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.
I got the feeling that corrective rape was more closely linked to cultural ways than religious, that attitude of “homosexuality is not in our culture”, so it can be corrected.
Religion plays a sorry role in human societies world wide. It is the most violent expression of human behaviour and subsumes its kindliness with manipulation and justification.
Ja, what Po said.
I’m not sure how to understand the whole corrective rape thing. But I can’t imagine that a man who would not otherwise rape a woman, would do this?
Does that make sense? In other words, I suspect that men who “corrective” rape women are men who rape/abuse women just for their own pleasure in other contexts too.
(I’m not sure about that, just my suspicion, in the absence of knowing more about it. Would a man who would not otherwise rape a woman, rape a woman to “correct” her lesbianism?)
My mind still boggles over that study where about 25% of men said they had raped someone before.
All such arguments presume that God approves of heterosexual strait sex….having the right ceremony of course! Yet the biological sexual imperative is innate to human nature. Either they are all right or most likely, they are all morally wrong. I doubt there is any gay or strait before the Lord, only the universal corruption of body mind and spirit that is human nature itself! http://www.energon.org.uk
“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.”
I trust that you agree that this is why the song “Shoot the Boer” has no place.
Sex and religion. Do a search: First Scandal.
Religion is not from God – it is man made to assert control . one life taught us what to do when we find that someone does something contrary to what our beliefs state. stoning in Palestine – Israel was afforded to those caught in adultery – but one man (the Son of God) forgave a woman caught in adultery and treated her with compassion.
The “Illusory happiness” of the previous Soviet Union didn’t help them much – much like a vociferous atheist getting married in a denominated church.
But like you said : changing my OWN behaviour as opposed to someone else’s is a fact misunderstood by most religious groups .
But in a society where a majority of institutional instructions relate to shooting and killing i.e. ‘Shoot to kill’ and ‘Shoot the boer’ the ‘masses’ are subjected to an ungodly ‘baptism’ of using violence to correct a dissatisfaction .
Couple this to frustration from the fact that you are jobless,hunger with no silver lining to your cloud and these acts will occur – with or without the blessing of the respective clergy.
Cave ab homine unius libre….
Re POs comment
Culture develops initially shaped by those who hold sway in a society, and those who have the ear of the leaders in terms of moral guidance.
In almost any culture those who promoted superstitious or supernatural beliefs have had a major influence in what was deemed law and what kind of influence the leadership had in shaping the culture.
Religious influence has shaped much of what culture is, in every society that could not be termed secular from the beginning.
Those who rape are at least partially influenced by the idea that the victim is somehow less worthy than them, and almost all religions have had a hand in perpetuating cultures that percieve both women and non-heterosexuals as unworthy or of lesser importance.
The bible and koran in particular, have many references to the lesser status of women, and deity-approved examples of men owning women, being given women, taking women, and incitements to punish homsexuality.
Culture and religion are creations of class society – the same society that produces sexism and rape. Only by removing class divisions will all other divisions fall away.
My Bible reads:
Thou shalt not kill.
Treat your neighbour as you would be treated.
I’d lay a bet that everyone else’s Bible reads similarly. I cannot speak for the literature of other religions because I don’t know enough about it, but biblical admonishment serves as lessons for the reader; it is not a call to action to us to improve the behaviour of others.
My Bible also notes:
Judge not that you be not judged.
This makes it clear that it is not my right to judge anyone else. Judgement is in God’s hands.
>>Religion is, no doubt, complicit in the incitement and therefore in the perpetration of these abominable and senseless hate crimes.
This issue is one of the main reasons I cannot accept my upbringing in christianity. The amount of hate, disgust and fear directed at homosexuals by christians is so out of proportion. They cannot see how ironic it is to ‘draw the line’ at homosexuality while half their congregation have probably been through 2 or 3 marriages, or are ‘living in sin.’ Their own religion damns them, never mind common sense.
Jaco, I could not put it better.
When some religious people want to use ancient texts to justify acting upon their prejudices, citing the book of Leviticus suits them just fine. On the other hand, when such people want to indulge in practices prohibited by those same ancient texts, ignoring the bible suits them just fine.
@Michael John
So if you are unemployed/hungry you can go and rape a woman? We all have frustrations in our lives, but we don’t all up and rape the nearest lesbian.
@Les Wood,
Couldn’t agree more. MLH’s comment reflects this attitude precisely.
‘Religion is, no doubt, complicit in the incitement and therefore in the perpetration of these abominable and senseless hate crimes’.
That’s a very sweeping statement for a law professor to make! To support it, you need to show that those who commit the truly horrific crime of corrective rape have been incited by pastors or Christians in responsible positions to go out and rape lesbians. Your article conspicuously fails to provide and evidence to support this assertion.
According to the HSRC, between 80% to 85% of South Africans consistently believe that it is “wrong for two adults of the same sex to have sexual relations”. It is clear that there is a vast difference between the respectful holding of that belief and the appalling violence being dealt to lesbians through corrective rape. Your article does not explore these differences in any way at all.
Is it not more likely that in the poverty stricken townships, violent people commit corrective rape based on their fear of those who are ‘different’, in a similar way that foreigners are targeted in xenophobic attacks?
Corrective rape is a violent hate crime and it must be campaigned against and strongly prosecuted, just as for xenophobic crime. But the cause is the violent, crime-ridden culture of poor townships, where people are very slow to change and where outsiders are treated with deep suspicion.
The solution therefore is poverty eradication, education and employment, rather than the blanket condemnation of religion that you give!
‘Corrective Rape’ is a punitive act only. If it were to encourage homosexuals to ‘convert’ why are the victims not given time to consider the idea but killed after the event?
While some of what you say is well noted, it over simplifies the endemic nature of corrective rape in SA and all the variables of its odorous making. While religious zealots may fuel the fire – you will probably find that the actual victims in the SA townships were not brutalized by bible waving fanatics, nor were the perpetrators so influenced;; all the cases I have reported on over the last 2 years have been hate driven by men who felt entitled and undermined – who have no compassion – who believe on a cultural level that women are there for their use and purpose – who are homophobic thru fears and repressed anger, often scapegoating because of their own sexual inadequacy. AND a lot more to it……. Corrective Rape is a HATE CRIME. http://lezgetreal.com/2010/11/lesbian-corrective-rape-victim-has-her-day-in-court/
All the reasons why I am happy to have gone beyond religion and developed a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
It works, try it!!!
” gone beyond religion and developed a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ”
If Jesus wanted belief in him to be reasonable, why were no books of the bible written about him during his lifetime, or by eye-witnesses, or within a couple of decades of his death? Why was it left to a Roman council nearly 400 years later to compile the bible and vote on whether to portray him as divine or just another prophet? Why are there no originals (or even close) of the texts of the new testament?
Faith in christianity starts with the bible, which has no objective credibility, look into the history of its sources, look at the contradictions and the complete lack of corroborating evidence, look at who put it together and why.
While you are at it, ask yourself what is good about a god who demands a blood sacrifice before he can forgive his own creations for being themselves, and what sense it makes to carry the sins of ancestors through the generations.
Faith is misguided, what you believe has a solid foundation is built on self-contradictory myth, perpetuated by mistranslation upon mistranslation of unsupported assertion.
I have written a reply to Jaco’s article and posted it here http://burden4souls.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/religion-and-corrective-rape-%e2%80%93-reply-to-jaco-barnard-naude/
@Gavin I won’t argue the truth of the Bible or Christianity. But you’re incorrect about who wrote accounts of Christ’s life and when those accounts were written. It’s obviously completely up to you whether you buy any of the content, but I’d encourage you to do some investigation, because what you assert above about there being no original manuscripts, there only being written record 400 years later, mistranslation, those are all actually untrue.
Sorry to be a pedant. I believe Marx called it the “opiate” rather than “opium” of the masses. He was thus clearly giving a class of drugs that give rise to complacency rather than speaking about the effects of any individual drug.
Otherwise, nice blog.
Religion is a human construct. The All, or the Absolute, is outside and above all religions no matter what any particular religion’s followers may claim in this regard. Thus it is up to each person to take responsibility for their own relationship with the Absolute. Thus it is a cop out to hand this relationship ove to any other organisation or person whether they claim to be religious or not.
I think why I link corrective rape to culture rather than religion is that there are many religious people in places like, say the US and I have not heard a of a big corrective rape problem there. No doubt the religious people there hate the idea of homosexuality, but the decision to rape a lesbian is not made. In South Africa, women are not on the whole a respected species, and I don’t feel that corrective rape is fueled by religious passion, but rather by disrespect for women.
@ Scott
Mark was the earliest gospel, and bible historians place it at around 70AD at the earliest, none of the gospels are available as originals, and nobody knows who wrote them. I did not claim there were no texts before 400AD, but the bible was compiled at the council of Nicea, Jesus left no written record during his lifetime, what remains was written long after and contradicts itself. Most of the faith rests on the 4 gospels and what Paul wrote, and he also never met Jesus.
Try watching this for a start. See if you can point me to a credible source refuting what he says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB4MPBg60Ho
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