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Follow on Google News | Reflections on Turning 50 by a Global Gay Rights AdvocateOmar Kuddus tells Gay Star News that turning 50 brings both difficulty, and a new resolve to continue the fight for global gay rights
Omar Kuddus speaks to Gay Star News about turning 50, and continuing the global fight for LGBT rights: I celebrated my birthday this weekend. I have spent half a century on this planet and just now I realized I am no longer young but getting old. These hands are no longer firm but wrinkled, my hair no longer black but peppered with grey, and my eyes need the glasses I refuse to wear out of vanity. It is a fact – and something I just have to accept. As Francis Bacon once said: ‘Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.’ I did not get it before, but I do today. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity, but it is time to be mature and accept these simple facts of life for my body has a mind of its own. I have realized to my horror I am no longer young and my body can no longer keep up with my mind’s desires. Someone told me the great secret all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in 40 or 50 years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. But I do know gay men, like their heterosexual counterparts, can and do grow old gracefully and that youth must be enjoyed when one is young and the moments savored. Theodore Roosevelt had the right notion: ‘Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it you’ve got to start young.’ While Confucius said: ‘Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.’ I say all this because I had all intentions of retiring away today from my advocacy but then someone this week asked me, strangely, why do I speak out in support of the gay community and LGBT rights? My answer was simple, if not self-explanatory. Because I wish to live in a world that is equal and free. Because I am not a second-class citizen. And I will continue until we stop the hatred and discrimination. When all the 76 countries that still criminalize consensual same-sex relationships stop doing so. And when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people everywhere suffer no more from violent attacks and discriminatory treatment. On 23 May Amnesty International’ Russia showed (http://www.gaystarnews.com/ Ukraine Pride in Kyiv was banned (http://www.gaystarnews.com/ Meanwhile Ugandan LGBT activists Richard Lusimbo and Komugisha Shawn. were arrested while protesting media censorship. And two men arrested in Zambia for supposedly being in a homosexual relationship were refused bail. Finally I learned the Lithuanian parliament is to discuss a proposed ban on transgender surgery. The relentless right-wing Christians in the US are not giving up either as demonstrated by pushing a new book attacking gay families, called God Made Dad and Mom (http://www.gaystarnews.com/ So I am heeding the word of Samuel Ullman who said: ‘Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.’ Henry Thoreau reflected the same sentiment by saying: ‘None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.’ Read the full piece at Gay Star News: http://www.gaystarnews.com/ End
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