It would be funny to watch minorities invoke majoritarianism against other minorities, if it wasn’t so hateful and intolerant.
South Africa’s Constitution grants every person equality before the law, inherent dignity, an equal right to express themselves, and the right not to be unfairly discriminated against.
Some Christians (and particularly those of the alt-right variety) are not okay with this.
They loudly invoke the Constitution’s protections of individual rights, minorities and religious freedom, but when it comes to their own prejudices, they turn around to argue that a majority of South Africans are Christian, and therefore, their will must be done.
Jesus over the rainbow
Earlier this week, Willem Petzer, who calls himself an “Afrikaner commentator” and has 54,000 followers on X, highlighted a post by “Petzer”, which styles itself as an “independent news outlet” despite having amassed only 186 followers since the account was created in October last year.
That post reported that “Christian activists painted the name of Jesus over the gay-flag crossing” on Somerset Road in De Waterkant, Cape Town. In response, the City painted the crosswalk pink (lacking stock of approved road paint in rainbow colours), after which someone returned to paint the words “perversion” and “Jesus is Lord” over the pink, along with a reference to Romans 1:24-27.
The crossing is part of a “pink route” through an area with a high proportion of gay residents and gay-friendly entertainment venues.
When it was created, the city’s mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, reportedly said: “Cape Town is known for its vibrant LGBTQIA+ nightlife and community. We want all to feel welcome in our city where we embrace diversity, and the addition of this bold pedestrian crossing to our road network will help spread this message. It also speaks to innovation in public spaces and support for public art that we would like to foster.”
The campaign is part of an effort to market Cape Town internationally as a gay-friendly tourist destination, from which the city’s residents and businesses all benefit. Hostility towards gay people, by contrast, will chase tourists away and perpetuate an image of South Africans as intolerant religious zealots.
The City also says that the paint and colours used “complies with the SANS standards for road markings”.
“Perversion”
According to Petzer’s report, the census found Cape Town to be 86% Christian, before quoting a certain Dr Adi Schlebush, who turns out not to be a medical doctor, but a PhD in theology.
The post reads: “According to Dr Adi Schlebusch, head of research at Petzer, this is yet another example in a long series of cases where the DA leadership continues to alienate its largely Christian voter base: ‘The DA would probably have more success among voters if the party positioned itself more like the moderate Christian Democrats in Europe, but unfortunately it is increasingly displaying the characteristics of a militant woke movement.’”
So, Petzer and his colleague clearly approve of the vandalism of the crosswalk.
Petzer comments: “Massive debate now whether the street-crossing should have Christian or Homosexual symbolism. All of this could have been avoided if the DA just painted it Black and White in stead of appeasing the alphabet — as the law required in the first place.”
There isn’t actually such a debate. The debate is whether a symbol celebrating gay inclusion ought to be vandalised by self-appointed “Christian activists”.
White knights
I mocked Petzer on X for “railing about protecting minority rights against majority rule approving of this vandalism and invoking majority rule to justify his prejudice,” adding, “There’s no hate like Christian love, I suppose.”
In response, a phalanx of white knights from the South African chapter of the MAGA movement – who by sheer coincidence happened to be actually white – rode to his defence.
One asserted that the rainbow crosswalk was unlawful, as Petzer had done – as if this justifies vandalism.
Another asked whether it was “a right to have a rainbow colored (sic) pedestrian crossing [that favours] one spesific (sic) sexual orientation and excluding others”, as if he was unable to cross the road for fear of becoming gay.
Yet another said, “One can still be opposed to quasi-religious livery on public infrastructure, without being a hypocrite on minority protections. Separation of church and state isn’t irrelevant in this context.” As if homosexuality is a “quasi-religion”, whatever that means.
I was told the original rainbow crossing was a “[w]aste of taxpayers money, illegal, distracting to drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike”.
One said “if a little spray paint is hate you may not be tough enough for africa (sic)”, as if hate is a natural feature of African society, and tolerating it is as necessary as being able to brave the African sun.
Another thought they were being clever when they said: “Its advocacy for lgbtq+ puts government in opposition to almost all religions, thus in violation of the separation of church and state dogma.”
A commenter said that because the City of Cape Town painted the crossing, vandalising it with a religious verse that denounces gay people is just fine, because, “The city set the standard”.
A very oppressed Christian said: “I wish all religions hated like Christian’s if that’s the case 😅 I’m sure the whole lgbt (sic) community would also prefer some writing over a rainbow than being chucked off a roof”.
The reference is to a handful of cases in Pakistan. For the record: Islamic fundamentalism is worse than Christian fundamentalism, but that doesn’t make Christian fundamentalism good. The implication, that Christians have it worse than gay people, or are oppressed in South Africa, also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
The least eloquent said, “Almal kyk hierdie moffie”, as if support for gay rights implies anything about my own sexual preferences, and as if calling someone gay is an insult.
Hatred
There are a few things to point out here. First off, all these people were defending an act of hatred.
You don’t vandalise a symbol of equality and inclusion out of love. You don’t call the sexual identity or preferences of other people “perversion” as a sign of love.
I don’t believe the people who vandalised the crosswalk are representative of all, or even most, Christians.
That said, the verses they cited bear reading, because it is hard to dispute that they are indeed hateful.
The apostle Paul was writing to the Christians of Rome, arguing that “the just shall live by faith”, while the “unrighteous” who failed to accept the world around us as proof of God’s power and refused to thank or glorify him, “became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened”.
Then come the verses quoted by the vandals:
“24 Wherefore God also gave them [the non-believers] up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
“25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
“26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
“27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”
That’s not all. Unbelievers are also “filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful”.
Other than being full of debate, I deny every one of those accusations.
Christian love
This certainly isn’t a passage of Christian love towards non-Christians. It also shows that Paul considered homosexuality to be “unseemly” and “against nature”.
But that non-believers are full of evil is just Paul’s opinion. It isn’t a very charitable opinion. It is, in fact, provably false.
As I have written before, the ethical basis of Christianity – loving thy neighbour, and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you – is not unique to Christianity. It predates Christianity. It is as old as philosophy itself, and has been subsumed in virtually all religions and moral doctrines.
Paul (and any other Christian) is free to hold such a dismal opinion of non-Christians, but that doesn’t mean other people should be bound by it, or need to listen to this hatred.
Christians believe that their God is the sole basis of morality. Yet a simple study of history will show that moral codes very similar to those of Christianity arise naturally in any society, as a result of the need for mutual safety, social cooperation and peaceful trade.
Denouncing non-believers in the terms that Paul does is both false and pretty clearly hateful.
Happily, many modern Christians reject this knee-jerk denunciation of people who don’t share their own beliefs. Many abide by their Bible, when it not only instructs them to love sinners and be nice to their enemies, but also, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? …You hypocrite…”
So, self-appointed “Christian activists” who think it is okay to express their hatred for gay people by defacing symbols that celebrate their equality and inclusion are not representative of Christians in general, and do not heed their own holy scripture.
Legality
The question of legality was raised by quite a few people. I don’t know whether the City is correct in claiming that the crosswalk is legal, but it is surely the authority to which one would apply if one wanted to do something like that oneself.
If it is not legal, however, then the proper response would be to challenge the City in court. Given that no court has ruled that a multi-coloured crosswalk is unlawful, it is not justified to take the law into your own hands and vandalise it. That, I am sure is illegal.
As for the idea that the crosswalk is distracting to drivers and therefore makes Capetonians less safe, there is research on that. Asphalt art actually makes for “significantly improved safety”.
The claim that “the City set the standard” by painting the crosswalk in the first place is also nonsense. For a start, the City is the governing entity here. The vandals did not have City approval. The City also did not bulldoze a Christian cross (many of which can be seen lit up on the koppies around South African towns, spoiling the landscape for Christians and non-Christians alike, by the way).
Yes, Christian “activists” have a right to express themselves, but not by denying others the same right. What happened here is akin to claiming freedom of movement to be the right to shoulder-barge someone from where they were standing.
The separation-of-church-and-state argument, implying that the state may not advocate for anything that isn’t consistent with religious dogma is both circular and self-contradictory. Restricting the state to church-approved advocacy actually subjects the state to the church.
The argument that 86% of Cape Town’s residents identify as Christian is misleading, and quite unsound. It is misleading because it is not true for the community surrounding the crosswalk. De Waterkant is internationally known as a “gay village”.
Celebrating that is not in any way exclusionary, as some commenters claim. Nobody is oppressing straight people by expressing their tolerance of, or friendliness towards, gay people.
Majoritarianism
Either way, the majoritarian argument is flawed. The entire purpose of constitutional rights is to protect individuals (and, by implication, minorities) from the tyranny of the majority.
People who claim to be members of persecuted minorities and reject rule by a majoritarian government are hypocrites if they appeal to majoritarianism when it suits their religious prejudices.
Contrary to the “moffie” commenter, I have been friendly towards gay people, and enjoyed gay-friendly venues, for decades. Never once have I even been tempted to reconsider my own heterosexual orientation. (Sorry, Paul. Not all non-Christians do “unseemly” homosexual things. In fact, very few do.)
Homosexuality is not infectious.
I think people who so overtly hate any sign of gayness – public handholding, or rainbow flags – must be very insecure in their own sexuality. In every homophobe, there’s likely a homosexual who hates himself for his “unnatural” desires.
As for whether homosexuality is indeed “unnatural”, and merely a “choice”, there is an easy answer for that. Ask a homophobic heterosexual to demonstrate that it is merely a choice by choosing to be homosexual for a day. If they find the notion of doing the gay fandango repellent, then why would they think gay people can just choose to be straight?
Liberal society
In a free society, Christians have every right to their beliefs, to the practice of their religion, and to live by the laws they believe their God set for them.
But they have no right to impose those beliefs upon anyone else, whether by law or by other forms of pressure – such as vandalising public symbols or facilities they do not like. On the contrary, they are required to grant their neighbours the same freedoms that they expect for themselves.
As I’ve written before, a chief characteristic of Western Civilisation is not the very significant Judeao-Christian influence on its history, but its embrace of enlightened secularism by which the pious were freed to worship as they chose instead of being required to follow a state religion, and being punished for dogmatic differences with the ruling elite.
In that light, it is good to consider who exactly supports vandalism targeting gay people.
Christian Nationalism
“Dr” Adi Schlebush is the executive director of the Pactum Institute, which is “an independent academic research institute dedicated to the scholarly advancement of traditional Biblical Christianity.”
His bio says he is “a member of the board of directors of both the Movement for Christian Nationalist Education as well as the Afrikaans Protestant Academy”.
My older readers, who were subjected to apartheid-era schooling, will recall that Christian National Education is an educational system based on ultra-conservative Calvinist principles, implemented by the National Party government to promote Afrikaner nationalism and culture and subjugate black people.
Calvinism is a Protestant doctrine that asserts the absolute sovereignty of God not only over Christian believers, but over the government and society at large. It holds to the principle of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) as the ultimate authority for both faith and practical government. Calvin himself advocated “theocracy” under God’s law, though not extending to the judicial law of Moses. (Where exactly that line lies remains a question of endless dispute among Christians.)
Schlebush is a Christian Nationalist, and seeks to establish religious rule at all levels of society, including government, as a counter to the “contemporary dominance of Cultural Marxism” in the West.
Pactum Institute
Here’s how the Pactum Institute describes itself:
“The Institute seeks to fill the lamentable gap left in contemporary scholarship by the systematic intolerance and bias against historic and Biblical Christianity in academia, by promoting the following through its research:
- The Authority of Scripture and in particular the confessional or high approach to Bibliology.
- Covenantal or Federal Theology as the foundational and organizing principle for a Christian society.
- Christ’s Lordship over all of creation and especially over every aspect and every sphere of the Christian life.
- God’s Law as the absolute moral standard for all spheres of society.
- Christian Familialism and Ethnic Complementarianism as representing the organic and divinely ordained social order for mankind.
- Providing sustainable, practical solutions for small community and clan living within the context of contemporary society based on the principle of Subsidiarity.
“By virtue of a covenantal or federal theological framework, the Pactum Institute strives to contest the contemporary dominance of Cultural Marxism in Western academia by advocating the historic and biblical Christian doctrines of Scripture, the Covenant, Divine Law and Familialism. The Christian worldview will thereby be presented to the broader public as the only true alternative to the ruin and decadence caused by apostasy from historic Christianity and the extensive yet destructive impact of Cultural Marxism on Western civilization.”
I don’t propose to define the long words in this deranged piece of nightmarish theocratic fantasy.
Suffice to say that the kind of people who support defacing gay symbols in public are not the kind of people whose political opinions are consistent with individual freedom, humanist morality, classical liberalism more broadly, or indeed the South African Constitution.
On the contrary. They are prejudiced, hateful and quite possibly insane.
Their beliefs are as mad as that of any Taliban mullah. How they live their own lives is up to them, but if we value our freedom, we shouldn’t let them anywhere near the levers of power.
[Image: The original vandalism to the famed rainbow crosswalk on Somerset Street in De Waterkant, Cape Town, with the freshly painted pink crosswalk – which was vandalised again. Photos supplied by Councillor Ian McMahon of Ward 115]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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