I do not know how it feels to be a second-rate citizen by law, growing up in a liberal and progressive country, but I do know how it feels to be considered second-rate and to be treated like you are worth nothing.

It still amazes me that evolved and cultured people in this day and age can look at someone who is unlike themselves and proclaim that person to be less of a human being. Especially those who cling on to “morals” and “family values.” Is it not the ultimate moral thing to help, respect and love your fellow man, a member of the extended family of human beings, regardless of gender, sexual preference, ethnicity and/or religious preference?

Why is it that in the twenty-first century people are still discriminated against, when we have all this wicked history to fall back on in our considerations? Have some learned nothing from the past?

I hope that we someday can all look back at this time as world-changing—a time in which true equality was achieved. However, the roadblocks ahead of us first need to be bulldozed before we can get to a peaceful and equal future. And with dreams and hope alone that will never happen. Passivity’s time has expired and only through social and political actions, militant if necessary, can we eradicate the poisonous brume and finally get to a clear and unclouded existence.

We’ve been told that “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” is Mariah Carey’s attempt to deliver an album that brings back her 90s sound. The comparisons between her presence at the start of her career and the current-day personality she has become have even surpassed the music alone—her appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show took everyone almost twenty years back in time. The hair, the smiles, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a mini-skirt, and especially the high notes at the end of her live performance. Apparently, the media wants me to believe that this is still the Mariah Carey I grew up with.

However, is it? Mariah Carey, 39, has, in my own opinion, never sounded out of sync with the music of the times she lived in, and the things happening in her own life have always transcended into her albums. So, if this album is truly a plain throwback to the albums she produced in the 1990s, I simply cannot abide it. Nevertheless—and I will repeat myself—is it? Read More »

A great nation—and optimistically speaking, any nation—is supposed to represent all its inhabitants, equally and without discrimination. It shouldn’t see a difference between people of different sexual orientations, between people of different races, between the personal beliefs of its citizens. And yet, in many countries—commonly third-world and second-world ones, but unfortunately often also in first-world nations—the government and constitution does discriminate between its citizens and ultimately victimise them in unnecessarily cruel ways.

Same-sex marriage is one struggle on the way to equality for all, as are equal-treatment civil rights, but this time I want to talk about something that’s a little less media-centred: religion and the state.

Let’s assume that the United States was founded on the principle of Christian values (even though it clearly was not). If so, religious outings at the presidential inauguration, constant references to (protestant) religion in speeches and on the US dollar, and a ban on same-sex marriage, but also on abortion and euthanasia, would make sense. Read More »

“The knowledge exists by which universal happines can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilisation for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.”
— Bertrand Russell