I have seen the protests all over the world on the news, and it wasn’t something I saw to be logical, or human for that matter. I mean, let’s stop for a minute and say that it was okay to be gay all over the world and have a chain around a man’s neck and have him dragged around. How would that serve mankind any good? It obviously wouldn’t. The pair (if not more) would never have offspring, the rate of STDs would skyrocket, and any morality that society still had would disappear amongst a myriad other plights. In that logic, if homosexuality is legalized world-wide, then let’s legalize marijuana as well. If homosexual’s excuse is ‘it’s what makes us happy’ then what will stop others from taking the same stand?
The point is, religion has done well in keeping society working well and efficiently in a respectable manner. God has set the rules for us to abide by, not to make life hard on us, but to make it better and easier.
‘homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with other men. There is a three year waiting list’ Yakov Smirnoff.
The lust, the hunger, the addiction. Men hungering for gay pleasure are willing to withstand the freezing environment of a metal cell in Russia just to pleas e their insides. Is this what the human race has become?
How and why are homosexuals portrayed by Mohamed Sibai as an abomination?
Homosexuality has been always a very controversial issue, especially between conservative religious people and liberal scientist and human rights’ activists, and even though all developed countries have decriminalized homosexuality and many of them went to the extent of even legalizing gay marriage, Arab countries such as Lebanon (where this article is from) still criminalize it. Although Lebanon aims to be the most secular state in the region it still has the famous 534 article of the Lebanese Penal Code which prohibits having sexual relations that are "contradicting the laws of nature", which is punishable by up to a year in prison. LGBT support and rights’ groups such as “Helm” exist in Lebanon making it actually one of the most homosexual friendly country in the region, yet like any other Arab country it has a high rate of homophobia. Other Arab countries that follow strict Sharia’a law such as Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, North Sudan and Yemen, go the extreme of punishing homosexuality with the death penalty.
The author is very clearly against homosexuality himself, he states in the first two lines that he saw something out of the ordinary on the street: “Normally I would never look twice” then he displays his prejudice by saying: “but something was not right”. He does that to anticipate the reader and to set the readers mood that what is about to come is negative. He then projects his point of view again emphasizing on what he saw being negative and shocking in order to get the reader’s sympathy by saying: “The sight was disturbing”, then saying: “I couldn’t believe what I saw”. He then goes on implying that he doesn’t believe in equal rights for all entailing that he is against perhaps “too much” freedom by saying “if this is what ‘secular’ is then maybe it’s not such a good idea”, even though he stated that is what Lebanon aims to be, “I know that Lebanon aims to be an ideal ‘secular’ country”.
Throughout this article, Sibai also shows that not only is he homophobic, but he classifies the Abrahamic religions as “holy” and disregards the other 10,000+ around the world as he only mentions their views on homosexuality as well as plainly saying: “Every holy religion has condemned it” this quote clearly shows that he is exclusionary towards anyone that doesn’t follow his beliefs or what he thinks is right. He also in his second paragraph only quotes both the Bible and the Qua’an only and mentions Judaism and seems to not bother looking up the verse which goes back the same exclusionary act throughout the whole article as this goes back to the fact that most Muslims hate Jews because of what Zionists do in Israel.
In his third paragraph he makes many false claims, assumptions and judgments to support his argument without stating any sources or statistics; he says: “our cultures, logic, morals, and humanity have and hopefully always will condemn such acts whether in public or in private” implying that homosexuality is immoral, illogical and inhuman and that all the other people that came to terms with homosexuality and accepted are too. He does that, using such strong emotive language, and the clear use of Pathos in order to persuade people into what he thinks, rather actually stating facts that support his argument since he has none. He also uses “our” a lot throughout the article to in order to make people feel involved and assumes that they agree with him or says that to make them feel like they do, by which he gains a big amount of support. He also falsely claims that “People are not born homosexual, usually one changes as he is growing from the infant stage up until puberty, some even later than that.”, “homosexuality can be treated in various ways.” and that “any morality that society still had would disappear amongst a myriad other plights.” These claims being made, he doesn’t site a single source for his claims even though studies have actually proved that people don’t choose to be homosexual. He then also compares very strangely homosexuality (a sexual orientation), to doing drugs “let’s legalize marijuana as well” as an attempt to portray homosexuality as a very negative choice by linking homosexuality to drugs in people’s minds to prove his point. Finally, he claims that “religion has done well in keeping society working well and efficiently in a respectable manner”. He speaks of religion a lot as Lebanon has a religion-following majority and it is also a taboo, so if he mentions religion people tend to not argue a lot which is a form of intellectual terrorism. He also mentions that despise the fact that many wars have been fought in the name of religion causing deaths, injuries and loss of money. For his final attempt he then quotes a Russian comedian (not knowing that he is a comedian) to show that a European “liberal” country also criminalizes homosexuality in order to appeal to those that aren’t very religious, but his claims are false since that law has been abolished and Smirnoff was not seriously speaking.
In conclusion, Sibai attempts desperately throughout the article, to prove his point using many different invalid arguments, and only speaks from one perspective and doesn’t show any attempts of being unbiased. He catches people’s attentions by talking about his personal reaction for the first paragraph, and then only portrays the views of religion and not science. Even when he mentions science he makes false claims and doesn’t site a single source for them. He then desperately uses vague words and illogical and untrue allegations. The article only uses pathos and lacks any signs of ethos and logos, which means that the only audience that would buy into it wouldn’t be the intellectuals but rather the boorish. This article simply shows how much work Human Rights groups have to do in these regions.
Word count: 1000
Bibliography:
-
"Gay from the Womb If Biological Older Brothers Matter." MedPage Today. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.medpagetoday.com/OBGYN/Pregnancy/3641>.
-
"Homophobia." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 21 May 2012. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homophobia?s=t>.
-
"Is There a 'Gay Gene'?" WebMD. WebMD. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20050128/is-there-gay-gene>.
-
"Mothers' Genetic Skew Linked to Gay Sons." - 09 November 2004. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6612>.
- Web. 20 May 2012. <http://justpaste.it/yzm>.
-
"Why Gays Don't Go Extinct." LiveScience.com. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.livescience.com/2623-gays-dont-extinct.html>.
