Iraqihomophobia

"The best way to increase toleration is to multiply the number of individuals who enjoy real happiness and do not therefore find their chief pleasure in the infliction of pain upon their fellow men."

Bertrand Russell
Conquest of happiness
Page 110


Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a fatwa against gays and lesbians on his Web site, according to London-based LGBT (that's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) human rights groups OutRage (that's O, R).

Story here

Written in Arabic, the fatwa comes from a press conference in which Mr. Sistani was asked about the judgment on sodomy and lesbianism. Forbidden,” Sistani answered, according to OutRage, Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.

If Bertrand's analysis is correct, then one must conclude Mr. Sistani is an unhappy man along with his followers.

Why is it that religion is so often used as a veil to cover the sadistic pleasure of persecution of others?

Is it because without religion all that is left is naked sadism and that is too unflatteringring a truth to accept about oneself?

Consider that in our era Charles Manson, L. Ron Hubbard, Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jim Jones, and Vernon Wayne Howell (aka David Koresh) have all formed religions.

Isn't that list reason enough to doubt the validity of religious beliefs, let alone tolerate their intolerance?

I end the way I began, with a quote from Bertrand Russell:

"Consider how much of unadulterated superstition goes into the make-up of the conventionally virtuous man, and reflect that while all kinds of imaginary moral dangers were guarded against by incredibly foolish prohibitions, the real moral dangers to which an adult is exposed were practically unmentioned. What are these really harmful acts to which the average man is tempted? Sharp practice in business of the sort not punished by law, harshness towards employees, cruelty towards wife and children, malevolence towards competitors, ferocity in political conflicts - these are the really harmful sins that are common among respectable and respected citizens. By means of these sins a man spreads misery in his immediate circle and does his bit towards destroying civilization.

Yet these are not the things that make him, when he is ill, regard himself as an outcast who has forfeited all claim to divine favor. These are not the things that cause him in nightmares to see visions of his mother bending reproachful glances upon him. Why is his subconscious morality thus divorced from reason? Because the ethic believed in by those who had charge of his infancy was silly; because it was not derived from any study of the individual's duty to the community; because it was made up of old scraps of irrational taboos; and because it contained within itself elements of morbidness derived from the spiritual sickness that troubled the dying Roman Empire.

Our nominal morality has been formulated by priests and mentally enslaved women. It is time that men who have to take a normal part in the normal life of the world learned to rebel against this sickly nonsense."


Bertrand Russell
The Conquest of Happiness
Pages 83-84.