NO RED HOUSE FOR MANNING (RHOCD) Personally speaking

I’m sorry, but this is a PM who likes a little too much to make light of serious matters. He’s like a man on a constant quest for a clever sound byte to gratify an easy audience. And he shouldn’t because he’s just not witty and because not everyone is a PNM. Look at how he responded to a question about homosexuals with respect to the Draft National Gender Policy at a PNM conference a week ago. In his religion’s eyes, he announced, much it seems to the amusement of the sycophants around him, “a man is a man and a woman a woman and whenever the twain meet, it shall be in special circumstances.”

Just who exactly asked the Prime Minister for his religious views? Now that would be personal. His religion has nothing to do with national policy, or at least it should not. Patrick Manning needs to remember he’s the Prime Minister of a plural country so his faith is of no consequence to us when affairs of State are concerned. He also has to remember that though he laid his right hand on the Bible when he became Prime Minister, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not that Bible and that he promised to serve his people without fear or favour. This pledge — believe it or not — included his gay citizens. He should also recognise that he’s expected to lead by example, not to encourage laughter at gays. He doesn’t have the luxury of being able to discriminate against any group or person, not when he’s the Prime Minister.

Readers, if you’re homophobic or if you are already thinking I’m making a mountain of a molehill, ask yourself this: what if the Prime Minister were Muslim? Believe me, this is not too far-fetched a thought, especially as Mr Manning seemed at the very meeting, to be endorsing polygamy even as he sought to negate homosexuality. Women, he remarked, were doing so well they were having difficulty finding a good husband, “so the few among us deemed proper have their hands full.” Just what was the PM intimating? That he is “proper,” whatever that means and his hands are thus, full of women? What did his wife Hazel Manning make of his comment? Or is she, our Minister of Education, not allowed an opinion in the house of the Prime Minister where a man is a man and a woman is a woman? What are other women in the country to think of Patrick Manning’s imprudent remark in this, the land of soca and horn?

But back to the question of his religion. What if Patrick Manning were Muslim? Would we want him to legislate for us according to his religious beliefs? What if he announced tomorrow morning that he was banning alcohol and Carnival because these were against his religion? Or what if he grew locks instead and prohibited the sale of meat — though I think the PM is too much of a baldhead for such a move. Would we laugh at Mr Manning’s remarks then? Or would we take to the streets in protest? You get the point, don’t you? Real countries for real reasons seek to separate Church from State. And real countries manage thus, to achieve real progress, which is often measured not in terms of how many blocks of buildings their governments erect, but in the search for a higher humanity, so to speak. And real leaders in real countries appeal to lofty sentiment, never to base emotions. Yet we are amused when the PM bashes gays. We salute his narrow definition of man and womanhood. And he gets away with showing prejudice because he’s Christian “proper” and because gays are an easy target. If Basdeo Panday had tried to throw Hinduism at us we would have been in an uproar.

But can we afford to allow Patrick Manning to inflict his religious views on us, to deny his homosexual citizens the rights they deserve, to make them the national laughing stock? Should we be really amused by his remark about TT’s men’s hands being full of women in a country where AIDS is reaching epidemic proportions? And shall we permit him to make light of the question of health care and of his going to Cuba while most of us are obliged to stay here and take whatever treatment is meted out even though we are paying a health surcharge on our income? The response to these questions depends on where we are heading. If we are moving toward a society that is male, privileged and Christian, then the answer is obviously yes. And then there’s just one final question to be asked and answered: Who next will offend Mr Manning’s “religious sensibilities”?

My friend is right; it’s personal. suz@itrini.com