It's a small, homophobic world - Brief Article

This is what 2001 looks like. Somalia: In February two women who lived together as a married couple were reportedly sentenced to death for "unnatural behavior." Namibia: In March the president declared gay rights a reflection of "foreign influence" and called on the police to arrest, imprison, and deport gay men and women. Egypt: In May the government raided a gay gathering place and arrested 52 men on charges of "immorality." The men were beaten and tortured in jail and brought to trial in a media circus not unlike a series of similarly sensationalized prosecutions of feminists earlier in the year. India: In July police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh raided the offices of two AIDS organizations. Staffers were arrested and charged with possession of obscene materials and intent to commit sodomy, a crime punishable by 10 years' imprisonment. These are just a few of many such incidents the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has documented on its Web site. The United States: The far-right wing, now firmly in power in the White House and in many statehouses, keeps itself fit and mobilized. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, at least 12 anti-GLBT ballot measures are expected to be placed before voters in the next 16 months. Since taking office, the born-again administration has proved true to its faith and begun proselytizing. Barely paying lip service to America's amazing religious pluralism, the current administration actively embeds Christianity as the national religion and seeks to secure the theocratic state that its socially conservative base has long sought.

Three things link these crackdowns against GLBT people: the exploitation of religion for political control, the reassertion of gender hierarchies, and the continued role of sexuality as a key component in defining national identity.

Campaigns against GLBT people's right to live openly and without discrimination are less about faith, doctrine, or text than they are about power. Catholicism's inquisitions and crusades, Islamic fundamentalism's jihads, Christian fundamentalism's antigay and antichoice actions, and Hindu fundamentalism's divisive use of anti-Muslim prejudice are all examples of how organized religion has long mobilized people to advance political agendas. GLBT people remain particularly vulnerable to political use of religious traditions: We are largely outside the mainstream of our religious institutions and often disengaged in the struggles for reform going on within them. The voice of pro-GLBT religious leaders is still far weaker than the religious right's.

It's important to analyze the recurring intersection between homophobia and sexism worldwide. Not only are those societies most hostile to women the ones most invested in traditional ideas of masculinity, they're also the societies that treat GLBT people harshly. This is no coincidence. Homophobia is, as writer-activist Suzanne Pharr has argued, a weapon of sexism--used to maintain gender dualism and inequality.

Finally, sexuality and gender are the terrain on which wide-ranging contests of identity are fought. Who is a real Indian, Namibian, Somalian, Egyptian, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu? Not the faggot. Not the dyke. Not the tranny. Not the bi. Not the single or unmarried woman.

The global economy erodes traditional forms of identity: The nation-state is less and less relevant, a World Wide Web produces new ideas of citizenship, media and technology mean we are less tied to place. In this shifting context, it is no surprise that preserving old cultural ways, regardless of their resemblance to atrocity (female circumcision, the murder of GLBT people by religious edict), becomes a way to assert some fixity and control.

GLBT politics cannot win the fight for human rights in the courts or legislatures alone; it must win it culturally. And engagement in cultural policy requires more than media visibility. It requires us to claim our full place in society--to engage in public debate on values, challenge sexism, defend religious pluralism, defend for others the inclusive and justice-based civil society we seek for ourselves.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group