Al Shindagah

8 | Al Shindagah | Issue 138 am a great believer in personal freedom. I have never sought to impose my beliefs on anyone else and my philosophy has always been ‘Live and let live’. What people do in the privacy of their own homes is of no concern to me. However, I strongly object to the trend in various Western countries of celebrating behaviours that have been considered aberrations since time immemorial. Worryingly the children in my part of the world cannot escape the Western media’s touting of time- honoured decadent deviations as being new, and in many cases desirable, norms. For one thing, fans generally look up to celebrities as role models and to my mind they have a duty to use their celebrity to set an example. Unfortunately, so few do. Take the Puerto Rican singer/actor Ricky Martin for instance, a father of twin boys. He has proudly announced his upcoming marriage to a man of Syrian origin on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, an announcement that was widely covered by the press which hyped it as though his was a royal wedding. He joyfully expounded on his plans for a spring wedding to loud applause from the show’s audience. A new reality that defies God’s constitution is being created to indoctrinate young people everywhere into believing they can now choose whether to marry a person of the opposite sex or one of the same sex. They now have the option to decide between the heterosexual and homosexual way of life. An argument still rages over whether homosexuality is a product of nature or nurture. I would argue that babies are not born gay; scientists have tried and failed to pinpoint a ‘gay gene’. In that case, rather than being a natural anomaly, homosexuality is a behavioural issue. Homosexuals have always existed but until recent decades they kept their activities under wraps and harmed no one else. But in this so- called progressive climate, they are proliferating as evidenced by well- I Minds distorted by neo-liberal values POLITICS ©APimages Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor • Published in the media on 11 October 2017