third Rome, endowed with a special mission. Except that it is as much Christian as a courtesan is a women's rights fighter. Their special mission at this point includes razing Ukraine to the ground, genociding its population, torture and rape of whoever survived, and looting whatever remained after erratic artillery and aviation bombardments. Anyways, I got carried away.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention another insult that the authoritarian conjured up to address libertarian in these lands: "liberast". They took it to yet another level, blending together four completely unrelated terms—five even—if we consider that they don't distinguish between "pederast", "pedophile", "homosexual", and "generally bad person".
I remember one far-right party marching in Kyiv with a large banner: "Homosexuals make up 2% of the total population and 80% of all pedophiles", or something of this sort written on it. The name of their political party was quite telling, too: "Tradition and Order". I don't even want to know where they got their "statistics" from. I don't wanna know about their definition of "Order", either.
As I was writing this, the news about Iranian traditionalist "morality police" beating up a 22-old girl for wearing hijab the wrong way popped up.
Do the traditionalist/authoritarian ever apologize? No.
Why would one apologize if there's Gott mit uns printed on their belts?
Have faith, and the all-merciful God will forgive. All the cute eagle images taken from wiki.
The "believers" keep playing their games with stones and sticks, and automatic rifles, and long-range artillery. I am afraid even to say it, they recently started to play with nukes. Maybe one such "believer" lives across the street, and you bought a cookie from them yesterday. Are they going to spend the money on shiny brass knuckles to pummel the gay or a crucifix to rape the infidels with?
Are rational, libertarian, progressive, compassionate people going to lose this game consistently, for thousands and thousands years over again?
I have some ideas. And I barely started to scratch the surface here.
I suggest you reward yourself and repost this piece. Too much shallow content on the web these days. My gratitude.