Will US move on global gay rights, hurt or help?

From Radio Free Europe, by Daisy Sindelar

Is the United States upholding human rights, or meddling in other people’s business?

That may be the question in many countries following a coordinated call by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for governments around the world to do more to protect gay rights.

Clinton, speaking on December 6 at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, called for a worldwide end to the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, saying, “It should never be a crime to be gay.”

Adding muscle to her remarks, Clinton said Obama had instructed government agencies responsible for allocating foreign aid to contribute to the fight.

“The president has directed all U.S. government agencies engaged overseas to combat the criminalization of LGBT status and conduct, to enhance efforts to protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, to ensure that our foreign assistance promotes the protection of LGBT rights,” Clinton said.

In a memo released the same day, Obama ordered all representatives of the U.S. government working overseas to “ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance to promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.”

The initiative is certain to raise hackles in conservative countries that chafe at the notion of Washington acting as a kind of morality police.

Homosexuality is currently a criminal offense in dozens of countries worldwide, including two of the top recipients of U.S. aid, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The directive, however, stops short of making foreign aid conditional on a country’s performance on gay rights.

Some activists defended the move as an attempt to protect local LGBT activists from coming under attack as a result of slashed foreign aid.

Renato Sabbadini, the co-secretary-general of the Brussels-based International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), also says that such conditions can only be effective if they are applied consistently.

Sabbadini cites the examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both countries say homosexuality is punishable by death. But one, Saudi Arabia, enjoys close ties with the United States, while the other, Iran, does not.

“If the U.S. government were to cut foreign aid on the basis of the violation of LGBT rights, then this would be a wise measure only if it was applied consistently both to Iran and to Saudi Arabia,” Sabbadini says.

“We understand that there are probably many other considerations which probably wouldn’t see this kind of action from the U.S. government,” he adds. “So in this case it is better to be honest, as the White House has been in its communications, and say that foreign aid is not directly linked to the violation of LGBT rights.”

Without the threat of slashed aid, it remains unclear how U.S. government pressure can be brought to bear on countries with a history of antigay discrimination.

The problem is particularly difficult in countries like Pakistan, where social conservatism and anti-American sentiment are both strong. Large demonstrations broke out in the country in June after staff at the U.S. Embassy held a gay-pride celebration there.

Pakistan has made unusual strides in recent months toward establishing the rights of its third-gender minority, but otherwise social stigma and the Criminal Code are strongly discriminatory against gays and lesbians.

Afghanistan likewise prohibits homosexual activity. The U.S. State Department, in its annual human rights report, found that Afghan authorities “sporadically” enforce the prohibition.

Another country that is likely to resist U.S. finger-wagging is Russia, where the Orthodox Church and nationalist movements have joined forces to repress the country’s burgeoning gay-rights movement.

The Moscow City Court last month upheld the city government’s decision to ban a gay-pride parade in May, a standoff that culminated in a violent confrontation between gay-rights activists, police, and antigay demonstrators.

And lawmakers in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly are currently mulling a bill that would ban anything seen as promoting homosexuality and pedophilia among minors. The proposal has sparked angry protests among gay-rights activists, who say such a law could be used to crack down on members of Russia’s LGBT community.

Russian officials, however, defend their record on gay rights and have indicated they will broach no criticism from American shores. Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, democracy, and rule of law, criticized what he called U.S. “intervention” on his country’s legislative process after Clinton made an earlier call for gay tolerance last month.

Russian gay-rights groups have cautiously welcomed the latest show of support from Clinton and Obama.

But Olga Lenkova, the head of communications for Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT support group, says her group is concerned that the well-intentioned U.S. message may have unintended consequences for things like Petersburg’s propaganda bill.

“We were actually a little worried by the Foreign Ministry’s reaction. There’s traditionally a very strong anti-American mood in Russia. We’re worried that the Petersburg Legislative Assembly will now, to the contrary, pass the legislation out of malice.”

Still, Lenkova says, it was good to hear the words of support. “The issue of gay rights gets very little attention in Russia,” she says. “If the West didn’t bring it up, it wouldn’t come up at all.”

 

Hungarians appeal to EU Parliament re new laws

From Hungary around the clock

Human rights groups have appealed to the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Europe to appeal the family defence bill, calling it discriminatory.

Háttér Társaság a Melegekért (Background Society for Homosexuals) official Tamás Dombos told Népszabadság that the bill could push hundreds of thousands of couples into a position of legal uncertainty.

The draft stipulates that families are solely based on heterosexual marriage or common-law partnerships.

The human right groups noted that the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that all co-habiting couples constitute a family, regardless of sexuality.

Christian Democrat chairman Tamás Lukács told Magyar Hírlap on Monday that Parliament’s human rights committee had ruled that the bill was “fit for general debate”.
The national society of large families also welcomed the bill, saying it could increase family stability in Hungary.

Story of a gay Ghanaian man

From Ghanaweb, by Paula Stromberg

Imagine if your family published a newspaper story saying you were evil, and that the story made some neighbours feel obligated to smash your skull with rocks. There are thousands of stories like this in Africa. This one is horrific but has a happy ending.

We know there’s a crisis facing lesbian, gay and transgender people around the globe.

Homosexuality is criminal in about 77 countries, including five with the death penalty, and numbers are growing. Particularly in Africa, queer people are being terrorized into the closet, prison cells or the club-wielding hands of lynch mobs. Many religious groups exacerbate this terror to mobilize against wicked Western morals and the ‘previously unknown’ foreign import – homosexuality.

Laws against homosexuality did not exist in Africa until the late 19th Century under British colonization. Nowadays, African leaders who promote gay hatred maintain the colonialist mentality. Governments cracked down on homosexuals as a way to unite Christians and Muslims in Africa.

This could seem comical, except that modern queer Africans are fleeing homelands where they’ve been imprisoned, blackmailed or tortured because of their sexuality or gender identity. Many are physically or sexually assaulted by police or religious officials.

In 2011, the Canadian Government amended the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other legislation claimed to improve Canada’s asylum system for refugees.

Vancouver lawyer Rob Hughes, well-known for representing gay and lesbian refugees over the past 20 years, says Canadian law allows refugee protection for those who can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. They must also prove they cannot be safe in another part of their country and that their own state government is unable or unwilling to protect them.

In Vancouver, Hughes represented newcomer Sombede Korak at a refugee hearing in 2011. Korak is a gay man who recently fled West Africa. He’s from Ghana’s second largest city, Kumasi, in the centre of the country’s Ashanti Region.

Korak’s story Although Korak is now safely in Canada, he prefers to remain anonymous and his name here is a pseudonym. This is his story.

Kumasi is the capital of Ghana’s kente cloth and gold-producing Ashanti Region. Much of Ghana’s wealth and many of its leaders come from this area. The Ashanti ethnic group is estimated to comprise 19 percent of the population, making it the largest cultural group in Ghana.

As a young Ashanti boy, Korak knew he was different. One day, after he wore his sister’s clothes on the street, his father beat him so severely it took several weeks to recover.

His adolescence was difficult, but at age 20, he met his first boyfriend. “We stole time together,” says Korak in an interview in Vancouver.

“That same year, 2001, a male relative demanded that I date a woman and have sex to prove I was a man, not a homosexual. My family forced me into a heterosexual relationship. ”

Because his 18-year-old girlfriend insisted they live together after she had twins, Korak rented two rooms. He attended the Catholic Church, hoping a Christian god might trump African traditions. “Secretly I kept seeing my boyfriend,” said Korak. His traditionalist family was happy he sired children, but after a couple of years, one of the twins died.

“Twins are a good omen, so according to Ashanti tradition, I had to perform a ceremony to make the dead child’s spirit return in the next baby. Our Ashanti religion, a mix of spiritual and supernatural powers, includes ancestor worship. Shaming the ancestors is an unforgivable sin,” he explains.

By 2008, he and his girlfriend produced another child. “Everyone agreed the baby had the same face and spirit as one that died,” he says. “Spiritual beliefs, customary practices and fetish rituals are part of everyday life in Ghana. ”

Korak was rarely home with the babies and their mother. He had a successful business and claimed his trading operation kept him absent, but all along, between 2000 and 2009, he and his boyfriend continued their relationship.

“One afternoon, my boyfriend and I were at a hotel that rented rooms by the hour. Suddenly, my boyfriend’s family broke the door and barged into the room, catching us in bed. The mother and sisters screamed and made a loud scene. There was lots of shouting.”

“I ran away. Later, I tried to call my boyfriend several times, but his mobile phone was dead. That was the last time we saw each other. We’d been together nine years. ” Of course, the boyfriend’s family made sure Korak’s relatives found out he’d been caught red-handed as a homosexual.

“Oh, it was bad. In reaction, my family ordered I go to an Ashanti bush shrine to be cleansed of evil spirits. I tried to remind them I was Roman Catholic, but it did not help. They insisted I go for the shrine ritual. ”

Exorcism It is important to note these cleansing rituals are not confined just to African traditionalist religions. For the past several years in Ghana, the fastest growing evangelical and other Christian churches embrace the notion of the Devil, spirit possession and witch demonology. African leaders know that a church without exorcism or so-called deliverance sessions means empty pews.

“A different religion like being Roman Catholic made no difference,” he says. “My family insisted I be cleansed. The shrine priest would perform painful rituals to drive out the Devil and make me straight. ”

When I show Korak my photos of an Ashanti shrine 20 kilometres outside Kumasi, he shakes his head, saying that a painted shrine, a town shrine, does not hold the horror of a bush shrine.

“You have to pay money to be beaten. The priest takes you far into the bush, chains you to a large rock at the shrine, throws stones and clubs you. They would shave my head and poison me – or likely kill me in the bush shrine. Acid could be forced down my throat as part of cleansing the evil, being homosexual. Because I broke a serious taboo, they could treat me the same as a witch.”

“When people die in a bush shrine there is rarely a police investigation or autopsy,” he says. Rather than undergo a cleansing ritual that was likely to kill him, Korak ran away. His family searched for him. Relatives gave a story to Ghana’s National Democrat newspaper, announcing they were hunting him for a cleansing ceremony.

The article was as good as signing a death warrant. Ashanti beliefs – that being homosexuality shamed the ancestors – meant anyone could beat him to death on sight. He was known to have an evil spirit. Some religions teach some Africans that killing a homosexual is like beating the Devil.

Realizing he could not stay hidden in Ghana, Korak applied for a visa and came to Canada as a tourist. In Vancouver, the LGBT activist group, the Rainbow Refugee Committee, helped him make an application to be accepted in Canada.

Korak must keep details of his Canadian refugee claim private for his own safety and to protect those Ghanaians who helped him, but he does reveal that after he’d arrived in Canada, a Kumasi friend mailed him a copy of the newspaper story about his family’s hunt. In a strange twist, the news story’s open invitation to violently cleanse the devil saved his life.

Rob Hughes explains: “The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board member who heard the case said she ruled in favour because of the proven death threat [Korak] faced at home. The newspaper clipping corroborated details given earlier in the refugee application about the danger he faced. ”

Fear Despite being safely in Vancouver, Korak is still in the closet. Old beliefs die hard. He is afraid of being discovered as a homosexual by fellow Ghanaians at his Vancouver church. In a strange new land, he needs continued contact with his own culture. However, many newcomers are still socially conservative. Many still hate gays as a God-given right. He does not feel safe.

Perhaps this can be a reminder for us. Hatred and exorcisms are not confined to African traditional religions. With rapid growth of Pentecostal, charismatic and evangelical churches on that continent, they are harnessing Africans’ fear of witchcraft and supernatural powers. Both religions and governments gain power by demonizing gays and lesbians, denouncing low Western morals. It is cheaper for African governments to look engaged by passing anti-gay laws than to deliver clean water, sewage systems or education.

Media reports such as The Rachel Maddow Show document US fundamentalist churches that finance African pastors who preach against gay rights and women’s rights. African congregations see their hate-speaking pastors quoted internationally by conservative media outlets, getting publicity for outlandish pronouncements that North American pastors would be laughed at or arrested for here – and thus attracting US dollars. African pastors who say the right thing become rich and famous with American Christian help.

American money shaping African morals and African souls – another colonization of the spirit.

Meanwhile, rising immigration from conservative nations into Canada and all of North America and Europe is creating new pressures. Local fundamentalists promote homosexual hatred with evangelical fervor. For Canadian queer people, protecting the right to live safely, be treated with dignity, overcome internalized homophobia, come out and fight back against hate-mongering religious messages must remain a never-ending process.

Human rights workers and queer activists need our continued support both in Canada and around the world.

German Social Democrats endorse same sex marriage

From On Top Magazine

The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) has endorsed gay marriage.

The SPD is Germany’s oldest and second largest political party. Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) is the country’s dominant party.

At its recent three-day national annual conference held in Berlin, the Social Democrats unanimously agreed to oppose the nation’s ban on gay and lesbian couples marrying.

“The SPD is committed to opening up marriage for same-sex couples. Marriage – as a social institution – must include heterosexual and homosexual couples,” the party’s resolution reads in part.

Party leaders also agreed to support giving gay and lesbian couples the right to jointly adopt children.

Germany currently recognizes gay and lesbian couples with civil partnerships, which gives couples most of the rights and protections of marriage, except joint adoption and full tax benefits.

“The SPD has given a clear signal for the full equality of gays and lesbians in society,” said Ansgar Dittmar, the national chairman of lesbians and gays in the SPD (Schwusos). “There is today no more legitimacy for the two parallel institutions of marriage and civil partnership. The SPD has again proved that it is the party of progress and social development.”

The Greens party, the nation’s fourth largest, also supports full marriage rights for gay couples.

According to a 2006 Angus-Reid Global Monitor poll, a majority of Germans (52%) support the legalization of gay marriage.

Fijian church speaks out against gay sex

From Fijian Broadcasting Corporation, by Savaira Tabua

 

The de-criminalisation of homosexuality in Fiji has not gone down well with the Methodist Church.

President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau revealed last month the HIV Decree allows for sexual relations between males so there can be support for those who contract HIV/AIDS.

Church assistant general secretary Reverend Tevita Nawadra says it is clearly stated in the Bible that homosexuality is wrong.

Reverend Nawadra says Methodist’s believe there are other ways to assist people vulnerable to HIV/AIDS without having to de-criminalise homosexuality.

Health Ministry spokesperson, Peni Namotu has acknowledged that many may oppose this decision, but adds that the last say is with the people.

‘Well many organisations are against homo-sexuality, we also aware of the disease that arises but it is the basic right of everyone’

There are 366 reported cases of HIV in Fiji.