THE GEORGIAN TIMES
TEMPEST IN A RAINBOW COLORED TEAPOT?
2013.05.27
May 27 2013
By Bryan Adrian
The recent LGBT gay rally in Tbilisi
failed for its second year in its attempt to popularize sexual gender politics
in Tbilisi.
Therefore, we might now ask if the hostilities that resulted from this rally
inspired by foreign NGOs and the small local group Identoba, really should be a
reason to question the effectiveness of the new Ivanishvili government, or to
portray the entire Christian Orthodox national religion of Georgia as being
"backward" and represented by a cave-full of retrograde priests? It
seems the International Day Against Homophobia,
Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), should not be pursued so vigorously in its
current fashion in the Eastern Orthodox Christian nations, especially in the
light that this movement was so unpopular in the liberal city of Love, Paris,
in the following days. More innovative and sensitive techniques than IDAHOBIT,
perhaps, are required for greater civil and human rights for non-traditional
sexual lifestyle activists.
As reported by Freedom House, an NGO with central offices
in Washington DC
and New York City,
Saakashvili in late 2011 signed into law amendments to the Georgian civil code
that enabled religious groups to register as legal entities, against the
clearly stated wishes of the national Orthodox Church of Georgia. By July 2012
four new religious groups had been registered already for official legal status
in Georgia.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2012/georgia
Does this across-the-board bold green light in Georgia
give a kind of fast food freedom to multiple and even arcane religions to
register their legality in Georgia? It presents a symbolic victory flag to
religions that could conceivably clash with the well established national
religion of Georgia
which dates back to the 4th century. Does this new legislation work as an
enabler? An enabler of USAID and/or Anglo-American-French-Israeli private
citizens monies or missionaries, to assist whatever sects, organizations, or
cults, such as Moonies, Scientologists, Jehovah Witnesses, extremist Hassidic
isolationists, Children of God, Pentecostals, Druids, Neopagans, Jews for
Jesus, and the new Alien Abductees faith-based movement--in addition to Bahais
and Wiccans too--as an enabling support system for antagonistic religions and
sects seeking a foothold here in Georgia? Should Georgia evolve into a one-stop shopping for god, as in an American retail shopping
mall? After more than six years of living here and working as an editor of
government reports, writer, and teacher of English in Georgia, my answer
is a polyphonic Caucasian NO.
We have two issues here suddenly and complexly
intertwined in the camera lenses of the western media and various western NGO
spokespersons. On the one hand are gay rights, should they be paraded downtown
against the admonitions of the Georgian
Church? Alongside this
development, in lock-step, are the rights of the new legal religious entities'
easy registration in Georgia.
There is a fine borderline in politically-correct American-brand
"democracy guidelines and protocols", that blurs the rights of
minority groups known for their non-traditional sexual preferences, attached at
the hip to minority rights legislated for non-traditional religious persons. Some
western news outlets and NGO spokespersons are now shrilly even suggesting that
this less-than-an-hour long violent melee outbreak during the Tbilisi IDAHOBIT
gay lifestyle LGBT activists' attempted declaration, which incurred no deaths
and not even one permanent injury, was a stealth operation of Russia working in
tandem with the Georgian Orthodox Church hierarchy. The innuendo is that the
new Prime Minister of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is sleeping in bed with
Putin of Russia and the whole Kremlin, and in their assessment he is a lame
puppet of Putin who meekly does not want to make war with Russia or Syria
or Iran.
Russia had been harangued in
hours long speeches here, for ten hostile years, again
and again and over and over, by President Saakashvili, who claimed vociferously
that Russia
was the single-most cause of all evils in this Georgian nation. The boom of
such explosive rhetoric was subdued when Saakashvili lost his leadership last
October 2012 during the universally NGO approved democratic national
parliamentary elections that took place here.
Don't forget, there was also an anti-gay backlash last
May 2012 in front of the Philharmonic during the LGBT activists' rally, in
which quite a ruckus took place also, during the government of Saakashvili. Now
all of a sudden, Ivanishvili's new-in-government Dream Team is somehow suspect
of nefarious felonies because of a repeat performance of a cluster of foreign
NGO agitators, promoting gay rights as if they are in bohemian San Francisco, clashing with a few well known
repeater and extremist Georgian Orthodox priests. Magically, out of the blue,
this year a sizeable larger number of homophobes from the provinces were
alerted and present at Ground Zero to make the headlines, doing their uncivil
deeds against the foreign brigade of LGBT activists, who brought along a few of
their Georgian gay representatives to exhibit themselves alongside them.
Is there something i am missing here? I know more than
a few Georgian gays here and none of them would have gone near the western
organized protest used to demonstrate for greater civil and human rights, and
to forcibly attempt to make their sexual lifestyle more presentable to Orthodox
Christians. I think these people here in Georgia, on their own, given a little
more time, can iron out a fistful of wrinkled homophobic priests, using their
own devices, don't you? Do most people think like me, that without alien NGOs
sending press releases to BBC and CNN, and EuroNews, i.e., not so reliable news
sources any longer these days in the single-voiced western owned media, that
Georgia can find its own answers without persistent unsolicited outside help? Much
like the Arabs do NOT "so desperately" need
our Arab Spring agitators and democracy-touting NGOs. Or do we need to
interfere here like in Syria
and Libya and I guess, what
the hell-- why not in Lebanon
and Egypt and Tunisia too-or
why not ubiquitously? Everywhere United States AID is proffered, by U.S. aid groups
and government agencies, it has a steep price-the underlying devious cost of
American commerce and military and cultural imperatives, descending like
hailstones. When will a few of these aid agencies and democracy-fighting NGO
ninjas return home and fight it out against the biggest threat of them all
threatening democracy, i.e., against the menacing forces and planks that are
desiccating human rights in USA right now minute by precious minute,
undermining Democracy so much that it is soon to become a dirty word?
Former glorious democratic Made-In-USA ideals are now
smeared by bankster frauds careening into tens of trillions of dollars, without
any new banking regulations on Wall Street, in addition to the largest military
empire expansion since the bloody sword-slashings of Alexander the Great's
robo-soldiers, along with "shelter-in-place" pseudo martial law
restrictions brought about without precedence just after the Boston Marathon. How
could two boys who grew up in America have done this evil deed, and they may or
may not have been any more guilty, than the many Craft International security
personnel that were also lavishly caught on camera by dozens of witnesses, with
their backpacks missing on their shoulders after the explosions subsided? Twenty
years of unfettered growth of the aerospace arms makers and traders, have
damaged the American Dream, as have the satellite technology and microwave
communications security systems firms, which are now permanently embedded
deeply into nearly all facets of American industry and service jobs and
activities. It is time for the disenfranchised of USA to brush aside lobbyists
and try to restore some sense of democracy back into the Senate and House of
Representatives, in new and innovative ‘Yankee Spring' acts of protest, along
the same lines and methods as advocated by LGBT and Arab Spring organizers.
OCCUPY WALL STREET and "We Are the 99 Percent"
civil and financial rights movements have already been nearly completely
silenced in USA
by police strategies and surveillance techniques. Shouldn't we put our
vehemence for reform back onto our own soil, where we understand the culture
and traditions somewhat better? The Czech
Republic has a balanced relationship
with the USA, the EU, and
with Russia,
all three now trusted by them like a Holy Trinity. Let us ask a hypothetical
question now: Would the same NGOs and western spokespersons here in Georgia warn the Czechs that the Czech
government was in collusion with the Russians in suppressing human rights,
because of a clash between Orthodox Christians and gay activists' rights in the
streets of central Prague?
Shouldn't the NGOs be equally if not more alarmist about prisoners' rights? Have
political prisoners' rights become so mundane in Georgia that they will become
inconsequential in comparison to LGBT activists' rights? Last year during the
LGBT rally here, the violence was less than this year, but there was still
plenty of it, and there was no voice then, not even a peep, defending the tens
of thousands of prisoners who were still wrongly imprisoned and staving off TB
and rape on the inside of Georgian prison cells.
Don't you think it is time for NGOs here to set their
priorities into some kind of order of importance? Let the local gays do it on
their own, their own style of seeking attention to address their own requests
and grievances, and let the majority of good priests here apply more corrective
and coercive measures to their own bad apples. I give the Georgian people and
intelligentsia and Church here, much more credit than the current tone of the
western media. The question here in Georgia maybe should be,
"Couldn't the new government request the Church to put into their
priesthood, ONLY university trained graduates of approved Orthodox
seminaries?" I feel that the NGOs if they want to be so alarmist,
should also focus on human rights abuses in Israel. Shouldn't we all get
equally alarmed as the western media, over the hostilities seen at the LGBT
rally in Tbilisi, if such issues are so urgent, over the irony that in Israel
we are not seeing huge throngs of minorities-rights protestors being gently
protected,? Are the bulk of NGOs in Israel getting really worked up
over the bulldozing down of homes of non-Jews, as much as the NGOs are getting
worked up over LGBT altercations during an inflammatory Tbilisi IDAHOBIT rally?
One should first ask-- if they really are concerned
and want to improve the living standards of Georgian gender minorities-- what
exactly are the numbers of battered and abused gays here in Georgia? Are their
numbers more, or less, than battered wives statistics? Should we have a foreign
NGO backed public parade of Battered Wives demanding justice against their
Georgian husband beaters? Are the numbers of bashed gays here more or less than
the proportion by population in Saudi Arabia
and Qatar and Turkey and Dubai?
In which land[s] should our western NGOs and democracy-building spokespersons
endeavor to achieve sexual rights for more and more and more of the silent
minorities of LGBTs? Should one condemn Israel for their bashings against
their minority religions, as much as the Ivanishvili government and the
Orthodox Church are taking heat for not protecting their sexual minorities and
minority religions? Let's hear this out immediately instead of making a huge
mistake in over-publicizing an unclear foreign-imposed agenda that does not
represent the majority of gays in Georgia. And if you disagree, show
us all wrong with a survey and poll, of tens of thousands of gays here in
Georgia, who incontrovertibly agree that they need access to larger gay parades
in central Tbilisi, more frequently organized, along with some proof that such
public activities increase their standard of living and civil security.
In the last week I have read in the local and national
media, and seen on YouTube numerous NGO and western self-appointed
spokespersons of democracy-validating entities, alleging that Russia is THE evil shadow which is behind this
recent homophobic outburst here in Tbilisi.
As usual in Georgia,
somebody helped during this recent LGBT rally, to congregate agitators into a
knuckle-punch formation, with money handouts or free transportation or nice new
protest T-shirts, using a number of busloads importing in from the regions, a
legion of homophobic late teen-aged boys, joined in animosity by an ideological
cluster-bomb of extremist homophobic priests. There was little mention in the
western media at all about the presence of priests who were there in their
black frocks standing around only to register their protest against too liberal
and exhibitionist an LGBT rights demonstration-- for their parishioners. These
priests I refer to now were not advocating violence nor
invectives. If there is a sinister shadow strategy afoot by Russia, to
destabilize all former Soviet client states vis-à-vis angry Orthodox priests
hostile to LGBT public rallies, it is time to let us hear from the multitudes
of Georgian gays here that this suspicious idea holds true and that this
conspiracy theory is as palpable a reality as the taste of the legendary large
red ripe Georgian tomatoes, when held in one's mouth in mid summer. Has this
recent media tempest for the rights of sexual minorities, been created out of a
web of western networks, and is it actually more bluster than it is fact? Is it
merely more convenient than it is reformatory? Let us see.
Web Counter
(5.0)
|
By Bryan Adrian
4
