I refer to the letter by Frederick Kissoon (KN 21/7/10) captioned “Religion Has Failed Guyana Thus Far”, and would appreciate the opportunity to rebut! The task here is simple. We would simply provide detail … while Kissoon has not … or cannot … do so! Kissoon joins his mentor Swami Aksharananda in a thinly veiled effort to discredit the IRO’s recent denunciation of Sidewalk Café’s gay-film “festival”, and also accompanies him in the insipid extravagance of declining to quote any source in the entirety of his narrative. We have hopefully answered Aksharananda’s analogous defence of the ‘nuance and sophistication’ of homosexuality and ‘gay rights’ in the detailed online article “Aksharananda’s Delusion on Homosexuality: Western Values and Their Usurpation by “Gay Rights” and “Human Rights” “. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/34519077/Aksharananda%E2%80%99s-Delusion-on-Homosexuality-Western-Values-and-their-Usurpation-by-%E2%80%9CGay-Rights-Human-Rights%E2%80%9D   ). That Kissoon should follow in this vein illustrates that the IRO’s detractors are scraping the bottom of the barrel on this issue! An astonishing ignorance, or better an astonishing deception, accompanies these attempts to justify Akaharananda’s worldview. Kathleen Melonakos is not fooled. (http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/medconsequences.html).  

Aksharananda has chosen not to respond (the article has been copied to the ERC and the IRO in an effort to have him do so).                                            

Kissoon operates from a false premise. He equates the measurable instances of tragedies such as child molestation, incest, violence against women, prostitution, homicides, police brutalities, divorces … as being evidence of “religion failing Guyana”. The converse would be true. It is religion that has saved Guyana from worse thus far!

How can we justify this statement? By addressing the facts that Kissoon (and Aksharananda) are committed to ignore!

Kissoon will find that it is … foolish … to say that “… sociological evidence worldwide does not support the contention …” and then not cite a single sociological source for this bit of profligate nonsense. For an overseas perspective, we should point him to the evidence in, say, the policy document “Harms of Legalized Gambling” (http://azpolicy.org/pdf/Gb1HarmsofGambling.pdf) where the following succinct comment appears in the second paragraph:

“…Research studies and government statistics repeatedly show that the arrival or expansion of gambling opportunities cause significant social problems to the county or localized area where the expansion has occurred. These social problems include increased bankruptcies, suicides, gambling addictions, divorces, child abuse, child neglect, domestic violence and overall crime…”

Kissoon would thereafter be …  unwise … to ignore the slew of statistics following the above statement which shows that Guyana can soon … with its outstanding record for corruption and lax law enforcement … achieve an even more complete model of the same licentiousness he has consistently rationalized as being politically-driven these past two years. Either that, or Kissoon is actively engaged in adding “hypocrite” to his spell-binding array of Russian qualifications!

It bears repeating that Kissoon operates from a false premise when he equates the measurable instances of tragedies such as child molestation, incest, violence against women, prostitution, homicides, police brutalities, divorces … with “… religion failing Guyana…”. The converse would be true. It is religion that has saved Guyana from worse thus far! He ignores the evidence that one such vice … gambling … all by itself, and with the support of government and Kissoon … has consequences that affect THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM of the ills he mentions. He further “sees no evidence” of the fallout of gambling, then blithely says in his vice-list above that societal ills (including gambling) are “…reaching depressing proportions …”. You cannot have it both ways, Mr. Kissoon, much as hypocrites are wont to do! Is Mr. Kissoon trying to say that the religious community did not try to stop … within constitutional/legal boundaries … what he PROUDLY claim to have supported? We should point Mr. Kissoon to the painful and sordid commentary in the online article “The Christian protest Against Casino Gambling Presents No Threat to National Security” (http://www.scribd.com/doc/31055198/The-Christian-Protest-Against-Casino-Gambling-Presents-No-Threat-to-National-Security   ).

Regarding child molestation, he should quote us the relevant statistics for Barbados, then (he is a ‘Doctor’) juxtapose this fact against the evidence posited in detail by some of his academic counterparts in the 2002 law-review “Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement” (  http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/baldwin_pedophilia_homosexuality.pdf   ); 14 REGENT U.L. REV. 267 2002) because it illustrates the imperative that should guide entire national policies:

“Unfortunately, the truth is stranger than fiction. Research confirms that homosexuals molest children at a rate vastly higher than heterosexuals, and the mainstream homosexual culture commonly promotes sex with children. Homosexual leaders repeatedly argue for the freedom to engage in consensual sex with children, and blind surveys reveal a shockingly high number of homosexuals admit to sexual contact with minors. Indeed, the homosexual community is driving the worldwide campaign to lower the age of consent” (Kissoon should also READ W.D. Erickson et al, Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters, 17 ARCHIVES SEXUAL BEHAV. I, 83 [1988] and numerous other references on page 2 of 16 in Dr. Baldwin’s review)
If Kissoon’s effort, like B.C. Pires before him (“A Response to BC Pires on the Ideal Caribbean Person”), was born out of the need to fill in a slack day with some cheap prose to earn a salary, then he would have fulfilled his mission with this cut-price piece of garbage on “religion”. Saner citizens, on the other hand, would address detail and scholarship in responding to such mischief.
As to what is driving the incidents of child molestation, incest, violence against women, prostitution, homicides, police brutalities, and divorces, Kissoon might find more answers (he has offered us none) in the online articles “How Britain is Turning Christianity Into a Crime” (http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=447 ), “The Case Against PANCAP and the Decriminalization of Homosexuality” (http://www.scribd.com/doc/17685588/The-Case-Against-PANCAP-and-the-Decriminalization-of-Homosexuality  ), and “Greed, Genocide … and now ‘Green’: Corruption and Underdevelopment in Guyana”(http://www.scribd.com/doc/17958657/Greed-Genocide-and-now-Green-Corruption-and-Underdevelopment-in-Guyana   ). It is intellectual effrontery, Kissoon, not to deal with the detail! You should put up … or shut up!
Has atheism or Kissoon’s more familiar communist outlook … done better for Guyana? I would think not!