ARTICLE
T
Hamza Ali Abbasi, social
activist or moral
crusader?
he recent legalisation of gay marriages all across
the US has caused quite a stir on social media.
Opinions of all kinds are flowing in; some strongly
disapproving the notion, others advocating it.But Pakistani actor/director Hamza Ali Abbasi, known to occasionally give his two-cents, has a very interesting stance
on it. The celebrity, in the past, has expressed his opinion
on various issues and having a following of about 2.1 million on his official Facebook page, we infer that his word
matters. But what we don’t understand are the analogies he drew in his latest post. Firstly, the post that was
edited four times within five hours. Hamza is obviously
disappointed at
people who are
‘celebrating’ a
behavior
that
is,
according
to him, “taboo
even in animals”. But how
can he generalise
animals
on the basis of
human psychology? What we
mean to say
here is that researchers have
proved a display of homosexual behavior
in about 1,500
species and not
just in terms of
sexual
activity but courtship, affection, pair bonding, and parenting
too. Just to make it clear, the animal kingdom practices
it with much greater sexual diversity than the scientific
community and society at large have previously been
willing to accept – including homosexual, bisexual and
non-reproductive sex. Categorically, his statement falls
in speciesism. The actor says he isn’t hateful towards
people who are gay but at the same time is against the
idea of justifying “homosexuality under the banner of universal love”.According to his Facebook post, the legalisation of gay marriages is an attempt to “make normal
and natural what is abnormal and un-natural”. The original post was then edited to add that “Gay marriage does
not mean ‘human equality’. Stop mutilating the concepts
of human equality and justice.” Though Hamza did not
explain his concept of human equality and justice, any
lay person with even some very basic common sense
would know that equality is about having the freedom to
go about one’s own choices without being considered an
outcast. On the contatry, Hamza mutilated the concept
of human equality and justice with his strong biases in
his own post. The post was again edited to add another
line: “Tolerance means tolerating something…not celebrating it.” The definition of tolerance and celebration
remain very subjective. Tolerance means tolerating with
or without necessarily having to
accept something
and
celebrating
shows certain acceptance. He is
right considering
the
denotations
of the two words
but why dictate
people what to tolerate and what to
celebrate, for that
too is very subjective.The post was
re-re-re-edited to
add that Hamza’s
heart sank at the
innocent question
of his nephew inquiring about the
meaning of gay.
Let us just hope
that we all have the intellectual neutrality to explain things
to the younger generation without strongly attaching our
opinions that may, in some way, divert their course of
thought. Let us let them learn things and decide what’s
right or not. Let us treat their intellect with equality and
give them freedom to make their own choices in making a distinction between right and wrong.The post was
edited again to add that legalisation of gay marriages
equate to legalising and celebrating incest.We’ll just wait
for the post to be edited again for the umpteenth time
to see if Hamza explains the correlation between incest
and homosexuality or we shall leave it to your better
judgment.
7 | BOOM