With all its much-vaunted celebration of diversity, is Hermanus really welcoming of all identities?

A Facebook-comments section is hardly a scientific instrument. It cannot tell us whether Hermanus is homophobic.

It cannot tell us how many people in the town support the LGBTQI+ community, how many do not or how many simply scrolled past the post without feeling strongly enough to comment.

But sometimes a comment section tells us something else. It can tell what some people are comfortable saying when they believe nobody is really listening.

This is what happened when Village Drinks Cape Town, described on Instagram as a “social-networking month event”, and Glow Boutique Suite Hermanus announced a Gay Weekend on the Hermanus Facebook page, planned for the weekend of 4-6 September. The comments section flooded very quickly.

Some shared excitement over the announcement. But most were hostile. Others even invoked the Bible. And while people are entitled to their religious beliefs there is something uncomfortable about watching someone’s existence become a subject for public condemnation, simply because they are gay. It left me with a question I suspect many people would rather avoid:

Is Hermanus homophobic?

I do not think we can honestly answer yes. Not from a Facebook-comment section. But perhaps that isn’t the question we should be asking.

Perhaps we should be asking why the sight of LGBTQ+ people celebrating themselves still makes some people in our town so uncomfortable.

Because Hermanus has an uncomfortable history when it comes to deciding who belongs where.

The town was not immune to apartheid. The Hermanus History Society documents how the Group Areas Act of 1950 transformed the town.

Coloured residents were forcibly removed from parts of Hermanus to places including Mount Pleasant and Hawston. Zwelihle was later established for African people forcibly removed from Mount Pleasant.

Then there was the beach

In the 1960s Hermanus and surrounding communities wrestled with the question of who should be allowed to use which beaches.

The Hermanus History Society records objections to coloured people “mingling” with white people on the beaches and efforts to designate beaches according to race. Eventually, beaches were allocated to different population groups.

Different issue. Different time. Different kind of discrimination. There is another thread worth considering.

Who gets to belong?

Who gets to use public spaces? Who gets to celebrate openly? Who gets to walk around the town without being told, explicitly or otherwise, that they are not wanted?

Taking to the streets, this author asked residents: Is Hermanus homophobic? The most striking answer that gave birth to this column was simply: “Hermanus is everything”.

We like to think that South Africa answered those questions in 1994. Our Constitution certainly tried to.

Section 9 said that everyone is equal before the law and explicitly prohibits unfair discrimination on grounds including race, religion and sexual orientation.

And Hermanus itself has changed. There is now a Hermanus Pride movement. Its organisers describe their vision as creating a platform for the LGBTQ+ community to express themselves and celebrate their identity, while welcoming people of all races, faiths, sexualities and genders.

That matters

Because it means the story of Hermanus is not simply one of intolerance. It is also a story of people pushing back against intolerance.

So perhaps the Facebook comments don’t tell us that Hermanus is homophobic. Perhaps they tell us something more useful.

They show us that homophobia, as it does everywhere else, exists in Hermanus. And instead of pretending otherwise perhaps we should have the courage to talk about it.

Nobody is asking everyone to attend a Gay Weekend. Nobody is asking Christians to abandon their beliefs. Nobody is asking people to agree with a lifestyle they do not understand.

The minimum requirement is considerably simpler:

Let other people exist

Hermanus has spent generations learning what happens when society decides that certain people belong somewhere else.

We should be careful not to forget the lesson.

Because a town is not made by welcoming signs at its entrances the restaurants in its Main Road or the tourists taking photographs along the cliff path.

Instead, it is made welcoming by how it treats the person who is different. And perhaps that is the real test facing Hermanus this September.

Not whether everyone will celebrate the weekend dubbed Gay Weekend, but whether everyone can accept that it is happening. And that the people attending have every right to be there.