Gay rights concern us all

Madrid has become a vibrant city this weekend, as it celebrates its annual Gay Pride. Millions of varied sexual orientation mix in the streets and party together in an atmosphere of hedonism and mutual respect. It is nice living in such a civilized society. However, it is worth noting many countries consider homosexuality an ignominious act which try to tackle by way of repression. As usual, the vast majority of Western liberal democracies are free of this barbaric approach, and death penalty as a punishment for engaging in homosexual acts is restricted to just eight countries -Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen and Northen Nigeria-. What do these countries have in common? Well, it comes as no surprise they all are islamic States, which is significative enough. Another aspect worth mentioning in this regard is the readiness to consider gay rights a ‘problem’ of the gay community. As I see things, so called ‘gay rights’ deal with the essential freedom of individuals to live their live as they see fit, and everyone -gay or straight- should be interested in defending the basic freedoms of fellow human beings. Therefore, ‘gay rights’ -which we should not deem group rights but individual ones-, inasmuch as they deal with core human liberties, concern every single one of us.

Read more: ’Homosexuality is still a crime in more than 70 countries and may result in death penalty in eight of them’, in the Spanish section of Amnesty International.

Photo: Rainbow fairy, 2007 © Ricof3

Praise of Connemara

In the distance, the vast and desolate valleys of Connemara, leaving Galway well behind and venturing across the land of the Gaeltacht, the Irish Gaelic speakers. Road travelling for the sake of it. Maybe you will get lost, maybe you will not. Purple-flowered heath covering the sides of every path. Silence. Heavy rain. Then silence again. The shadows of the clouds above chasing each other along the grey slopes. Strong wind. A lost sheep, looking unscared, standing in the middle of the road. Colours ranging from purple to all shades of green to intense yellow, depending on the light which struggles to pass through the clouds. A local horse race with a luxurious prize: a kiss. A bell-like sound coming from a nearby village. Lakes are everywhere. The water is so dark it does not seem blue but black. Sometimes you cannot see it, but you hear it and feel it running strongly under the grass you walk on. Peaks hiding in the thick mist. The village of Cong, in the northern shore of Lough Corrib, which John Ford transformed in Innisfree, giving birth to ‘The Quiet Man’. In turn, almost thirty years after, we could enjoy a masterpiece, ‘Innisfree’, the documentary Spanish director José Luis Guerín shot on the location of Ford´s movie. The smiles of two redheaded and freckle-faced kids who wave goodbye to the stranger. Finally, when you thought the day was over, a ray of sunlight will come out of the clouds, perhaps illuminating for a second a solitary hut in the middle of the valley. This will happen for your eyes only, and at that precise moment you will understand the true meaning of the word ‘peace’. You are in Connemara. But be advised, if you remain here long enough, Connemara will be in you.

Photo: Connemara, Ireland, 2007 © Loudsoul

Dingle Bay

In a small pub in the port of Dingle, in Northwest Kerry, a bunch of locals listen to Tony Small, the aged singer from Galway, playing traditional songs with his guitar and the occasional accompaniment of a flutist. Everyone seems to know each other in this warm place. Nice and honest fellows, hard workers, good Irish people. Outside the night is chilly and windy, and here one may easily feel at home. Every new customer is greeted and welcomed with a smile. Countless pints of Guinness beer are ordered and consumed at a steady pace. Couples sit here and there. One of them, an elder one, follows the music with a permanent smile, the two of them slightly moving their white heads to the rhythm, chatting occasionally and exchanging serene love looks. How long have they been together? Both seem to be here and far away at the same time. Perhaps they recall their first dance together. Was it 1954 or 1955? Was it in that old ballroom in Tralee town they used to attend on Saturdays? Or was it during the local festivities at Killorglin, soon before they got married? In between songs, the singer raises his glass of Guinness in a toast to someone sitting among the public. He has just been bought yet another beer. ‘To your health!’, we hear. Soon he will start singing ‘The Shawl of Galway Gray’, and everyone will listen respectfully, enjoying this beautiful and well-known tune. May the wind carry these graceful sounds over the roofs in the port, over the fishermen´s boats and over the dark waters of the Dingle Bay. May the fortune preserve this placid life for the inhabitants of the Dingle Bay

Photo: Dingle Bay, Ireland, 2007 © Loudsoul

The flavour of Irish roads

Driving in Ireland is not an easy task, as there are countless things you may experience when you take the road. First and foremost, you will be in the company of lots of cars, and then more. It seems as if, with their sudden wealth, the Irish flocked to buy any available new car, clogging the existing roads, which were not designed for such a heavy traffic. Then, there are construction works everywhere. On many occasions, a muffin-shaped pavement is the best surface the wheels of your car will move over. In a country in which never ceases to rain, holes here and there -specially in the margins of the road- ensure you will sometimes feel like driving a hovercraft. Finding your way with an Irish map is almost impossible. The proportions employed do not match the real distances, and you will never be sure if the segment ahead is longer or shorter than the one you just left behind. The traffic signs do not help either, and you will find them either uselessly far from a crossroads or right in the middle, when it is too late to decide which way to go and you have just taken the wrong direction. There are also many things you may come across in an Irish road. Stubborn sheeps which will not move no matter how hard you honk, cows, lost pigs, ducks followed by her adorable ducklings, foxes, drunken fellows, bicycles with or without cyclists riding them, countless traffic cones that seem to be randomly scattered for no reason. You may even find yourself driving completely on your own for ages. There is also the weather. You have a bright blue sky over your head, and in the next curve you are under heavy rain, only to re-encounter yourself with the bright morning a few hundred meters away. This is what I call ‘The Pink Panther Effect’, for the poor and rosy feline always had a sort of ‘private’ cloud following and showering her on the cartoon show.

However, the beauty of the Irish landscape, the grass, nearly melting with the sea in the horizon, the rolling hills, the intense blue -almost black- colour of the lakes, the magnitude of the Irish valleys, the shape of the clouds… make any road trip in Ireland a breathtaking experience.

Photo: Dingle Peninsula, Ireland, 2007 © Loudsoul

Want to join the club? Then do not criticize our rules

One catholic priest in a village near Toledo declared yesterday he will not admit children at the rite of confirmation (in the Christian Church, this is the rite at which a baptized person is admitted as a full member of the religious community) unless their parents withdraw them from a forthcoming course called ‘Education for Citizenship’, which will be mandatory for all children in Spain beginning next academic year. This new subject was incorpotated to the core national curricula by the Spanish parliament this year, and, among other things, explains how our democratic institutions work or how our society is formed by people of very different ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs and sexual orientations, all of them deserving respect. The Spanish Catholic Church considers it to be inmoral and against traditional values. Amid the fuss generated by the priest intentions, the local Church hierarchy has backed down from its initial plans. Why all this uproar? Because of the pressure the Church wants to exert on a democratic government to withdraw the law by means of its followers. I see things rather differently. First, the Catholic Church, as any other sect, should be a fully private institution, not receiving a single cent from the state or using any public facility. Obviously, it should have nothing to do with the public education system, thought it ought to have the right to set up private schools, which would receive no public funds. Second, as a private club, it should be allowed to fix its own rules, provided they do not go against the laws. If an adult voluntarily wants to join a religious group, she should be aware of its rules, and abide by them, period. All this reminds me of another example in which the current epidemics of political correctness also plays an important role. A few months ago, a girl was dispossessed of her newly won crown at a Spanish beauty contest because she hid to the jury she had a son, something strictly forbidden according to the rules. Since those rules applied only to women and not to men, the organization´s decision triggered wide spread complaints, amid accusations of sexual discrimination. Yet beauty contests are among the most stupid and prejudiced inventions of humanity. If an adult voluntarily wants to take part in them, she should be aware of its discriminatory rules, and abide by them, period. What is not fair is acting as if you did not know where you were getting into, especially when things are not going your way. The Church has never been a democratic or egalitarian institution. Why asking it to become one now? Because the political correctness climate demands so. The state has no right to force private citizens or institutions to behave in a particular way. However, the Spanish Constitution establishes the separation between Church and state, and it is high time our governments live up to that principle.

Photo: St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic Church, Rocklin, CA, 2008 © Encouragement

Six Feet Under

Isn´t HBO´s ‘Six feet under’ the best TV series ever made? If you don´t agree with me, which ones do you like best?

Photo: Six Feet Under © HBO

Motives and doses

Drugs are bad, we are ceaselessly reminded. If that were true, how come millions of people want to use them? Is it possible that such a great number of individuals is not rational but purely masochistic? We take drugs because we think they are good for us. They give us pleasure or some other kind of benefits. However, drugs, like many other things -from cars to food, from swimming in a lake to climbing mountains-, may have undesired effects, and may even kill us. The two key words when dealing with drugs are ‘motives’ and ‘doses’. As with any other human action, we ought to have a rational motive to use drugs, be it pure recreation, gaining insight, be in close emotional contact with others or getting ourselves in a creative mood. Doing otherwise is likely to cause troubles. Then, having the best possible knowledge about the drug we are going to take is invaluable. This knowledge should not be restricted to the characteristics of the substances themselves but extend to our physical condition in relation to the effects of the drug as well. Only by doing this will we be able to determine the appropriate dose we have to take of each drug to reach our aims and minimize the side effects. It goes without saying that in certain cases this dose will be close to zero. If you suffer from psychotic episodes, it is not advisable you smoke cannabis or take LSD; if you have a weak heart condition, snorting cocaine will do no good to you, and so on. Therefore, states should be preaching less about what we may put into our bodies and engage in a serious effort to disclose, divulge and make easily available real information on drugs. And, above all, they should start treating us like adults and not like children, though maybe that is asking too much from our current nanny states.

Photo: Cannabis-like leaves

A moral dilemma

Russia is not a democracy. The Gulf Monarchies are not democracies, nor are many African countries. Human rights are respected in none of these countries or regions. On the other hand, we have commercial relations with them. We import oil, natural gas and all sorts of raw materials from them. We know in most cases the money we pay for those goods does not reach the population of those countries. It usually only fattens the Swiss bank accounts of the tyrants ruling them. Therefore, we are backing autocracies with our commercial policies. Put in another way, our commercial policies often undermine our foreign policy -provided it actively endorses human rights abroad-. It can be argued we should make our trade relations contingent upon progress in basic freedoms, human rights, the rule of law and democracy. In fact, that was the way we dealt with the apartheid in South Africa -along with diplomatic sanctions-. But, is it realistic to think the United States will cut oil imports from the Middle East or that Europe will stop buying natural gas from Russia or the corrupt Central Asian republics? Our economies depend increasingly on those resources. But even if they did not and we were able to devise some kind of embargo to help advance the cause of the high moral principles cited above, there will always be less scrupulous governments in need of those goods. Thus, if we do not buy Russian gas, China will; if we stop importing Saudi Arabia´s oil -and that is really science fiction now-, again, China will. Those are among the hurddles we encounter when we try to tackle security and human rights issues in the international realm. We only need to think of the difficulties to agree on economic sanctions as a way to stop Iran´s nuclear ambitions, or the increasing presence of Chinese firms -in many cases substituting Western ones- in Africa. When dealing with corrupt governments, the chinese will not raise the subject of human rights, to begin with because their civil society back home will not press them to do so (the chinese government does not permit the emergence of an independent civil society), as it is the case with Western companies and agencies, no matter how much we may criticize their behaviour. So, what is to be done? We certainly should not continue bowing down before dictators like Vladimir Putin or Teodoro Obiang while we happily buy their oil, but neither can we shut the door on their faces. If we want to advance the cause of human rights and democracy, that approach is bound to fail. I believe a solution to this moral dilemma ought to combine trade with diplomatic pressure and help directed to democratic elements in those societies, in particular the ones who could trigger political changes. I will try to further develop my viewpoint next week, when I return from an international seminar on the subject organized by the Foreign Office in London, UK. Let us hear what world experts on these matters have to say.

Not separatists but terrorists

ETA announced today its break of the so called cease-fire it declared a year ago and which actually broke last December with a deadly attack at the Madrid airport. The international press echoes the announcement and, as always, there is a consensus on calling this Basque mob a ’separatist group’. Let us take a quick look at today´s online edition of some international papers. ‘Basque separatist group ETA calls off cease-fire’, The International Herald Tribune; ‘Basque separatist group to resume violence after halting 14-month ceasefire’, The Guardian; ‘Basque Group Ends Ceasefire’, The New York Times; ‘L’organisation séparatiste basque a annoncé…’, Le Monde; ‘Basque separatists call off year-old ceasefire’, The Globe and Mail . One hoped that after the 9/11 and the surge of global terror networks, terrorist groups would be called what they really are, and not designed by adjectives that perhaps conjure up an image of a romantic fight for freedom against an occupying power, but which nevertheless are far from reality. We in Spain have been suffering terror for more than thirty years. ETA has killed more than 800 people throughout these years, including policemen, politicians, civilians, and children. It is high time the world knows we cherish our democratic freedoms and have a constitutional system in which everyone may defend all sorts of ideas in the political arena, including independence and secession. However, the only way our laws allow it to be done is through non-violent and democratic means. ETA and its political branch, Batasuna, consider acceptable to kill anyone who does oppose their views. That is not separatism but a sheer practice of terror. The Spanish paper El País offered in today´s edition the best definition of these mafiosi: ‘An armed group in search of excuses not to disappear’.