Following the outbursts of Latvian Integration Minister Oskars Kastēns last week on Riga Gay Pride parade, the openly gay news commentator Kārlis Streips “lets rip” in two  blog commentaries on the Latvian daily Diena website  The English translation is by the author.

April 28, 2008

On Semi-Minister Kastēns and New Legislative Procedure

By Kārlis Streips

Good morning, readers!

I am always delighted when I notice that there have been new developments in our country’s political system.  That can be said, for instance, about the way in which laws are adopted.  Various institutions have the right of legislative initiative, but the overall process has always involved the meeting of state secretaries, the Cabinet of Ministers, the relevant parliamentary commissions, Parliament itself, and then the president.

Now, it turns out, another phase has been attached to this process.  These days the ordinary legislative process is no longer adequate, and the men of the church must be brought in, too!  It is particularly our mightily intelligent and tolerant “integration” semi-minister (he is not a real minister, he is “special” with his portfolio) has decided that he can do his work only with the blessing of the Roman Catholic cardinal and also the child of God who is the chairman of the parliamentary Human Rights Commission.  At least that is the case if the national integration programme is the issue.  The semi-minister questioned whether government policy in this regard is adequate, he talked to specialists and employees of his secretariat, decided that their views are less important than those of the aforementioned cardinal and child of God, and amended the programme accordingly.

Surely this is a process which can be expanded?  The Roman Catholic church, after all, has dogma in all areas, even if it quite often seems that when it comes to people, the church is only interested in the zone that is between their navel and their upper thighs.  The government could ask the cardinal what he thinks about administrative and territorial reforms.  After all, there are many Roman Catholic cult buildings, as they used to be known, in Latvia – they could be given special status!  No one asked the high-ranking church official what he thought about the recently rejected resolution on Tibet.  After all, there are also Catholics in China, albeit not too many, most likely, in Tibet.  And the national budget!  The budget!  Perhaps Godmanis could give the cardinal a seat at his right hand, just like Kalvītis used to do with Lembergs.

But seriously, folks.  Oskars Kastēns is an excellent example of a terrible problem in our political “elite”.  To wit – with few exceptions, good people who enter politics (and here I am not speaking of the many politicians who care about nothing at all as long as they get a good salary and can put their friends on the councils of various companies) – these good people are forced to put their brains in a blind trust, like Andris Šķēle did with his promissory note.  Good people voted to amend national security laws last year, knowing full well that they should not do so.  Good people voted to appoint Zatlers as president, knowing full well what signal they were sending to the world (and, by the way, to Latvia’s society, too).  And so on.

To be honest, I don’t know whether Oskars Kastēns is a good person or an ordinary politician.  The young man used to be a journalist.  He even worked abroad for awhile, reported on issues from Brussels on television.  Apparently he didn’t learn much there.  I don’t believe that he is unaware of how terribly he has degraded himself by perverting the concept of integration as such to such a massive degree.  Just one small example.  Last year, as we all know, it was the Year of Equal Opportunities in Europe.  The secretariat of our semi-minister took part.  There was a conference to which all of those groups who do not exactly have equal opportunities were invited.  All except Mozaīka, the organisation of gays, lesbians and their friends.  The semi-minister’s people explained that this was because they couldn’t find a way to contact Mozaīka.  This claim was composed by the same person who later convinced the leadership of Latvian Television that they should babble about the “horizontal timecode”.  In other words, the secretariat was simply lying.

The situation is clear. In the hands of Oskars Kastēns, there is no integration in our country at all.  His pitiful behaviour over the last few months makes it more than clear that the semi-minister’s secretariat should simply be shut down.  The functions could be turned over to the Religious Affairs Department or, even “better”, to the Roman Catholic cardinal.

April 29, 2008

What We Now Know Thanks to Our Not Quite Truthful Semi-Minister

By Kārlis Streips

Good morning, readers!

He loves all 12,000 of Latvia’s non-governmental organisations equally, semi-minister Oskars Kastēns has just claimed in an interview.  He’s lying.

Elton John can reduce intolerance against minorities in Latvia, because “everyone knows that he has a male life mate” – says the semi-minister.  At best he is naïve.

The intolerance and aggressiveness of the “New Generation” sect couldn’t be reduced even if “we invested enormous resources and time”, says the semi-minister, but he is going to attend the sect’s event, because “my children like music and balloons”.  Yes.  Music and balloons are far more important than extremist intolerance.  Thank you, semi-minister!

The semi-minister does not know whether there is any research to indicate intolerance vis-à-vis sexual minorities.  He is purposefully ignorant, because there is such research at Mozaīka.  True, the minister has pretended in the past that his secretariat doesn’t know Mozaīka’s address and telephone number.  That was another simple lie.

And here’s the greatest thing.  Never mind that sometimes gays get beaten up in Latvia, because, you see, the semi minister was also beaten up when he was a child.  What’s more, even as a child he was skilled enough to do so in a way which would later, when he became a politician, ensure that he could be a noble Latvian patriot.  The semi-minister was “beaten up”, we learn today, because “I spoke Latvian in a Russian neighbourhood.”  How lovely.  And that gives us to understand that if the semi-minister was punched in the nose at one time, then no one else has any right to complain about it.  Except, of course, the Roma.  Last year when two Roma teenagers were attacked, the minister was not boasting about how much he himself was once “beaten up”.  “Acceptable” violence apparently relates only to other minorities.

I really do understand that life would be much easier for the semi-minister if the gays, Africans, Gypsies or others who whinge about discrimination and whom the semi-minister pretends not to notice would disappear from Latvia.  But the fundamental issue remains.  The government of the Republic of Latvia has entrusted integration to enemies of integration, to people who create bemusement (to put it very, very lightly) among integration and human rights specialists in Europe.

The semi-minister is forced to become a mendacious hypocrite in his job.  Perhaps he is a mendacious hypocrite all on his own.  Apparently this does not bother him, but it is pitiful nevertheless.  The entire Cabinet of Ministers and all of Parliament are responsible for this.

And, by the way…  Those of you readers who yesterday were going on about how much you detest all “pederasts” who, in your eyes, are apparently all the same?  Perhaps you read in the press today about the Austrian who locked his daughter up in the basement and raped her again and again.  Does that mean that I should now talk about all the horrible “breeders”?  That’s just a thought.

SEE ALSO

Riga Gay Pride 2008: In a Park Behind the Fence – Again?  The office of Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Integration Minister Oskars Kastens have both said that next month’s Riga Pride and March for Equality should take place in an enclosed park as last year at Vermanes Park in central Riga.  UK Gay News, April 25, 2008.

LINK

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Posted: 1 May 2008 at 09:30 (UK time)