In a recent column, I said my opinion was that this Equal Opportunities Bill should have been done piecemeal, and this opinion of mine grows stronger, the more I think on it. The people behind the Bill must think very highly of themselves to believe that you can create a Bill to cover so many areas in a short time.

Hmm, we have to consider that the architects here might welcome scattering our energies because that’s the best scene to sneak in other agendas. The teachers of Belize will not be moved, and we, all of us, should not allow ourselves to agree to anything without giving it a good going over.

The recent scene with Dr. Carol Babb, her discussion with 7News’ Jules Vasquez, left many wondering which country we live in. Our government is in the habit of grabbing every bit of soft cash from foreign, and it doesn’t matter that they tie us to their agendas. The projects all have value, but they forward too many foreign agendas.

The main fetish coming from the people from Europe these days is about splitting the two genders into as many letters as they can. For 6,000 years, when a child was born the doctor told the lucky parents, it’s a girl! Or it’s a boy! That is all ancient stuff now. The story in the modern hospital is that the doctor delivers the baby, but the sex isn’t known until the baby decides which of the 26 or so genders he/she prefers.

Even old haad bak man are getting in on the genders parade, and the poster boy, now girl, is a man who was given the name Bruce Jenner by his parents, but now that he is well past his prime, and maybe a little fuzzy in the head, he says he is she and wants to be called Caitlin. Fantastically, Bruce the she, is sexually attracted to women. Bruce the man was also attracted to women.

This Bruce story comes from America, and you know that everything that comes from there has to do with money. The real story is that Bruce was once an athletic star, but no one is interested in his life anymore. The world is now paying attention to the very sexy daughters of his ex-wife, a family called Kardashians. The Kardashian girls hog up the front pages of the Hollywood tabloids, and so jealous Bruce goes and does all the outward transformation things, puts on lingerie and pays a magazine to paste his picture on the cover. Bah, nobody wanted to see him anymore, and nobody wants to see her.

Ouch, this is the brand new crazy world our Prime Minister and our Minister of Education are travelling all over to hustle funds to promote in Belize. Channel Seven’s Jules Vasquez, who can be considered a modern type, may not be modern enough to adjust to all that the new-world UDP is pushing. Of course, when he interviewed the Education Ministry’s Dr. Carol Babb he might just have been pushing the interesting questions, for the ratings.

Mr. Vasquez asked Dr. Babb how the Ministry would respond if a boy who thinks he’s a girl shows up for classes, or at the girl’s bathroom. Dr. Babb’s response was that a public school can’t turn back any child. A private school might, but a school that gets funds from the government can’t discriminate, she said.

Dr. Babb said: “I haven’t seen it in Belize yet; that’s new. I believe the time will come that will become an issue and then we will have to be prepared to respond to that, but so far we have not had any kind of issues like that where children are being discriminated or turned away because of whatever their choice is.”

I never got the best grades in school, so I hesitate to lecture these big people in the Ministry of Education, but somebody has to tell them that the best schools, meaning the ones that turn out the students with the best grades, are those where the school keeps sex things out of the education. Let me expand on that. Serious schools don’t encourage female students to look sexy during school hours, and they teach how the body works, what properly goes where.

The television and the internet are doing more than enough to acquaint our children with all the letters out there. The children know that an old American politician, Bob Dole, was taking Viagra to satisfy his second wife at night. Our UNIBAM brothers and our friends at the Education Department are not telling the children things they don’t already know. They are just gloating over the newly gained closet rights and wasting valuable education time.

Equal Opportunities Bill serious about confidentiality with HIV

The Equal Opportunities Bill is very serious about protecting the privacy of persons with HIV, and I congratulate the Bill makers for this leap because we should make the best of this situation for our brothers and sisters who have contracted the disease. If people don’t feel that institutions that administer the HIV test are confidential, they will avoid the test, and definitely it is a good thing for people to know their status, especially those of us who are into loose living.

I 100% support the confidentiality of the test, but I want to see something special in the Bill about responsibility. I support privacy and call for responsibility. Allow me a little time to explain what I mean.

The young man the architects of the Bill trotted out to make their case softened the truth about HIV when he said that people with the disease are living into their 80s and 90s. Sure, the disease can be managed, but it is still a very difficult disease.

I get the sense that our government leaders think their responsibility ends with the little education about the disease that they do. I don’t think they are doing enough. Are our young people being taught that having safe sex greatly reduces, but doesn’t eliminate the risk of, catching HIV from an infected partner?

The expert advice is that a young person should ask their potential mate to take a test before any sexual activity. Does confidentiality give you the right to NOT tell before engaging in sexual activity?

All the advances in treating HIV are great, but if we will do more for confidentiality we need to do more to protect the innocent. I’m not aware that we have a law against passing the disease to your partner. If we have one, it is not publicized. If we advertise that people with the disease are living into their 80s and 90s, we are suggesting that the disease is really not that consequential. Many countries aren’t saying that.

I am not aware that anyone is immune to catching HIV. A baby can contract the disease from an HIV mother even if she is taking treatment. Pediatrics and Child Health at the website ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, tells pregnant mothers that without treatment their “baby has a one in four chance of getting HIV”; if they follow the recommended drug regimen, “the chance of the baby being infected with HIV drops to about one in 20”; and this can be bettered with some drug combinations.

There are other ways an individual can contract HIV without personally being involved with risky behavior. It’s not about making it harder on people with HIV: it’s about being honest and more protective of our youth, more protective of our youth because being 18 doesn’t mean you are fully able to take care of yourself.

My first take is that the Bill is insufficient in the area of responsibility. It’s possible that we can’t improve this Bill. But maybe we can if we get inputs from others.