The Tribune

By IAN BETHEL BENNETT

WHEN Reverend Hall spoke out against homophobia, people were shocked. What is interesting about this is that the church, an institution that is meant to preach peace, love, and tolerance actually furthers exploitation and violence.  The church can forgive a rapist for repeatedly raping women, blame the woman, but cannot forgive an individual for being gay, as if that were a choice.  Did the church ever stop to ask what drove that person to that point?  Certainly, most people would not flippantly choose such a role.  Particularly when it is an identity that they are taught is despicable.  The church would rather encourage paedophiles than preach tolerance, in my view.  The Bible talks about forgiveness and love yet the church can not forgive and preaches hate.  When we condone homophobia we also condone wife beating  and child abuse.  It is not only about killing gays.  Actually, we seek to destroy anyone who is perceived as being different or unequal, and thereby destroying the possibility of any kind of weakness in ourselves.   Further, it actually justifies violence and inequalities.  

When a woman is murdered by a mob, it is because she is perceived as being weaker than the mob.  When she is stoned because she was raped, as still occurs, it is not because she is bad.  It is because of patriarchy’s inequality.  How do lawmakers stand by and say that we should not stop rape before it happens?   Yet, religion says that she shall be stoned.  When a woman is shunned by her husband because she was raped she, again, had no part to play except as the victim of exploitation and religious and/or ethnic persecution. The rapist has won.   Yet few challenge these norms.  

According to some, if an untouchable person was raped by a member of the elite, no crime was committed.  This speaks to power inequalities created around gender, race, ethnicity and religion.  We have seen this occur for decades in the case of countries like Rwanda and other countries such as Croatia and Bosnia.  We are quick to condemn sexual violence when it happens there, yet when the same scenarios are performed in this country, we are silent.  

We thereby encourage exploitation based on inequality, I believe. 

This is so for women as well as any other group that is perceived as being weaker.  The church often silently stands by and watches when sexual abuse occurs.  A man can beat and rape his wife for years and when she goes to the pastor seeking consolation and direction, he can tell her that as long as he does not beat her with a stick any bigger than his thumb then it is permissible.  This is all terribly 18th century, but still current in some cultures.  Laws served to create and perpetuate these inequalities as Mary Wollstonecraft points out in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.  This ground-breaking text arose out of the discussion around rights that developed in the 18th century that was in part sparked by John Stuart Mill’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man. 

There had been no recognition of people’s rights before the lead up to the French revolution as most people were subjects, and women were particularly impotent to perform any socially significant roles given the extreme patriarchy of the times. Both writers decried the lack of rights of people to participate in society.  Mill challenged the inequalities that existed between men and Wollstonecraft those that were enshrined in law and custom against women.  These inequalities still plague societies.  This was one fact that resounded clearly in Hall’s statement.  Religions continue to build on these in their discussions of subjugation and obedience, as well as intolerance.   

Ironically, a society that has survived slavery, where black women and men were chattel and could be abused and exploited at will has fossilised these laws and inequalities into constitutions to render its citizens and ‘non-belongers’ equally subjugated in the 21st century as in the 18th.

When Hall spoke out against churches’ condemnation of gays he broke the silence that allows exploitation to continue and encourages its growth. 

Society now needs to step back and ask how can we continue to condemn and silence victims of sexual abuse as well as GBV? 

By refusing to listen to their voices, society has condoned sexual depravity as well as the result of untreated child abuse, the loss sight between right and wrong. 

Yet society refuses to listen, and so pushes anyone who is perceived as weaker into a corner and then throws stones.