ANGUILLA EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION DISAPPOINTED BY GOVERNOR’S PRIDE MONTH POST

Black Immigrant Daily News

The Anguilla Evangelical Association submitted a letter to Governor Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam on July 13, 2022. Supporting details were deleted to reduce its length. The following is the unedited version.

Your Excellency, we hereby express our deep concern with the June posting that depicted yourself, the Deputy Governor and other members of staff expressing that “the Governor’s Office joins with others across the globe to support those who…are out and proud”. Our concerns are for the following reasons.

1. Knowing staff members who were in the photo op, it became immediately apparent to the public that there were some whose religious beliefs and personal convictions were certainly not aligned with your message. This raises serious questions. Were such persons aware of what the moment was all about? If not, then this is profoundly problematic. Another question that arises is, even if they were fully aware prior to the photo op, did any members of staff feel pressured or coerced to participate? A “No” to the first question, and a “Yes” to the second question, would indicate that in your capacity as Governor of Anguilla you might have set a disturbing precedent that, if emulated by employers and other persons of power across Anguilla, would lead to the abuse of fundamental rights as enshrined in the Anguilla Constitution.Although Anguilla is officially a Christian nation, even at school assemblies and in classrooms students are allowed, upon official request by parents, to be exempted from certain religious activities. So even though your personal beliefs and your appointment may be in alignment with the agenda of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, involving members of staff in activities that violate their beliefs and that are not enshrined in the Anguilla Constitution, is cause for deep concern.

2. Does the Governor’s Office join with all across the globe who desperately desire to gain legal recognition for their lifestyles, or do you join only with some? You must be aware, Your Excellency, that there are many people across the globe who perfectly fit your first three categories – “do not feel safe to be themselves; face uncertainty; find themselves without a support system”, but are not in your last category of “out and proud”. Do you proudly support the rights of such persons to fully express their desires as well?

For instance, on July 3, 2020, CBS reported, “The city of Somerville, Massachusetts, has passed an ordinance making it one of the first cities in the nation to officially recognize polyamorous relationships. The city no longer limits the number of people included in a partnership…It’s estimated that 4% to 5% of people living in the U.S. are currently participating in polyamorous relationships…”. According to the New York Times on July 1, 2020, City Councilor Mr. Davis, who is a lawyer said, “I don’t think it’s the place of the government to tell people what is or is not a family.” He said he had considered the possibility that a large number of people — say, 20 — would approach the city and ask to be registered as domestic partners. “I say, well what if they do?” Mr. Davis said. “I see no reason to think that is more of an issue than two people.”

Sweden has long legalised the marriage of half siblings. There are those in the UK, Europe and elsewhere who strongly feel they should have the right to marry as parent and child, grandparent and grandchild. And meet – not a gay couple who you proudly support – but a trouple! Alejandro Rodriguez, a graduate in physical education; Manuel Bermudez, a journalist and professor at the University of Antioquia; and Victor Hugo Prada, actor and dancer, are three Colombian men who received formal legal recognition of their union in 2017. The Guardian reported “We want to make what’s intimate, public,” says Prada, at 23 the youngest of the three. “We have no reason to hide it. We are just helping people realise that there are different types of love and different types of family.” Your Excellency, since you support lgbtq+ with its vaunted slogans of “Love is Love”, “Love is Equal”, Marriage Equality”, then you are compelled to support every conceivable union between consenting adults as their “fundamental human right”.

Does the Governor’s Office join with those who range from children to highly educated adults who seriously feel that their ear, or hand, or eye, or leg does not belong to them and they want it amputated? The condition, as you know, is apotemnophilia or Body Identity Disorder. According to WebMD on April 8, 2022, ‘People with BIID want to be their “true self,” which often comes with a desire for amputation or disability to help them feel “complete” inside. Recent research has started linking this feeling to certain psychiatric and neurological reasons. There are strong similarities between BIID and other identity disorders like transsexualism and gender identity disorder.

Would you support a BIID 12-year-old girl gouging out her right eye because she doesn’t think it belongs and she is traumatized by having it? We hope not. However, by your photo op and nicely worded message you support 16-year-old girls choosing to amputate their breasts and having profiteering doctors disfigure their private parts to make them what they think they are. Yet when any such girls/women later regret their transsex surgeries they are silenced by the hisses of the “tolerant” lgbtqia+ masses. Will you soon have a photo op in support of trouples, polyamory, incestuous marriage, BIID, ad infinitum? After all, they “do not feel safe to be themselves; face uncertainty; find themselves without a support system…”…

3. Promoting LGBTQ+ inevitably leads to abuse of parental rights. Ask Canadian father Robert Hoogland who served six months in prison for the horrible “crime” of insisting on referring to his daughter as “she” and “her” rather than “he” and “him”. Schools must have parental permission before they give an Aspirin to a child, but puberty blockers are given out freely to children, and sex conversion counselling and even sex change surgeries are done without parental consent. We as parents cannot “stand with…the out and proud”, Your Excellency, for we see them as defiant abusers of our fundamental parental rights.

4. To promote LGBTQ+ is to promote the proliferation of pro-LGBTQIA+ indoctrination in public schools to children as young as four. You are undoubtedly aware of the sexualization of children in public schools across the UK. CBN reported on October 4, 2018, that ‘A controversy is brewing in the UK after a video surfaced last month showing a group of young students (6 yr olds) at a primary school in England being asked to write a same-sex “love letter.” BBC’s Radio Manchester posted a video detailing the LGBTQ lesson that was taught to children at Bewsey Lodge Primary School in Warrington, England. In the video, teacher Sarah Hopson instructs the class to pretend to be a fictional fairytale character named “Prince Henry” and write a love letter to the prince’s servant “Thomas,” explaining why they should get married.” Six-year-olds made to write marriage proposal letters!!!?? Down through the centuries this has never been even considered for genuine marriage, but now suddenly it is being imposed for so-called “marriage”.

“They are going to go out into that world and find this diversity around them and they’ll find that at a young age as well,” Hopson told BBC. “And the more they can be accepting at this age, you are not going to face it further on because the children will be accepting now and will be accepting this diversity around them.” The lesson isn’t the first of its kind. In fact, according to BBC, the school is known for being LGBTQ friendly – recently winning the pro-LGBT “Educate and Celebrate”.

Let’s not ignore the calculated indoctrination, Your Excellency. The lgbtq+ understand perfectly well how easily children can be made to believe almost anything told them by adults who they trust. In 2018 The Telegraph reported that across the UK there are growing concerns about the 4,000% increase in girls who want to transition to boys. This is indoctrination of criminal proportions.

5. LGBTQ+ activists are intent on sexualising and perverting our children. On June 30 Catherine Lough wrote in Independent, ‘A Tory MP has criticized a UK 2020 Government Relationships and Sex Education guidance (RSE) in schools which she says has “opened the floodates” to children being exposed to “extreme and inappropriate” sexual content in the classroom. Miriam Cates, a member of the Commons’ education committee and Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, criticised the Relationships and Sex Education guidance (RSE) at a Westminster Hall debate. The RSE framework allowed for external sex education organisations to provide resources to schools, resulting in children being exposed “to a plethora of deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit and damaging materials” which contribute to what she calls the “sexualisation and adultification of children.” ’

MP Cates referenced a learning pack provided by the LGBT charity Diversity Role Models which was found to contain the phrase “Love has no age limit,” a slogan that has historically been associated with pedophile rights advocates. “If we tell children that ‘love has no age’… Do we undermine their understanding of the age of consent?”, MP Cates asked. Also included in the Diversity Role Models pack, though not cited by Cates, was a list of book recommendations provided by Diversity Role Models. One recommended book, titled “Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out,” contained a graphic account of a six year-old child performing oral sex. In addition to gender identity, Cates pointed out that lessons about BDSM and rough sex are being utilised.

Lessons for children aged 14 and older provided through Bish, created by Justin Hancock, describe rough sex in an uncritical manner, including slapping and choking. “If there’s little or no care or consent, these things are acts of violence and criminal offences,” notes Bish, before saying that “rough sex is quite common, [and] most of the time it is probably consensual.”

Your Excellency, we dare not, cannot, will not allow our children to be exploited and corrupted in this dance with sheer insanity.For these and many other weighty reasons we were profoundly disappointed in your post. But the most significant of all is the fact that the word of God is unequivocal in speaking to the matter. Suddenly north is not north anymore, nor does a red traffic light mean stop. The wokeness says it all depends on how you see it. So the newest appointee to the US Supreme Court, a woman, declared to the world that she doesn’t know what a woman is! The ideology you promoted during Pride Month (which, interestingly, none of the other Caribbean BOT governors publicly promoted) flies in the face of Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He them male and female.”Let God’s word speak: “Don’t you realise that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people- none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. You are encouraged to read Romans 1:18-32 as well.

As clergy and laity we address the suppressed and tragic truth that the vast majority of persons in the lgbtqia+ community experienced intense trauma in their early years. We know them, interact compassionately with them. Yes, the church community speaks love to all, including the lgbtqia+ community. But a man opposing his friend who is also his brother-in-law, for cheating on his sister with three children for him, is not being “intolerant” nor a “hater”, but a genuine friend. Rather than saying, “Hey, bro, cheating is your truth, so I respect and support you in that”, he says, “If you never stop cheating on my sister I will still love you, but I will always and totally oppose your behaviour.” That is the clear teaching of the Bible and that is where the church stands.

Pastor Philip Gumbs,Apostle Elmead AllenPresident, Anguilla Evangelical AssociationExecutive Member

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