WHERE THE CHURCH GETS IT WRONG ON GAYS AND GOVERNANCE

I have a revelation and it doesn’t involve horses and burning chariots. And its simple, Christians do not own the concept of marriage. Marriage is not copyrighted neither is it anyone’s intellectual property. Muslims do it. Jews have it, inter alia. So of fundamental value is who owns marriage and who has the right to determine who gets married and not? Would it be a fellow human being and if so under what premise is he an authority?

This logic is acutely synonymous with one you’d forward against the Catholic Church during those years it desperately yet meekly tries to bin; when they held Galileo Galilei under house arrest and charged him with publishing sacrilegious blasphemous materials. The ‘sacrilegious’ findings postulated the earth was spheroid and that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of the solar system. The question then would have been who owns knowledge? The pope thought the church did. We now of course know that the Catholic Church was shambolic in its dictatorship as it was in operating a simple telescope.

But it’s not only knowledge here or the intellectual right to marriage but an audacious attempt to own morality. The church is trying to be the traffic warden in the highway of morality which in itself is an immoral premise since morality is innate and implicitly human.

Throughout history the church has tried to enforce itself as the owner of knowledge and is such what we are witnessing here with regard to marriage and whether gay marriage is right or wrong? It may mean naught to you but not being allowed to visit your partner who’s critically ill in a hospital bed or not being accorded the same tax cuts and employer benefits just because homophobic anti-gay rights church crusaders(oh that term crusaders) foists the state to decline your union is horrific violation of human rights.

I’ve never been an advocate of gay rights movement but Charles Kanjama’s sentiments on ‘thetrend’ on Friday in which he also called same sex relations a ‘curable habit’ were not only galling but betrayed a vastness of ignorance on the history of religion. He was there in his capacity as vice chair of Kenya Christian Professionals. Demonizing the gay movement will not stop its existence. No one, even the presidency, has the outright jurisdiction to rule over such issues of human rights. He may be our elected official but on such issues he shouldn’t have blanket sovereignty to finagle ideas on the electorate. In the same breadth the church shouldn’t be permitted to impose their ideas and ideologies on citizens without the consent of the citizens. In short if the church wants to be part of government then they should come out and officially ask for the mandate by ballot not hide under the helmet of the church.

And neither should the courts. Courts with regard to civil rights movement have in fact proven to be more tyrannical than emancipating. That’s why the American case of Plessy vs.  Ferguson in 1896 became a landmark case. The Plaintiff, Homer Plessy, tendered that racial seclusion was illegal and he must not be discriminated against because he was ideally just one-eighth Black.  The Supreme Court which heard the case regardless directed that he alongside all other blacks rides in the "separate but equal" coaches reserved for "coloreds." It’s important I affirm that just like in Apartheid South Africa roughly 100 years later, the coaches, railways, schools and other public facilities were indeed separate but never equal.

My reiteration here is that this should be a people and government Issue but not and has never been a church or court issue. In the struggle for civil rights history has shown that today’s churches’ beliefs are tomorrow’s churches embarrassment. I don’t desire to be tomorrows joke. It’s not long ago that the majority of interracial married couples involved in Christian churches before marriage had to renounce their affiliation and boycott going to church all together after marriage primarily because they faced prejudice from the same religious fundamentalists who would hold the bible with such zeal. Why is it that people who are heterosexual can sleep out of wedlock, marry and divorce, and even have open marriages and people find it palatable? Why doesn’t the church complain about Muslim men being allowed to be polygamous?

For years the Kenyan Constitution allowed divorce under four platforms and they are adultery, if your spouse deserts you for more than three years without reason, if they become insane or of unsound mind and if they become cruel to you. Why wouldn’t the church advocate against this, why play blind to divorce terms that I believe are unchristian? Why should homosexuality hence be different isn’t it but an expression of the inherent weakness of all human beings. Isn’t it but stigma to tie down homosexuality with child molestation or pedophilia. In fact if there was a sudden burst of democracy and a vote sanctioned the Catholic Church would be shocked to find a good number of its priests are pro-gay.

God won’t burn you for accepting there are gays. Why brandish the bible to cover-up the real issue. Won’t Christians of latter days learn from the unforgivable atrocities and callous inhumanities peddled by those of former days in the name of God? And please don’t forward the argument that gayism is a foreign/western concept. Christianity and in effect Islam IS also a western concept and gays have always existed. Gays were in fact a welcome faction of the society in ancient Greece and I’m yet to read any documented account categorically stating gays never existed in African culture. I have read though that gays were recorded among Zulus. Don’t forget its Christianity that caused imperialist colonialism. It’s Christianity that preached against and declared a sin copulating in any other sexual position bar lying down hence its famous name ‘missionary’. It’s Christianity that led the crusades, a religious cleansing spree against Muslims, pagans and nonconformist Christians which combined religious agendas with military expansionist schemes.

It’s with such mentality that religious zealots fail to agree to simply not agree with other religions. Not everyone is Christian and imposing your beliefs and culture on them makes you a religious fundamentalist which in turn makes you a religious terrorist. As one Nahashon Njenga would aptly note there is no difference then between Al-Qaeda who deem Sharia law as the only applicable form of government, and yourself. Why would Muslim theocracy be extremism yet yours acceptable?

Am not suggesting a way out; maybe a simple vote is one but the church should stick to its agenda. North Carolina went to the ballot on this and they voted overwhelmingly against gay marriages and that essentially is what democracy is about.

OF JOGGERS AND BANK LOANS...IRONY OF DUMBBELLS AND DUMB BELLES!

I have the opportunity to reside at an area where I am greeted every morning with a fairly enviable view. Enviable in the sense that I get to see the populace go about their hurried activities as they try to justify the maxim “the early bird catches the worm”. In this delineation is juxtaposed various health addicts that have taken up this parvenu mode of exercise that is about as effective as Ruto explaining that the reason he has formed a new party is because he doesn’t like attention.

First of all, I have nothing but admiration for those who are willing to put their bodies through torture so that they can be á la mode or so that the society can give them that much needed nod of approval. We all want to belong somewhere; that’s why financial institutions are coming up with nigh ingenious ways to appeal to that part of the human brain that yearns for peer approbation. This is why there are such existences as ‘Executive accounts’, ‘Diva accounts’ and to some extremisms, ‘Business club’. This is the height of snobbery that is reminiscent of the French revolution. However, I digress.

Jogging is about as helpful as the plethora of diets that keep popping faster than Airtel keep lowering their calling rates. It’s akin to attempting to remedy malaria by incessantly swatting away at the mosquitoes. In fact, there was a time I saw a lady jogging while carrying a single dumb bell and my default reaction was, “Dumb belle?” And this is more or less the same reaction I have whenever I hear people talk of the myriad bank loans on offer.

As I write this, the lowest interest rate earned by a bank loan has to be 23%; which is a great improvement from the highs of 25% or even 30% witnessed towards the close of 2011. This means that for the least loan amount of 50,000; minus the hidden charges and the ilk, you’d have to pay double your loan amount in less than 7 years. This is all under the assumption that there is no clause that allows for rising of the lending rate by the bank. This is what eventually killed the US economy and to some great extent the world economy.

The fundamental issue about bank loans, just like jogging; is trying to curb an issue that is (pardon my French), running away from you. In jogging, the goal is to cut one’s podginess whilst taking every precaution not to look like a weight lifter at the Olympics. Whereas for bank loans, the banks try to take up as much risk as they possibly can without exposing themselves to such adverse risks as what happened to the Lehman Brothers Holding. In both cases it is a matter of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. For banks it becomes much worse when they start putting on too much weight; which is to say when there are more cases of default in payment.

This is comparable to putting on weight despite one’s incessant morning work outs and jogs. This is forgetting that no matter how much one jogs, so long as your body decides that it wants food, there is no way to stop it. Much the same case in default of payment. So long as someone defaults in payment, no matter what amount of property you take from them; chances are you won’t recover your full amount. This has not deterred modern-day Shylocks from over-reaping where they have sown little. This though doesn’t change the fact that bank loans are a double edged knife that eviscerates both the loaner and the loanee.

To quote an exceptional economist: a financial meltdown is like radiation, not easily recognisable until a neighbour starts losing some hair, a job, or even their house. When it gets to the point where banks are shying away from issuing loans as if meting them out gratis, it is time to consider extreme measures rather than the staid jogging.

BIG BULLY AMERICA

America conjures up the idiomatic question of boon or bane.

America is a pure brand distillation of Kim Jong Il, Napoleon Bonaparte and Stalin. Other nations’ sentiments and feelings are seemingly stealth on your radar, leaving you engaged in your own doctrines. Utterly indulged in your own little bubble, and not just oblivious of other people's feelings and thoughts but oblivious to the idea that there might even be other points of view other than your own. You not only believe you’re perpetually correct but harshly judge anyone who does not hold your beliefs as wrong, or stupid or intolerably undemocratic.

Yes it must really be cumbersome and overwhelming being the United States of America, always being called to intervene when nations are at loggerheads, having that profound tireless pro bono responsibility of world prefect that the world unquestioningly bestowed upon you.

America ruthlessly abuses the North Atlantic Treaty alliance like Sepp Blatter does Fifa and catholic priests do anything below twelve. NATO, initially formed to predominantly prevent a second holocaust or holocaust-magnitude tribal, religious or racial extermination, presently serves as America’s cane of delivering cowboy wild western justice.

Like men, America exemplifies the concept of double standards. Every civilization has its black eye and in America it’s their foreign policy. In Britain we have the most spectacularly useless institution in the monarchy. In China it’s their men’s ‘package’ issue. Among Pakistanis and Indians and I dare conjoin them on a single thought it’s taxi driving in New York. In Northern Ireland its England. In Kenya we have Mike Sonko, and in Uganda it’s Dysentry-and this was just after just one decent-try at their cuisine in Kampala! And it really was a decent restaurant, though I got the idea it was under the same management as Apple Bees.

If you shoot up students in a Virginia University and you’re American it’s a misdemeanor, if you’re Jew it’s a misplaced hate crime but if you’re Muslim its terrorism. God bless you if you’re North Korean.

America peddles words like hate crimes, terrorism and insurgents to further their foreign policies. But what is hate crime? Hate crime laws are a fundamental infringement of expressions. As long as I don’t act on it aren’t I allowed to hate whichever group of people and even write about it? Well a terrorist is different in that though similarly fueled by hate he actually acts against innocent people indiscriminately and doesn’t target a particular group and he mostly tries to prove a point.

But as the Queen proudly stated America and the UK are the most important present day countries in maintaining global peace. 

But America is more hypocritical than a gay in Vatican. America has since the eighties tried to arrest and prevent Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and China from developing nuclear energy yet it has the largest nuclear energy war chest. Nuclear energy is only acceptable if you fall under America’s nuclear family.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The cold war was basically a nuclear arms race between the U.S and the USSR but America still effectively threw its arms around like a spoilt kid to prevent the Middle East from gaining the same. And when the USSR fell it was hell for Bush Snr. Where the hell would all the nuclear heads go and knowing the instability from the cessation for each of the four countries they would probably be a circle of trade off to the middle east or even Kim Jong Il.

Once anyone understands America he could as well understand the pattern to prime numbers. America is not narcissistic they just have the talent to spot value in people especially selves. Ask an American and I’m sure they’ll tell you they won the Second World War, even though 54 million Britons died in the Second World War, a third of the then population of US. The US had an unforgivably disgusting paltry 12million soldiers for the war and only around 6 million actually were on the ground. The US was the most immobilized nation while Britain was the most mobilized.

America owes everything to Britain, literature, laws and representative government. It was the British who first spoke against slavery and stood up against Hitler. Winston Churchill declared war against Hitler and it took the US two years to gather similar courage and join them.

America is a psychological bully, such that even the British PM Cameron ‘admitted’, erroneously of course, that Britain was the junior partner to America in ‘The Battle of Britain’. That’s like Kenya saying it was a junior partner to Burma in the Mau Mau war.

But Obama is their messiah right? He successfully shot down an unarmed Osama that should assist in clearing up the tainted American image right? If it was ok to shoot dead an unarmed Osama it surely must be ok to shoot dead an unintelligent Sonko. Osama was a nuisance every one in four years or so, we have to put up with Sonko every four days. I wonder if he has a special rate plan for being particularly irritating. And Sonko is a disgrace to other dumb people, I’m certain dumb people find it offensive when a fellow dumb person persistently tries to act like he’s not.

So of course he’s getting reelected next year you thunk. But bush won Desert Storm in 1992 yet still lost in the elections. Only you’d have to be extremely terrible at your domestic policies to pull a Bush and though Obama is, the right wing is working extra hard to hand him the victory in fielding lamp posts like Gingrich and Palin.

The only reason Palin should run again if only to make Southpark funny again.

When the Russians launched Sputnik for Eisenhower it was back to ‘Roosevelt-in-the-wheelchair’ give-an-inspirational-speech moment, for America doesn’t like playing second fiddle you see, and the people would be mad. Never anger the electorate and the American is a spoilt lot.

America thinks every Muslim fundamentalist wants to bomb but why would anyone want to bomb a nation that’s already on a self destructing path. Obama is the process guy, always doing something but no tangible results. Not only are jobs being shipped to China but china is itself regulating its currency so to have an import/export cost edge over America. Less jobs means a weaker purchasing power meaning what America has for generations relied on to drive their economy is grinding to a halt. It’s an almost irreversible downward slope and it really doesn’t matter who’s in the oval office.

But hey, if there’s anything we need to ape from Americans is their zeal for motherland. If only we were more patriotic.