Blessed Love Idren
I share the sadness and anger with babylon giving priority to normalize and harmonize LGBTQ issues in society OVER Black rights and reparations, let alone just trying to have compassion for Black people in general.
Ultimately tho, I dont think InI should even be surprised this is the way babylon chooses to move. There are plenty of white babies that turn out to be gay but there are no white babies that turn out to be black.
That being said, I think InI as Rastafari are allowed to have compassion and tolerance towards anyone InI might perceive as living in sin or trapped in babylon mentality, without calling for their death or wish harm against them.
It was a little hard for I man to track all the different reasonings put forth, but I think I can speak to some.
First off, nowhere am InI trying to set forth precepts of what InI Rastafari MUST do or feel towards another. The Most High thru HIM Haile Selassie I and Empress Menen I already gave InI the authority to reason and interact with fellow human beings in a way that promotes justice, compassion, peace, righteousness, and livity. InI are here to reason InI Ispectives based on this freedom, so ones can’t have the authority to say Rastafari must update or do this and that to stay relevant. Ones can only share the Isperience one sees.
I for one am glad that it will be the systems of the Most High that judge I man for I sins and not the systems of man’s laws. When the time comes for I heart to be weighed, I want JAH in charge of the scales.
What is New Age? Is Abrahamic tradition new age? Is the bible new age?
I know for a fact that some Ancient peoples were aware of people having a third and even fourth gender. For some Native American tribes, this is now referred to as “Two-Spirit”, but it is something the Ancients recognized in ancient times.
https://www.ihs.gov/lgbt/health/twospirit/
Relating to Ancients from Ifrica, a book that I read as a youth that was foundational for I man was:
African Origin Of Civilization by Cheik Anta Diop
Page 112 in the book, page 140 in pdf:
https://archive.org/details/africanoriginofcivilizationcomplete/page/n139/mode/2up
“Because of the requirements of agricultural life, concepts such as matriarchy and totemism, the most perfect social organization, and monotheistic religion were born. These engendered others, thus, circumcision resulted from monotheism; in fact, it was really the notion of a god, Amon, uncreated creator of all that exists, that led to the androgynous concept. Since Amon was not created and since he is the origin of all creation, there was a time when he was alone. To the archaic mentality, he must have contained within himself all the male and female principles necessary for procreation. That is why Amon, the Negro god par excellence of the “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Nubia) and all the rest of Black Africa, was to appear in Sudanese mythology as androgynous. Belief in this hermaphroditic ontology would produce circumcision and excision in the Black world. One could go on to explain all the basic traits of the Negro soul and civilization by using the material conditions of the Nile Valley as the point of departure.
By contrast, the ferocity of nature in the Eurasian steppes, the barrenness of those regions, the overall circumstances of material conditions, were to create instincts necessary for survival in such an environment. Here, Nature left no illusion of kindliness, it was implacable and permitted no negligence; man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Above all, in the course of a long, painful existence, he must learn to rely on himself alone, on his own possibilities. He could not indulge in the luxury of believing in a beneficent God who would shower down abundant means of gaining a livelihood; instead, he would conjure up deities maleficent and cruel, jealous and spiteful: Zeus, Yahweh, among others.”
End Quote
This leads I man to reason that Ancients already formulated the idea that the Most High is genderless. The text seems to imply in fact that the Abrahamic teachings would be considered “new age” to an African notion of a genderless Almighty.
The reference to circumcision may seem out of place but later in the text InI can see the Ancients also related circumcision and excision to choosing a gender for a child to ensure it would have the desire to procreate. I man personally don’t agree with that but I man trying to reason about facts, not how I feel about it.
Page 136 in the book, page 164 in pdf:
https://archive.org/details/africanoriginofcivilizationcomplete/page/n163/mode/2up
Thus, we can understand why the Semites practice circumcision despite the fact that their traditions present no valid justification for it. The weakness of the arguments in Genesis is typical: God asks Abraham (and later Moses) to be circumcised, as a sign of a covenant with Him, without explaining how circumcision, considered from the standpoint of Jewish tradition, can lead to the notion of an alliance. This is all the more curious because Abraham was allegedly circumcised at the age of ninety. In Egypt he had married a Negro woman, Hagar, mother of Ishmael, the Biblical ancestor of the second Semitic branch, the Arabs. Ishmael was said to be the historical ancestor of Mohammed. Moses, too, wed a Madianite, and it was in connection with his marriage that the Eternal asked him to be circumcized. What should be noted in these legendary talcs is the idea that circumcision was introduced among the Semites only as a result of contact with the Black world—which conforms to the testimony of Herodotus.
Only among Blacks does circumcision find an interpretation integrated in a general explanation of the universe, in other words, a cosmogony. Specifically, the Dogon cosmogony that Marcel Griaule reports. In Dieu d'eau, he reminds us that, to make sense, circumcision must be accompanied by excision. These two operations remove something female from the male and something male from the female. To the archaic mentality, such an operation is intended to fortify the dominant character of a single sex in a given human being.
According to Dogon cosmogony, a newborn baby is to a certain extent androgynous, like the first god:
So long as it retains its foreskin and clitoris, indications of the sex opposite to the apparent sex, masculinity and femininity have equal strength. Thus it is not accurate to compare the uncircumcised to a woman; like a girl on whom excision has not been performed, he is both male and female. If this indecision about his sex were allowed to continue, he (or she) would have no interest in procreation. . . . These, then, arc the various reasons for circumcision and excision: the need to rid the child of an evil force, the need for him (or her) to pay a debt of blood and to turn definitely toward one sex. -3
For this explanation of circumcision to be valid, divine androgyny, the traditional cause of this practice in African society, must also have existed in Egyptian society. Only then can we be justified in identifying the ritual causes of circumcision among Egyptians and in the rest of Black Africa. As a matter of fact, Champollion the Younger writes in his letters to Champollion-Figeac about the divine androgyny of Amon, Supreme God of the Meroitic Sudan and Egypt: “Amon is the point of departure and the focal point of all divine essences. Amon-Ra, the Supreme, primordial Being, his own father and termed the husband of his mother, has his feminine portion enclosed in his own essence that is both male and female.”
The Nile is also represented by an androgynous personage. Amon is likewise the god of all Black Africa. In passing it may be said that in the Meroitic Sudan, Black Africa, and Egypt, Amon is connected with the idea of humidity. His attribute in all these countries is the ram. Thus, in the significantly entitled volume, Dieu d'eau (God of Water), when Marcel Griaule writes of the Dogon god Amma, this deity appears in the form of the Ram-God, with a gourd between his horns. In Dogon (“French” Sudan) cosmogony, Amon descends from the sky on a rainbow, symbol of rain and humidity.
Although some Blacks have abandoned circumcision, through forgetfulness of their traditions or for various other reasons, although there is a growing trend in Black Africa to renounce excision, and although circumcision is a technically different operation for Egyptians and Semites, this does not alter the root of the problem. Yet, for the identification to be complete and the argument convincing, excision must also have existed in Egypt. Strabo tells us that this was the case:
“The Egyptians arc especially careful in raising all their children and circumcise the boys and even the girls, a custom common to the Jews, a people originally from Egypt, as we observed when we discussed that subject” (Bk. 17, Chap. I, par. 29).”
End Quote
So it seems that even though the Ancients already had the idea of a genderless Almighty, it was still important for human children to turn definitely toward one sex. Can ones share more references to laws or reasonings of the Ancients for what a human’s responsibility for choosing a gender should be? Or are all the arguments based on homosexuality being a new age problem more based off emotional reaction that InI as heterosexual males have when InI think of homosexuality?
I would also like to reason a little about how much weight InI are giving this topic. How many speeches can InI quote where InI can show HIM Haile Selassie I was even concerned with InI debating the legality of what defines homosexuality or the resulting punishments? How concerned or defensive would HIM Haile Selassie I act if the subject of homosexuality was brought up? I dont know of one example I can reference to where HIM even spoke on the topic. Probably because if someone chooses to do whatever sin or negative action one chooses to do, the law clearly defined the appropriate punishment, and what more is there to say about that?
So what do InI intend to do? Protect the world from itself by supporting laws that ban homosexuality? Vanguard the Root so no LGBTQ can pronounce Rastafari as the Living JAH? How do InI intend to control this from happening? Can the root be pure and the branches still blow in the wind?
I had quotes that I wanted to share from the Fetha Nagast, the Law of Kings, but could only find one location online where the pdf version is, and it is not complete. So I can’t prove without doing a lot more typing than I want to, about how much air time traditional Ethiopia law even gives to homosexuality. The answer is: it is hardly even mentioned. There is more air time given to the description and repercussions for a person having sex with an animal. There is a longer section devoted to Ethiopian law about how men are required to have shaved heads and the reasonings for that biblically, than there is about homosexual relations.
Fetha Nagast:
page 297 in book about Corporal and Spiritual Punishment for Fornication
page 307 Provisions on Hair
Unfortunately neither section is included in this pdf:
http://www.ethiopianorthodox.org/biography/01thelawofkings.pdf
The point I am trying to make is InI need to leave some judgements to JAH and focus on the real issues.
InI people are getting shot by police and other people on a daily basis because of a racist shytstem that lacks justice, and respect for InI people.
Hopefully InI Rastafari people can remain vigilant and work diligently for the justice of Black people.
HIM Haile Selassie I and Empress Menen I Love
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