Times Of Swaziland: YOUR RIGHTS VERSUS MY RIGHTS YOUR RIGHTS VERSUS MY RIGHTS ================================================================================ The Editor on 15/06/2018 08:48:00 Sir, The concept of human rights simply does not sit well with certain people and the fact that we are born into this world without the involvement of these people is irrelevant to them. When the Almighty God gave us His word, through the Bible, He did so with the intention that people would follow Him, and yet, even He does not expect His creation to follow Him against their own will. He gave us free will to make our own choices. Some people, on the other hand, have a tendency of thinking that they have the right to dictate to others and define what rights others should or shouldn’t have. While having some form of authority (government) is essential in a normal society, in certain countries, even the right to travel to other countries is restricted because someone somewhere thinks they have the right to control citizens as if they were also the property of the State. But while human rights are a good thing, it becomes tricky when the rights of some infringe on the rights of others. In many countries people are demanding the right to abort unwanted children, stating that they are free to do whatever they want with their own bodies. The problem with this view, however, is that it fails to take into account the right that unborn children have to life and to also do whatever they wish with their own bodies once they are born. In developed countries, which are often hailed as being the bastions of democracy and human rights, it is usually the voice of the majority which defines policy and human rights supposedly take centrestage. The LGBT community, in most countries, has gained the right to hold same-sex marriages and to hold ‘pride’ parades in public. While I will not question their motives for demanding those ‘rights’, it should be pointed out that it becomes an infringement on the rights of Christians and other religious people when the LGBT community demands the so-called ‘right’ to get married in the places of worship where such practices are strictly forbidden, simply because the majority may not see any problem with that, even if that majority consists of mainly non-religious people. As far as I am aware, the LGBT community does not constitute the majority of people in any country. In this complex world we live, there are people with many different sexual preferences, which, I’m sure, even most members of the LGBT community would also agree, are considered unusual by society in general, such as incest, pedophilia or bestiality. If a small segment of society is given the right to impose their sexual preference on the rest of society, which views it as unusual, what is to stop others from demanding the same rights? While no one should have the right to dictate to others about what they can or cannot do in their private spaces (provided they are not breaking any laws), we cannot say we are promoting equality and ending discrimination when the rights of some get trampled upon to accommodate the so-called ‘rights’ of a small minority. Swati citizen