by Colin Hyde
Did I forget to congratulate the GOB for its decision to honor the great Jimmy Carter? The narrow- minded Americans call him their worst president. I guess he didn’t increase their riches enough. The man the Americans call their worst president ever, he was the greatest, but when you’re shallow and self-centered, you’ll never see the bigger picture.
I think we need a preamble to kick off the ball, a beginning, and the best start I think is the story of civilization. It’s artificial, a man-made thing that began in the Garden of Eden when two parties decided to cover up, because they were better than the other animals. Yap, sexual behavior, it is at the core of civilization. In the civilized world, the highest sexual behavior is a committed man and woman who’re about perpetuating mankind. You’ll have to be satisfied with that for an introduction. Yes, I think we’re pulling out here, before we get into trouble.
It isn’t new news that our hero, Jimmy Carter, supports civil unions between parties that are absolutely not interested in continuing mankind. In the 2020 story, “Did Jimmy Carter say ‘Jesus Never Said a Word About Homosexuality’?”, which can be found at the website snopes.com, David Mikkelson said Carter said that “When we go to the Bible, we should keep in mind that the basic principles of the Bible are taught by God, but written down by human beings deprived of modern day knowledge.”
Mikkelson’s research showed it was absolutely true, a 2018 meme attributed to Carter which reported him saying, “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of His teachings about multiple things … [Jesus] never said that gay people should be condemned.”
Bible scholar, Peter Goeman, in the piece, “Homosexuality was Added to the Bible in 1946”, says the claim that the Bible doesn’t speak against homosexuality because “the word ‘homosexual’ was not in any Bible prior to 1946″ is incorrect. Goeman says it is just a matter of terms, that “the real issue is not whether the word homosexual was used in English translations, but whether the Bible speaks against the issue of homosexuality”, and that it very clearly does. Goeman also cited a number of instances where the Apostle Paul, in the New Testament, condemned the behavior
Jimmy Carter, who teaches Sunday school at Marantha Baptist Church, is so great you have to do a double take when he appears to be off base in his ideas. APNews says Marantha Baptist is small, and it was formed in 1976 when a larger Baptist Church that Carter belonged to wouldn’t accept black people as members. I’m not going to question civil unions in the US, because those people are a very different breed from us. I’ll say that Jesus didn’t speak about many things in his 3-year ministry. I don’t see why a matter like homosexuality would have come up without a gay lobby pushing things. And back then, noooo, for our friends in that crowd closet was best.
Jimmy Carter gets his pass from me for what he did for Belize and our neighbors, and I’m glad and proud that we are going to honor him. A GOB Press Office release during the recent September celebrations said he had “been nominated to receive the Order of Belize in recognition of his outstanding friendship and support to Belize, which will be conferred on a date to be announced.” My gudnis, why did it take so long? We all know we’d still be the colony Belize, if not for the man in the US Oval Office between 1977 and 1981. It was he who took away the veto that was blocking our path to 1981 glory.
Belize.com says Panama’s leader, General Omar Torrijos, was the first of the Spanish-speaking Americas to declare for Belize. Belize.com says we had been invited as a special guest to the Summit Meeting of the Non- Aligned Countries held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in August 1976, and Panama was present at that same summit to lobby for control of the Panama Canal. While “Panama had been previously committed in a signed declaration of Central American countries to support Guatemala’s claim, General Torrijos became convinced of the justice of the Belizean struggle for Independence, and at the next United Nation’s (UN) General Assembly session, Panama voted in favor of the Belizean resolution.”
I’m not about stealing any of General Torrijos’s thunder; he will forever hold a place of honor in our hearts, but I wouldn’t rule out that Carter could have exerted some influence on him, to support Belize’s liberation. Of course it could have been the other way around too. I will allow the experts to weigh in on that, so that I can direct the remainder of this piece to those fickle, ignorant Americans who fail to appreciate true greatness. And to share a little peeve I have with the Iranians.
I’ve not been pleased with Iran’s leaders, since they helped sink Jimmy’s reelection bid. Ronald Reagan would never have become president of the US if the Iranians hadn’t held American hostages. And the world today would have been a better place, if Carter had gotten his well-deserved four more years.
The following about the Iran hostage crisis that changed the world for the worse is taken from a report by The White House Historical Association, which says the beginnings of the crisis “preceded Jimmy Carter’s term by almost thirty years.”
The US, to protect its oil interests, had propped up the Shah of Iran, whose regime had become brutal. “In January 1979, the shah fled into exile, and the theocratic regime of Khomeini took power.” The US government had little understanding of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the depth of Iranian resentment for the West for eroding their culture. The shah wanted to go to the US for cancer treatment, and Carter, even though he knew it was volatile to do so because at a previous time, 1953, the shah had fled Iran and later been returned to power by the CIA, accepted him on “humanitarian principle.”
The Ayatollah’s government did not approve. “Days later, on November 4, a mob of 3,000 militants invaded the American embassy in Tehran, taking sixty-six diplomats and military personnel as hostages … In April 1980, after months of negotiations failed to result in the release of the hostages, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran.”
An attempt to rescue the hostages failed. “The abortive mission seemed to many Americans a symbol of U.S. military weakness in the post-Vietnam era. Carter’s popularity plunged to 20 percent, even lower than Nixon’s during the Watergate scandal.” The media pounded Carter’s administration over the hostage crisis. “Each night TV news commentators posted the number of days the hostages had been held in humiliating, terrifying captivity, their president impotent in finding a way to bring them home … ‘This is the 325th day of the Iranian hostage crisis,’ the journalists would say, and on and on it went.”
Jimmy Carter worked out a deal for the release of the hostages, but the Iranian leadership dragged its feet. It wasn’t until Carter had left office that the US hostages were set free. Jimmy Carter received the news at 12:33 p.m., the day of the inauguration of Reagan as president of the US, that the first plane with freed hostages had left Tehran. “President Ronald Reagan got the word at an inaugural luncheon. It was the first official announcement he would make to the American people.”
I have to feel Iran didn’t know the greatness of the man who was president of the US when they took the hostages. Effectively, they undermined the humanitarian Carter and opened picado for the ultra-right wing Reagan. Carter handed over the Panama Canal. Reagan tried to overturn the liberating Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Carter supported the human rights of the Palestinians. Reagan threw his weight behind Israel.