Monday 10 August 2015

Out with the bad old days

In her recent post about plans for ultra-rapid jets, Ice has noted in a comment that technology can change with surprising speed, using as an example the smartphones that many of us now carry around as normal. Rapid change can also occur in social attitudes, even if some traditionalists prefer the bad old ways.

"Uganda gay pride rally held a year after law overturned" reports on a gay pride rally in Uganda, whose leaders, like many in Africa, "have argued homosexuality is not part of African culture," when pressed by foreign leaders like Barack Obama (2015). According to the report, the rally expresses the fears and hopes of the gay and lesbian citizens of Uganda as they seek respect for their rights as human beings.

It amazes me how very quickly the western world has made great moral progress in the law regarding gays and lesbians. When I was at school and university in Australia, it was illegal to have gay or lesbian sex. But even worse were the ugly social attitudes, which were strongly supported by all the religions at the time: the Catholics, including the nuns who ran my primary school, other Christian groups, Jews, and all the rest were strongly anti-gay and lesbian. There was no worse thing than being thought gay. And religion was largely to blame for this evil. Thankfully, many Australians stopped believing in religion, as have many Americans, and even more people in Western European nations have become atheists who no longer follow any religion. The results of getting rid of religion have been very good: now that people no longer take religion very seriously, politicians and morally decent people have been able to stop abusing minorities such as gays and lesbians, and the not only the unjust laws against them have changed, but social attitudes have changed. In the US, since a Supreme Court ruling a few weeks ago, same-sex marriage has been legal in every US state; Australia doesn't have that yet, but it's no longer illegal or socially deadly to be gay or lesbian in Australia, and I'm sure that same-sex marriage will come soon, however much the morally wrong Christian and other religious groups try to stop it.

But as the African example shows, there are still many areas in the world where their cultures are seriously immoral. However, with more of the world making more rapid progress, I think even the most backward nations will have to accept that change for the better must come. I wonder how long, or how short a time, it will be before Uganda, too, start to respect the basic human rights of all of its citizens?
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Reference
Uganda gay pride rally held a year after law overturned. (2015, August 8). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33839050

9 comments:

  1. After reading your blog, it reminds me about the situation in Thailand, nowadays, it seem like people give more respects to gay and leabian, but sometime we still see in the news that some organisations discrimate homosexual and their appearance, not only colleagues who try to tease gay and lesbian, but mangement also ignore a problem becasue it is not matter for them.

    I think it is very interesting to follow up how this transformation will occur in the countries that strongly believe in religion such as Thailand, Japan and China.

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    1. As the African example now shows, and as the US and Europe did before, religion is a major problem because it often teaches bad morals, and unjustly uses the power of the law to support its immoral teachings.
      Buddhism seems to me better than the Middle East religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but as the Burmese nationalism shows, Buddhism too can be abused by politicians for immoral purposes in their political lust for power and control over people.

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  2. In strong competition for my choice of article to blog was "Australians eating too much junk food, report finds" (2015, August 10) at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-33843857.
    I especially liked the picture, which made me want to go shopping.

    But it was published about 20 minutes after I'd already started writing this response blog post, so I stuck with the gay story. Unfortunately, I can't include the mouth-watering picture in a comment.

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    1. And I wish I could change the justified formatting of blog comments to left aligned.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. That news made me remind to your R&S class in Term3, I'm quite surprised and glad to hear that. I'm not sure that the U.S. is the first country of this law?

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  4. For the issue of gay or lesbian, I would like to share a music video which is from a famous female singer in Taiwan who is called Jolin Tsai. And the song is called "We're All Different, Yet The Same." It means that love is love. I am really touched by the music video which is based on a real story that describes if lesbian cannot get married, they cannot decide anything for their lover in law. At the end of this music video, the nurse asked the woman: What is your relationship between the patient. The woman said: She is my wife. It is so beautiful, I hope it can come true in someday.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7hHofDW2ts

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joyce, thank you for sharing the video.
      If you like, you can add italics, bold, and active links - see my notes on the menu bar above.

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    2. I mean, you can add italics, bold, and active links to comments.

      Delete

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