Why did the Inter Religious Organization not make a public outcry about all the violence in our society?

Dear Editor,

In Stabroek News dated Tuesday, 29 June 2010, Mr Juan Edghill is reported to have said that “SASOD’s  Painting the Spectrum, now in its sixth year, is wrong and religious leaders have to speak out since they represent the conscience of the nation.”

I would like to know Editor, why Mr Edghill did not come forward as the “conscience of the nation” in relation to all the women who were brutally slain and maimed by their husbands, the sexual and physical abuse of children and the recent shooting to death of a sixteen-year-old schoolboy allegedly by a policeman?

To date there is no big public outcry from the Inter Religious Organisation over all the violence that is happening in our society, whether it is domestic violence or state violence.

Mr Edghill is further reported as stating that the SASOD festival was previously overlooked by the religious leaders because they were busy doing other things. What is he really implying? That for six years they were busy with church or other work? He should make clear to the public what work could take them so long that until now, they could not pay attention to what he is calling “corrupting of the young.”

Every adult human being has a right to choose who he/she wants for a partner. Whether he/she chooses to be gay is their business and also their right.  I don’t want him saying what the Bible says, because there are many things that are in the Bible – all those parables that the pastors like to quote, all those sins that plenty of us are guilty of committing – yet there is no call for them to be addressed.

In closing, Editor, I would like to say, he/she who is without sin, let them cast the first stone. I would like to ask if this applies to Mr Edghill.

Yours faithfully,
Wintress White
Red Thread