Is it because I am now in my late 60s that I have run out of patience with the world in the matter of human rights for gays?

Why is it that I no longer can abide religious zealots who insult my God-given nature with impunity? That I find media pundits and talk-show hosts insufferable who pontificate on an innate sexuality of which they show themselves to cognoscenti like me to be abysmally ignorant? That I have come to abhor politicians who try to legislate my sexual orientation out of the 21st century back to an era in which I could be neither seen nor heard without fear of imprisonment, torture or death?

Why does the news go down like bitter gall when I read what is going on in Africa relative to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people today?

In Namibia, President Nujoma has declared that all homosexuals should be "arrested, imprisoned and deported." He has urged local officials in northern Namibia to identify homosexuals in their communities in order for them to be arrested. "We...have not fought for an independent Namibia that gives rights to botsotsos (criminals), gays and lesbians to do their bad things here." Other Namibian politicians accuse our sexual orientation of being a "festering finger" endangering the body of the nation. Their churchmen say God wants us dead; their courts send us to jail.

Zimbabwe has declared that it will not tolerate homosexuality. President Robert Mugabe says that the black gays and lesbians of his country are "worse than pigs and dogs...a scourge planted by the white man on a pure continent."

Ha! How's that for an ignorant son-of-a-bitch sitting in his nation's highest seat of authority and power? How's that for a reflection of the mentalities governing our country, too?

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni recently called for gays to be locked up. He has ordered that homosexuals in Uganda be arrested and charged, a state-owned newspaper has reported. "I have told the Criminal Investigations Department to look for homosexuals, lock them up and charge them," the New Vision quoted the president as saying.

Charge them, I pray, with what? With being born as men and women liberated from the common herd? Uganda is the country which produced Idi Amin Dada, a black tyrant who slaughtered and maimed and ate the hearts of his enemies and who now sits in regal comfort and safety somewhere in Saudi Arabia, protected by Moslem lords who swear that God is great, but who also punish homosexuals with death!

Were it not for the Republic of South Africa with its beautiful Constitution protecting gays and for the European Union with its Declaration of Human Rights which adamantly include our sexual orientation, there would be little hope for our world with its hateful religious creeds and its craven political machines.

The thought calms me. I shall try not to be so angry for awhile.

THE END