In 1843 Karl Marx came up with a phrase that turned out to be one of the most enduring in all Marxist thought: religion is the opium of the masses. With this phrase, Marx attempted to convey his belief that religion was invented by man to provide him with some consolation for his suffering and agony in the world. Marx called religion the “illusory happiness” of the people and argued that its abolition would coincide with the demand for the people’s real happiness. In addition, Marx believed that the criticism of religion was the prerequisite for all other forms of criticism. For this reason, he writes: “The criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”
Although Marx called religion an opium, it is perhaps more appropriate in SA to call religion the tik of the masses. Tik is often associated with violent, irrational crimes like those we repeatedly see in the form of corrective rape and the murders of lesbians in SA. Religion is, no doubt, complicit in the incitement and therefore in the perpetration of these abominable and senseless hate crimes. Religious fanatics, who participate in the debate on hate crimes in SA, invoke the Bible, Koran or another book of religion in order to show us that God (the symbolic name of absolute authority) teaches that non-heterosexual sexual behaviour is abominable and falls to be “corrected”. These are the same fanatics who argued so vociferously during the same-sex marriage debate in SA that the legalisation of same-sex marriage would inevitably lead to the legalisation of inter-species sex and necrophilia and who warned that God would punish Parliament for adopting the Civil Union Act. The religious arguments always take the same form: non-heterosexual sexuality is wrong because the Book (God’s authoritative word) says it is wrong. Never do we get to hear why it is wrong and why it should be “corrected”.
Up to this day, non-heterosexual members of South African society are told by religious organisations and their heterosexist followers how abominable and worthy of punishment their sexual orientations are. Just this morning a caller on SAfm’s “Morning Talk” attributed the Japan tsunami and other recent natural disasters to God’s intolerance for and punishment of gay and lesbian sexual practices. And, as we have seen from news coverage of the murder of Noxolo Nogwaza in KwaThema last week, the religious incitement to perpetrate hate crimes is not just talk — people act on it.
It is true that patriarchal, macho, heterosexist “culture” also plays an enormous role in the perpetration of hate crimes, but it is also true that culture is for most part “derived” from religion and not the other way around. Especially in the cases of the so-called religions of the Book, a patriarchal authoritarian religion constitutes the raison d’etre of heterosexist cultural practices. Some readers would say that I am misconstruing religion and point out that religion also preaches love, tolerance and forgiveness. However, there is a hidden, real core (in Jacques Lacan’s sense of the word) to these benevolent preachings: love, tolerance and forgiveness come to those who yield to the constitutive conditions of the relevant religion — accept God’s teachings, repent for your sins, change your behaviour and you shall receive love, tolerance and forgiveness. There are, of course, exceptions, but by and large this remains the pure religious position.
Most religious groups in SA have not and cannot accept (or simply do not understand) the separation of church and state that was introduced by the 1993 Constitution. Quite simply, the separation means, to use the words of Justice Emeritus Albie Sachs, that the religious beliefs of some cannot be used to determine the constitutional rights and freedom of others. The Constitution determines the constitutional rights of everyone and perhaps religious groups should be reminded more often that there are no absolute rights in our Constitution — the right to freedom of religion and religious expression is limited by the right to life, dignity and bodily integrity as well as the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation.
It is time for religious groups in SA to take responsibility for their role in the perpetration of hate crimes. Until all religions explicitly teach against corrective rape, murder of homosexuals and other hate crimes and until all cultural practices in SA accept the human-rights culture which SA chose in 1994, there will be a responsibility to speak out in the name of all those who have been humiliated, maimed and murdered as a result of the irrational hatred of non-heterosexual subjectivities.
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