"Is it time for the English to be more afraid of God?" asks George Michael in a smart but sure-to-be controversial commentary that appears in the current Advocate. If your reading the Advocate, the pop star tells his American audience, "you are almost certainly bent as a nine-bob note, as we English like to say. Which in turn means that you are a homosexual living in a country where more than 60% of the country is taught that you and your kind are going to end up at the hottest circuit party in town."
The problem, for Michael, is that America’s brand of intolerant, by-the-book religiosity — with its belief in the inerrancy of the Bible — is gaining ground in Britain. "Devout Christians and hard-line Muslims," he writes, "have found common political ground [in the U.K.] and it’s called us."
Democracy is a risky business. "The lowest common denominator rules," notes Michael. And demographic shifts in Europe have hardened many Europeans to the feel-good, everybody-is-one idealism at the heart of the American impulse. In that spirit, Michael traces how diversity — the old-fashion melting-pot kind — backfired in his native land, and why gay-rights activists now find themselves on the same wobbly soap box as English racists who fret about England staying English.
"In the England of my childhood," he begins, "God could be described only as a fading presence, really." Private, as well as public, life had become overwhelmingly secular, partly in response to the waves of immigrants that came into Britain during the 70’s. "The Sikh and Hindu children I sat next to in class didn’t have a lot to say about Jesus, and being English and feeling terribly guilty about that whole empire business, we didn’t want to start waving Bibles around and reminding them what fascists we had once been."
And yet now this same tolerant multiculturalism has allowed backward superstitions and ethnic rivalry to creep back into the public square as if the Age of Reason had never happened. "We’re not afraid of our soft old village vicar." confides Michael. "But we are beginning to worry about Allah… Muslim clerics here are beginning to spout some very scary stuff indeed in public, the kind of [anti-gay] rhetoric that bishops and archbishops have had to stifle for the past 40 years."
"There really ought to be a campaign to make Henry VIII the patron saint of English queerdom," he muses on a lighthearted tangent. "Without his arrogance the English would still be Catholic, and we would probably have our own Mel Gibsons and Dubyas to deal with. The lack of interest with which The Passion of the Christ was greeted in England made me proud of my country (for the first time in a while), and if that sounds excessive, bear in mind I’d been in Texas when it was released stateside."
And so he asks his American readers to help him come to terms, as we have had to do, with a society where science is delegitimized and history, as in George Orwell’s 1984, is erased and replaced by fictions. Where reality must come to terms with the Bible, rather than the other way around.
Fight back is our answer. Fight like hell. Silence still equals death.
Wow. This is a brilliant post.
You know, for somebody being as staunchly anti-racist as I am, I’m disgusted, alarmed and horrified by the rampant and virulent homophobia spouting from some of the Islamic religious leaders in various democratic/socially progressive countries such as the UK and Holland. George is right on this. The same should be applied to any religious leader or political leader as well.
When one of these assholes steps up on their soapbox denouncing women and saying it’s alright to beat and kill them when they speak their minds OR jumps up and down foaming at the mouth about how the queers are evil/a disease/should be exterminated - I have no problem with rounding these pricks up and giving them a one-way ticket back to their country of origin, putting them on a list of people marked “DO NOT RETURN”, or making them spend life in prison for instigating violence against free and law abiding people. They came to these liberal countries to get away from their own.
If these ignorant bastards don’t want to accept how the culture, laws, and morays they can leave. They adopted a life in a new place, therefore, they will have to live by these new rules.
Pure and simple - this is hate speech which incites violence and should be illegal everywhere and I think that’s where the huge difference lies between gay rights advocates and these hateful white racists. The state has a right to protect itself and has a duty to protect it’s people.
Hold on, hold on, hold on. As someone who is Muslim and queer I have a little something to say about this. Yes, there are little parochial assholes who get up on the pulpit and scream about gays. How representative they are is another thing all together. These very same vocal minority is driving away the average muslim, who just wants to feel close to god, may not pray five times a day, may drink once in a while, doesn’t really care what the rest of us do in our bedrooms,etc. Secondly, I think the post really underrepresents the reality of most muslims in Britain, who are BROWN, and who do experience a tremendous amount of racism on a daily basis. Melting pot, my ass. I recommend Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth.” It’s a brilliant depiction of what it means to be brown and Muslim in a white Britain. The rallying of people around a militant Muslim identity in Britain has to a lot to do with the racism people have had to deal with, day in, day out. In short, hate is bad, but we have to understand where it comes from, especially if we want to stop it.
sorry Irate, I do not buy your argument and have experienced there is clear and imminent danger of this escalating beyond control. So please don’t confirm you really said that racism is an excuse to start terrorist action.
5 years ago a close friend of mine took the plunge to speak out. He warned us about the dangers of muslim fundamentalists in our oh-so tolerant Dutch society. And not only that, he also thought out strategies on how to stop it and published them.
He was very out, very eloquent, very funny, very well dressed, very much a dandy, but he also was very convincing.
He founded a political party and started winning election after election, untill he was campaigning his last one, that would have made him our new Prime Minister.
Then he got assasinated.
And as God would have it: A very scary representative of the Christian fundamentalists got the PM job instead. So not much was done about Pim’s warnings. Untill less then a year ago one of Holland’s finest film makers was assasinated for having made a movie about the complot theories surrounding Pim’s death and a movie accusing muslims of inhumane treatment of their women. Two members of parliament who were involved with Pim and with the muslim critical film by Theo van Gogh ( yes, grandson of Theo, brother of the painter Vincent) have had to go in hiding and have
lived in secret locations, guarded by our secret police ever since (yes, just like Salman Rushdy had to for a decade).
So yes, we Dutch have finally recognised there is a serious danger. That explained why we said NO last week to the European constitution. Not because we do not believe in Europe, but we don’t believe in weak
and frightened christian leaders who can’t say no to growing army of powerhungry euro civil servants in Brussels who think it is a good idea to keep on enlarging the EU and make it èver less gouvernable.
I don’t know where this is leading. For a while the Gay Pride celabrations in Amsterdam (Canalpride) were on the verge of being cancelled as the
committee could not fund the extra securitymeasures needed to counter the very real threat of a terrorist attack on campaigners on floats in the canals from one of the thousands of houses along the route.
I’m worried about that, but the canalpride was lost already from the moment when christian and other conservative parties decided nudity would no longer be allowed on the boats.
As a last feat of arms our muslim friends have started open war agains homo’s on the streets of amsterdam. At night they cowardly corner gay couples or individuals and beat the shit out of them. This has happened for centuries, but never before was it openly recognised as an act of muslim pride. Chris Crain, editor of “The Washington Blade”, a gay magazine from DC, can comfirm this out of first hand experience.
As all Europen leaders are joint together this week in Luxembourg, completely unsure on how to proceed, I can only come up with one meagre suggestion:
Do not throw out baby tolerance with the bathwater.
We need to find strenght within our commmunity to withstand all agression and stupidity. Surely, both muslim gays as wel as ethnic queer friends and the two combined, not forgetting the millions of suppressed women in many muslim countries need our support more then ever.
I know not all Muslims are fundamentalists. Irate and others keep saying they are a minority. But why then is it that there is such a deafening silence from the moderate Muslims?
Good grief, I just come here to wank off. *sigh* Why are moderate muslims silent? Where were moderate Christians when here in Ohio *dum dum dum* people voted to reduce Queers to second class citizens by not giving them the right to marry? Its hard being moderate, in any shape or form. We’re not as flashy. No one puts us on the news. LOOK CHRISTIAN MODERATES! MUSLIM MODERATES! There’s a laundry list of reasons.
Secondly, I’m not sure what the EU Constitution has to do with anything, but I’m going to recommend some reading. I study religion and politics at university and I’m offering up what I’ve read in the past. Unfortunately, I have very little on Europe, but I have some strong articles about the United States in particular. I think they can be thought provoking and interesting.
Google the Middle East Report (or Merip), issue 224. Its dedicated to this issue -not gays specifically, but the rise of militancy in western countries. Oh, I wish people wrote more about queers, but c’est la vie, we are a minority.
George Michael’s article dealt with Europe and I am speaking as a European. Good grief, Irate, why does everything have to be compared to the US?
Christians here do protest when bigots of their own denomination speak up. And they remain nothing but an oddity because of that.
There was one article in the proposed European constitution that said the Church needed to be consulted more often, or in similar words. That was one reason I voted against it.
I have seen many chat shows where Muslims in this country were asked to give their views. Frankly, it irritates me all the time. It always follows the same routine: 1: It’s not us/me 2: if it’s us/me it’s because you made us do it 3: oh, but you too are not perfect, look what’s wrong with yourselves.
(as in you respons, Irate)
Why is it that school teachers can no longer be openly gay, and that being gay in general can no longer be discussed in classrooms (or represented as an alternative to heterosexuality)? It’s because there is such a large percentage of Muslim kids - and other macho cultures - who won’t have it.
It is not so much the fear of immigrants, believe me, it’s the fear of intolerance, mostly religious.
Unlike the US, we have been very much a secular society in Europe. Can we please stay one.
We’re not sure whether to smile at American bigotry and sexual redardedness or to burst into tears.
Cést pas la vie, mon chèr, on peut le changer!
Good point, why does everything have to be compared to America. My French is nonexistant, and my German is laughable. So on. I have a much easier time accessing American literature. Two, if political theory is really valuable we can use it (carefully) in different situations. No?
I’m standing by my point that religion is a red herring. I don’t think people are rejecting secular society, simply because they belong to one religion or another. There’s always more - economic, social, etc.
I don’t agree at all. It’s hardly a red herring. It’s their excuse.
Religion is a fungus, a neurological disorder for the weak who hide behind their “moral majority” and when accused of bigotry, they play the religion card and wave it around as their big hairy reason to commit murder, oppression, and force others to their world view. Christian or Muslim - they are all right wing hate-mongers to me.
Thank you Drub,
No I’m not here to look for confirmation of my own beliefs. I just want to fuck and be fucked by hairy aggressive men and many muslims fall into that catagory.
To again make the point that it is not the Muslim faith, but (almost) all relions that stand opposed to freedom of expression, another futile Dutch example:
One of our small public tv channels now has a program called “God does not exist”. It’s nothing agressive, just a few philosophers and filmmakers diving into the theories of existentialism en religion with some humor thrown in. We’ve had this kind of discussions in schools, media and theater ever since I can remember. But now, all of a sudden, 3 religion based tv stations and 2 political parties immediately ran to the courts, to get the program off the air.
Fortunately the judge in charge of this special fast -decision court we have here in NL ruled that if we have more then 250 hours weekly on dutch tv saying that god does exist, he’s not going to stand in the way of 25 minits argueing the opposite.
And Irate, I agree with you too: let’s return to what we came here for fast.
I LOVE YOU
Reading this article (which I have come to a tad late in the day) makes me wonder where George Michael lives. We all know his relationship with the wonder-herb but, really, religion? In England? Has he visited?
Being Irish and coming from a land where we export some of our religious to the places that scratch under the buckle of the US bible belt I think George needs to cop himself on (in defence Ireland also produced Oscar Wilde). The English, by whom I mean the majority Anglo-Saxon descendant bunch, are so divorced from religion that they think ‘Christianity’ is a religion and if you ask, ‘yes, but which religion sweetheart?’ They blink, look confused and mutter about it being, ‘all the one’. You can hardly be religious if you dont even know the name of the one you belong to!
Yes religious minority migrants (like George’s Greek parents) do espouse a particularly virulent form of mythology but they are a minority and thats the point. They don’t threaten the British state - in fact the only religion that ever did was Roman Catholicism and it too resulted in bombs and scape-goating. Yes some Muslims English chose evil paths, but then too so did some British Catholics and some British Protestants inhabitants of the UK.
George (and indeed those US republicans and the intellectuals who vote for them) need to take a lesson from the average (unlike George) Londoner, ‘its just them terrorists innit? Lookin for attention int they?’ And with that dismissal they roll their eyes at whatever carnage and political spin and go on about their business. George, smoke more, think less.
But that, my friends, is England. Holland is a different case - There the powder keg is truly ignited.
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