Being gay isn't easy anywhere in the world, though the degree varies quite a bit depending on the location.
In THE UNITED STATES, some gays are having to chose between their heart and their country. This commentary in Newsweek explains on case. The writer's describes her son as a model American citizen. He is a hardworking, tax-paying, law-abiding young man. An honor student, a National Merit Scholar, a dean's list mainstay. He is liked by his teachers, co-workers and bosses; he's kind to cats, dogs and little old ladies. He is an environmental engineer because he believes we need to save our planet. He is wildly in love with the first and only person he ever dated and their monogamous relationship is an example of what it means to be soulmates. Except for a brief interlude with hideous pink hair, he has led an exemplary life. My son will be an asset to his employer, his community and his country, but unfortunately for us, his country will not be the United States.
He will move to Canada. Why? [B]ecause he wants what heterosexual American citizens take for granted. He wants to marry the one person in the world who makes him happier than anyone else. He wants to be able to go to the hospital when his partner, Aaron, is sick and have the same decision-making rights that heterosexual couples have as soon as they say "I do." He wants to be able to take advantage of family health-insurance rates that Aaron's company offers to all its heterosexual married couples but not to domestic partnership couples. He wants the tax breaks that heterosexual married couples get and the ability to inherit shared assets without paying taxes. He simply wants what he cannot have in this country.
Some people claim that gays want the sun and the moon. But what of the above is unreasonable?
Some people pretend that gays want "special rights." But what of the above is "special"? They don't want preferential treatment. They just want the exact same things that straights already have. Gay American citizens just want EQUAL legal rights to heterosexual American citizens.
These equal rights are something the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution supposedly guarantees but 26 state constitutions not only don't guarantee but explicitly ban.
But as bad as the Theocracy Brigade in this country is, NIGERIA's is much worse. The west African country's government wants to ban any acknowledgement of gays.
By this, I don't mean criminalizing gay acts (which I'm sure are already illegal, even in private). I don't mean banning gay marriage. Religious conservatives in the United States demand gays be treated as second-class humans. Religious conservatives in Nigeria want gays to be treated as not human at all, to ban them from talking. The Nigerian government and religious leaders want to ban anyone from even speaking out in favor of equal rights for gays. And to have the power to imprison people for such speech. Even the country's late military dictator Gen. Sani Abacha, one of Africa's most monstrous dictators, never proposed such insanity.
But in newly democratic Nigeria, with its lack of separation of church and state, such a ban has a good chance of passing. Religious institutions are its most ardent backers. Banning acknowledgement of gays as human beings is one of the few things that the conservative Muslim north and the country's fundamentalist Christian president will find in common.
Religious hatred can divide people. But just as tragically, it can also unite people. I wonder if those Americans who claim to be so worried about the freedom of Iraqis will speak out against this monstrosity. Or if they only speak of "freedom" when they want to promote militarism.
In IRAQ, it's even worse still. Theocrats in that country are assassinating gays. "Sexual cleansing" is the euphemism used, a word with an eerie echo of "ethnic cleansing" (a euphemism for genocide).
The Badr Corps -- the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the country's most powerful Shiite political group -- launched a campaign of "sexual cleansing," marshaling death squads to exterminate homosexuality, following a "death to gays" fatwa issued in October 2005 by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old chief spiritual leader of all Iraqi Shiite Muslims.
And you thought America was the only object to the 'death to...' chants.
One Iraqi gay comments:
"I've been living in a state of fear for the last year since Ayatollah Sistani issued that fatwa, in which he even encouraged families to kill their sons and brothers if they do not change their gay behavior," said [one Iraqi gay man named Hussein]. "My brother, who has been under pressure and threats from Sistani's followers about me, has threatened to harm me himself, or even kill me, if I show any signs of gayness."
Hussein had already lost his job in a photo lab because the shop owner did not want people to think that he was supporting a gay man.
"Now I'm very self-conscious about my look and the way I dress -- I try to play it safe," said Hussein, who is slightly effeminate. "Several times I was followed in the street and beaten just because I had a nice, cool haircut that looked feminine to them. Now I just shave my head."
Indeed, even the way one dresses is enough to get a gay Iraqi killed.
"Just the fact of looking neat and clean, let alone looking elegant and well groomed, is very dangerous for a gay person," Hussein said. "So now I don't wear nice clothes, so that no one would even suspect that I'm gay. I now only leave home if I want to get food."
If anyone has a rational justification for any of this, I'm all ears.
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