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Face the dawn of the swinging permissive age as Lanka gets set to raise the LGBTQ four-colour full mast to its flagpole and welcome the new wave of offbeat tourists to its shores as an idyllic paradise isle for lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, transgenders and queers, where anything goes.

Gone will be the sandy beaches from tourist promotional brochures. Gone will be the majestic high-rising dagabas that made Anuradhapura the grandeur of the East. Gone, too, will be the splendour that was Polonnaruwa.

Malwatte Mahanayake: Warn government

The grandeur and the splendour of Lanka’s ancient past will be swept beneath the carpet in one thoughtless jiffy, and, instead, every sexual deviation to slake the thirst of the wandering hedonist for curious pleasures in myriad forms of various hues will be openly on offer. Deviations that are even taboo in the United States, following Trump issuing an executive order this year, recognising two sexes only—male and female—and declaring that they cannot be changed.

But whom Trump had made outcasts, Lanka is set to welcome with open arms, not from a humanitarian surge of compassion but from a rising tide of desperation to extract the last dollar these sex refugees bring to sate their quirky needs and thereby fill the Treasury coffers to service the international debt.

Ramanna Mahanayake: Warn government

But it’s not only to scrounge off this motley lot of foreign queers by letting them raise their monstrous triple head without fear of shame or scorn in the Lankan public domain. It’s also to surreptitiously advance in its wake the ‘woke’ culture of the West.

Once heavily financed by Biden’s America through USAID to radically transform Eastern thought and practices for whatever unknown sinister purpose it aimed to achieve, Trump’s arrival to the White House had, by one executive act, stopped its forward march. But the triple-headed ogre lies in feigned sleep but is awake, alert to climate changes, to emerge from its hibernation at the discreet bid of a hidden hand.

The sudden move to transform Lanka as an LGBTQ-friendly destination for tourists so inclined to flock in droves and land on these isle shores may not be for the dollars alone but also to stone two birds with one pervasive, pernicious throw.

First to breathe brimstone and fire was the Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Alarmed at the unabashed spread of LGBTQ activities, he had warned of the emerging destructive trend earlier in the year. But this time it was far worse.

He was rightly perturbed over an official letter sent by the newly appointed chairman of the Tourist Board on September 9 to EQUAL GROUND Executive Director Ms. Rosanna Flamer-Caldera and published in the media last week. As the Daily Mirror reported: ‘Sri Lanka Tourism has officially endorsed a project initiated by rights organisation EQUAL GROUND to promote and develop LGBTQ tourism in the country.’

Amaprapura Mahanayake: Warn government

‘The report, published on 26 September, added: “In a letter addressed to EQUAL GROUND Executive Director Ms Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Sri Lanka Tourism Chairman Buddhika Hewawasam commended the initiative. In addition, Sri Lanka Tourism welcomed EQUAL GROUND’s participation, in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, at international tourism forums, fairs, and LGBTQ tourism networks to strengthen Sri Lanka’s visibility in this niche but growing global market.’

Needless to say, Cardinal Ranjith was outraged. From his Sunday pulpit last week, he breathed once more fire and brimstone, denouncing official moves to make Lanka an LGBTQ-friendly port of call.

Delivering a fiery sermon, the outraged Cardinal Malcom Ranjith declared, ‘Sri Lanka must not allow its children and youth to become victims of foreigners who arrive here to fulfil unacceptable desires. We are unsure whether President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is aware of the implications, but we hope he understands the seriousness of the matter. Citizens must be vigilant against those seeking to undermine Sri Lanka’s cultural values.’

He called for compassion towards those with same-sex attraction; Cardinal Ranjith drew a distinction between those he believes are born with such inclinations and those who take to unnatural sexual practices due to external corruptive influences.

He cited a shocking instance of two Lankan women getting married in a Catholic church after deceiving the officiating priest. ‘One of these women’, he said, ‘had taken male hormone tablets to change her appearance. The priest was deceived because she even had facial hair.’

The Cardinal expressed he was strongly against same-sex marriages and raised the question, ‘How can two men or two women lead a proper family life if they wed?’

Asgiri Mahanayake: Warn government

As a matter of curiosity, did this couple, one of whom was transgender, fervently believe that by getting married in church through deception, they would receive the blessings of an omniscient God?

The Cardinal’s vehement opposition to moves to make Lanka an LGBTQ-friendly state was heavily fortified when the Mahanayakes of the three Nikayas broke their silence and, in a joint letter addressed to President Anura Kumara, lodged their ‘deep displeasure over government moves to promote laws and practices at the behest of a small minority group, disregarding social institutions and the country’s moral identity.’

The Mahanayake’s letter further declared: ‘The failure of public representatives to understand that passing such laws would create imbalance in social institutions and lead to the collapse of the social strata and social degradation clearly

Cardinal: Outraged

demonstrates the failure of the political leadership to understand the country’s cultural value systems.’

The letter warned, ‘We emphasise that promoting unethical practices under the guise of economic development is a short-sighted act that leads to anarchy in a country. The government should refrain from such actions and focus on promoting morality and values based on the country’s long-standing cultural values. If not heeded, the government will have to suffer the severe consequences of public opposition to these unworkable amendments.’

If the Mahanayakes’ and the Cardinal’s warnings were not enough to drive home the message to the JVP leadership, then, as the Mahanayakes indicated, come the next elections, their necks will be on the public block to meet the cutting edge of the vote.

Handun’s Nobel Prize award for Lankan tea at Osaka trade stall Sunil Handunnetti must have felt a real dumb cluck on Tuesday morning for the ghastly gaffe he had made on his Facebook the previous day, which showed the world the Himalayan heights of his ignorance. If he had privately made it to his JVP comrades at their Pelawatte office, it would most probably have gone unnoticed, but when he, as the Cabinet Minister of Industries, states on his Facebook for all to see that Sri Lanka had won the prestigious Nobel Prize at an Osaka Trade Fair in Japan, the blunder reaches monumental proportions. CABINET MINISTER HANDUNNETTI: APOLOGY Neither could it be forgiven as a slip of the tongue. It had been studiously written on his Facebook. He had written: ‘Sri Lanka has won the Nobel Prize at a tea exhibition held in Japan. A kilo of Sri Lankan tea had cost around eight hundred dollars, which is equivalent to two hundred and seventy-five thousand Sri Lankan rupees. The high price received for Sri Lankan tea in Japan is a Guinness record’. And if that weren’t enough of a guffaw, he made certain the following day to go on national television and give his Facebook gaffe wider exposure and place himself in the nation’s stockade and plead for his release as its laughingstock by expressing his profound apologies. It wouldn’t have hardly mattered if he had been only a backbench MP of this ‘no steal, no lie’ party. But he was not. He was the minister of a top-drawer ministry on which the nation’s economy is heavily dependent for its resurgence. Foreign investors do not make a dash to Sri Lanka after hearing Hadunnetti describe it as a ‘beautiful island’ or as ‘the pearl of the Indian Ocean’ at a World Economic Forum in New Delhi but seek key indicators that can make them gauge for themselves the risks involved in investing in this country. This year’s US report on investment climate in Lanka states: ‘Despite the government’s $5 billion FDI target for 2025, experienced investors emphasise that policy stability, regulatory reform, and improved transparency must precede any significant uptick in large-scale investments. However, regulatory unpredictability, bureaucratic hurdles, and selective transparency continue to limit broader participation.’ It warns: ‘The government’s institutional capacity to encourage an open investment environment remains limited despite positive rhetoric. Overall, investors report that doing business remains difficult, frequently citing concerns about project reversals, regulatory shifts, slow decision-making, and inadequate support for established businesses.’ To add to the list of disincentives to further discourage foreign investors would be to have at the head of a dillydallying, procrastinating, indecisive bureaucracy a Johnny-come-lately with a proven track record for being a windbag and nothing else. In his apology, he said, ‘I am sorry if I caused pain to anyone.’ If by pain he meant the bellyache the whole nation got by laughing its sides out over the ‘unfathomable depths of his stupendous ignorance’, apology taken. But if by pain he meant the whole nation being worried sick over Industrial JVP’s minister Sunil Handunnetti’s lost marbles and anxiously wondering if this was, indeed, the pathetic choice of the government to lead the industrial charge and inspire foreign investors to land in droves on Lankan shores, then apology not taken. Too much is at stake to grant him an excuse for shooting his mouth off and apologising later, like he did when he ignorantly called Elon Musk an ‘economic assassin’ and profusely apologised later after being told of his blunder, born of ignorance. Can the country afford such regular displays of his bumbling buffoonery? The utopian dream of ‘A Rich Nation, a Beautiful Life’ will ever remain till the cows come home, as it’s destined to remain, as the title of the JVP manifesto of a hundred fantastic promises. And while Handun’s at it, here, among the numerous follies he should apologise for, is another one, one of a serious kind that does not raise a giggle of laughs but raises eyebrows of concern instead. During Ada Derana’s ‘360 degrees’ programme, host Kalindu enquired from the guest of the week, Cabinet Minister Sunil Handunnetti, why he and his comrades pleaded poverty and depended upon supporters’ handouts while they themselves were relatively rich, as their asset declarations revealed. Handunnetti’s answer was most unexpected and unbecoming of a people’s representative to make. His devious answer, ‘If they happily give and I happily take, is it paan for you?’ It may not be paan to us, but learn that man does not live by bread alone and seeks honest answers from an MP to valid questions posed of public importance. That’s the tradition of every democracy on earth. As opposed to a Marxist state where no one dares to ask and therefore no one needs to give.