Public Health Arguments and Civil Rights Protections

For some time now gay civil rights (aka gay rights) activists have argued that same sex relationships and conduct should be decriminalized because evidence shows that in societies that don't do so there is a higher prevalence of HIV among gay men.

Let there be no doubt, the latter claim of fact is true. There is a fairly substantial body of social science evidence demonstrating that. Opponents of gay rights typically point to that higher prevalence - even in societies that have decriminalized - to bolster their opposition. They usually argue that if their society decriminalized same sexual relationships  (aka buggery, to use that lovely colonial phrase invented by the Brits) even more folks would engage in that high risk behaviour and things would get worse on the HIV fronts. That isn't true, demonstrably so. This will have little impact on these campaigners' messaging, because they're god people. Their opposition to homosexuality is driven by religious convictions plus almost certainly deep-seated other psychological issues. After all, these are the same people that like equating pedophilia and homosexuality. Evidence for that claim is also difficult to come by. There's a method to this madness though, and it's a successful madness. Whole countries (Jamaica and Uganda are just two examples) these days are in the thrall of moral panics when it comes to the matter of homosexuality.

Now, gay rights activists have resorted to engaging in similarly flawed arguments to further their political objectives. To be fair, unlike god people they at least have some evidence on their side (i.e. homosexuality isn't pedophilia, criminalization leads to higher HIV prevalence). However, none of that creates a case for gay rights. At least it shouldn't. Civil rights cannot be contingent on non-immutable characteristics. What if it turned out to be the case that decriminalization of homosexuality led to higher HIV prevalence? Should one then join god people and their campaigns? Civil rights case closed? Obviously not. The case for civil rights cannot be based on public health arguments.

The case for civil rights protections is always and necessarily so based on individuals' liberty entitlements to live their lives as they see fit, as far as self-regarding actions are concerned, on privacy rights, their right to associate with whoever consenting adult(s) they see fit, their entitlement to see their needs treated equally to comparable needs that led to rights heterosexual people enjoy, and a gaggle of other related arguments. None of these arguments are contingent on the truth or otherwise of particular public health matters. After all, where would one go once it was possible to eradicate HIV with a simple pill being taken, or once a working preventative vaccine existed? Too bad for gay rights then? I think not.

That's not to say that opponents of gay rights should not be called on their lies and deception. However, by turning their arguments on their head no case is made for gay rights either.

Addendum: 12:29pm, July 25, 2014 EST.

Of course, it is true that civil rights protections also extend to certain kinds of choices (e.g. religion) as well as other not immutable characteristics such as language. I stuck to immutable because that case is easier to make and it applies to homosexuality.

Britain becomes safe heaven for gay refugees

The UK Supreme Court issued a finding today that gay refugees from countries that discriminate against homosexuality may not be send back to their home countries if there is a risk that they might be persecuted at home. The new conservative-liberal government promised to implement the ruling immediately, adding that they already have stopped sending such refugees back to their home countries. Initially, UK Home Office officials came up with the ingenious idea that gay people, after their deportation, should simply hide their sexual orientation at home, and so they would be fine. Lower courts agreed with the Home Office proposition, but the justices of the Supreme Court decided that that would constitute a violation of these gay people's human rights.

Here are bits from the finding that I did truly enjoy (taken from the UK Guardian website):

Deputy court president Lord Hope said in his ruling: "The ultra-conservative interpretation of Islamic law that prevails in Iran is one example. The rampant homophobic teaching that rightwing evangelical Christian churches indulge in throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa is another."

A "huge gulf" had opened up in attitudes towards gay people, he said. "It is one of the most demanding social issues of our time. Our own government has pledged to do what it can to resolve the problem, but it seems likely to grow and to remain with us for many years." More gay and lesbian people were likely to have to seek protection in this country if it was denied in their home countries, he said.

Another member of the court, Lord Rodger, said normal behaviour of gay people must be protected just as it was for heterosexual people. "What is protected is the applicant's right to live freely and openly as a gay man. To illustrate the point with trivial stereotypical examples from British society: just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates."

Leaving aside for a moment the characterization of gay men as being typically this or being typically that, the point is well taken that if this is how you express your identity you have every right in the universe to do so without risking your life. You can see how important this judgment is when you look at how bad the situation for gay people in many countries is.

And the weekend good news: Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is dead

I like the hypocrisy of people insisting that we must never speak bad of the dead. Why not? If the dead were bad people, what's wrong with wishing them good riddance. A case in point is Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (better known as Dr Beetroot), the former South African health minister. Her policies and that of her boss Thabo ('I don't know anybody who died on AIDS in South Africa.') Mbeki led to about 300,000 preventable deaths among infected people. Beetroot insisted that it ain't clear that HIV causes AIDS, and claimed that anti-retrovirals for Africans were an evil scheme by the CIA and the pharmaceutical industry to poison Africans. Those suffering from, and dying on AIDS she offered, well, you guessed it, beetroot, lemon juice and garlic. Moron that she was she thought nothing of it to jump the waiting list for organ transplantations in order to grab a liver when her old failed as a result of her marriage to alcohol. Excuses were found for why this woman, in her 60s at the time, was deserving of the liver (ie public sector clinicians, working for her, colluded in lies about her legitimate rank on the waiting list). During the time it became public knowledge that as a hospital doctor in Botswana she was convicted of stealing patients' property while they were in surgery. It didn't occur to the ANC and its senior officials to fire Dr Beetroot. Well, I was elated when I found out that the transplant liver crapped up on her, and the system refused to offer her yet another one. Good riddance Dr Beetroot. Thabo, we're waiting for you to join her. After all, you also like your booze and there's some 300,000 people who are dead today because of you. Why don't you also call it a day?

On a slightly more analytical (as opposed to purely angry) level (even though my anger about these two South African politicians' murderous policies knows few boundaries, I have admit): What is of interest is that there's a pattern of colonial mentalities in play in South Africa as well as in Uganda. In South Africa, black nationalist politicians happily ganged up with Western crank scientists against their own people, because they were suspicious of mainstream Western science and knowledge. White Westerners taught them stuff that translated into genocidal policies costing about 300,000 predominantly black people's lives in that country alone. The attempted political emancipation drove these black nationalists straight into the hands of crackpots, that's how substantial their concern was that hooking their people onto life saving medicines was just another ruse by the West to poison and keep Africans down and dependent on the West. Incomprehensible. As good nationalists are wont to do, they insisted on 'local solutions', hence beetroot, garlic and lemon juice. African scientists and medical doctors standing up to them were fired and bullied sufficiently that Stalin could have taken a page from that book (Beetroot managed this without actually killing the scientists, she simple removed them from jobs and funding).

Uganda is another example. It has become clear by now, that draconian anti-gay legislation, threatening gays with the death penalty, was inspired by US evangelicals, white US evangelicals. How ironic that Africans, busily trying to assert themselves against 'evil Western values', are being goaded by other Westerners (crazy ones) to implement seriously civil rights violating policies against their own people ... bizarre stuff. The only good news is that they're being opposed frequently by younger generations of Africans who won't stand for that sort of crap.

Anyhow, Manto is gone, let's go and drink to her demise :).

Open Letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Uganda

I am reproducing an open letter my colleague John-Stewart Gordon has written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the dismal situation of gays in Uganda.

Dear High Commissioner Navanethem Pillay:

my name is John-Stewart Gordon (Germany) and I am currently visiting
professor at Queen's University Kingston, Canada, conducting
a research project on human rights in bioethics.

Even though you are certainly aware of the current situation
concerning gay rights in Uganda (and other countries in Africa:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/13/death-penalty-uganda-homosexuals?CMP=AFCYAH),
I wonder whether there is anything
what you can do about this serious human rights violation.

I am not gay but I do care for other people and I am a professional
philosopher who notice when serious changes in communities effect the
lives of innocent people. You can certainly call this a "sex-related
genocide" that has to be stopped immediately. The situation is grim,
the social climate is poisoned and hatred crimes happen on a daily
basis. I am deeply concerned about this situation and I want you to
take any possible action in order to end this humiliating tragedy.
This seems to be only the beginning of a cultural change
concerning minorities in Africa and in other countries etc. Once
again, I urge you to act now or to contact the relevant human rights
bodies that might be of any help. Please, use all your authority to
end this "war against gay people".

If I can be of any help, please, let me know and I will be there for
your assistance.

Sincerely
Professor Dr. John-Stewart Gordon

John-Stewart Gordon, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor

Area-Editor of The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Queen's University Kingston
Department of Philosophy
Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6
Canada
http://www.queensu.ca/philosophy/faculty.html

http://www.johnstewartgordon.com/index.html
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-de&field-author=John-Stewart%20Gordon
http://www.amazon.de/Morality-Justice-John-Stewart-Gordon/dp/0739122991/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1240667047&sr=1-3

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) is currently looking for
authors with (great) proficiency in the field of Bioethics.
Please, have a look at the following topics, at:
http://www.johnstewartgordon.com/iep.html

'Unnatural' sex and its naturally not so bright opponents

This thing about 'unnatural' sex has been bugging me for a long time. For those of us who are trained to think about what we mean when we say certain things the term 'unnatural' carries no normative weight. For those who think less (either because they quite naturally or culturally cannot think a great deal due to a lack of gray brain matter or lack of education) about what they mean when they say that something is 'unnatural', the 'unnatural' charge routinely leads to demands that certain behaviours or products be outlawed.

Let me look at two examples just from this week, one from Uganda, the other from Jamaica, quite naturally both examples involve Christians on a crusade against gay sex. So, here we go:

Dr. James Nsaba Buturo is the Ugandan Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity. He announced this week that any attempt by donor agencies to have the country legalise 'unnatural' sex (and homosexual sex in particular) will fail. He went on to say that the government is prepared to fortfeit any [sic!] amount of donor money if that meant accepting homosexuality. I'm a consequentialist, so when someone says something like 'no matter what', which is what Dr Buturo's 'any' implies, I know I am seeing someone not too deeply rooted in reality. For the sake of the argument: what if someone gave Uganda enough money to resolve the problem of poverty among its people for good, offered in addition free education, state-of-the-art free health care to everyone living in Uganda etc, provided that consenting adults be permitted to engage in 'unnatural' sex if they so wish. Any government minister who would be prepared to sacrifice the well-being of the people in such a case for the sake of fighting 'unnatural' sex is obviously a nutcase. Consequences be damned is very Christian, of course, but it also not very smart.

Anyhow, I digress, I really meant to write about the 'natural' and the 'unnatural', and that I will do, but let me first give you the second example. We owe it to a Christian 'Senator' in Jamaica. I don't know Jamaica too well, so I presume Senators are not overly well educated people relying on tax hand outs for a living while preaching hate. So, without further delay, in her own words, Jamaican Senator Hyacinth Benneth: "For many persons that push a radical homosexual agenda it is claimed that homosexual behaviour is natural for them. That particuar [sic!] group has been quite successful in advancing their cause by using the rights based approach. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist but I have not seen where homosexual behaviour has been conclusively shown to be natural. In fact the dominant scientific opinion has been that no one can conclusively show that homosexuality is natural."

So, don't blame me, blame Dr Buturo and Ms Benneth for today's rant on nature.

Ms Benneth is probably unaware of the fact that there is no dominant scientific opinion on the naturalness or otherwise of homosexuality. The reason for this is that this issue is not a scientific question to begin with. It's a matter of what you mean when you call something 'natural'. In science EVERYTHING that is physically possible by necessity is considered a natural thing. Anything governed by the laws of nature is natural. So, for that reason alone there can't be a body of scientific opinion on the naturalness of homosexuality anymore than there can be a body of scientific literature on the naturalness of any number of other things that are happening within what the laws of nature permit (namely: everything that is physically possible). So, dear Ms Benneth, your claim about the views of 'science' on the naturalness of homosexuality (wrong as it is even in fact), also aims to take comfort from the wrong people. It's akin to someone saying in response to a question such as what is the proper way to lay pipes in a housing estate? that there is a consensus opinion of theologians on the matter. It makes no sense, and even if theologians had views on how to lay pipes in a housing estate they're not really competent to claim particular expertise.

What does this mean? Not too much. Gay activists, do not rejoice too quickly. A lot of crap happens in nature. Crocodiles eat tourists in the Australian Northern Territory just about every year. Very much a natural thing, but still it's not nice. Men (usually) rape women. Natural. People drive cars. Natural. People fly to the moon. Natural. People kill each other in genocides. Natural. People bake cakes. Natural. You get the drift, I'm sure.

What we could do now, of course, is to change our definition of natural. Say, we could add a bit of Christianity and dump an imaginary God into the equation. What the claim about the naturalness of homosexuality then means is that homosexuality is a violation of a normatively understood (human) nature. Of course, this has even less to do with science - poor Hyacinth, how did you manage to get all of this so badly wrong... - This, after all, is what really motivates our Ugandan and Jamaican crusaders. There's a lot of irony in this one, too. After all, if anybody is unnatural, God is. The God these folks have invented hovers above the laws of nature, this God even makes laws of nature. Now, if anything is unnatural, God is. Funny enough, they're not going on about outlawing God or God's unnatural behavior (say, 'miracles'). Nope, they aim to punish people who do things within the laws of nature that their imaginary (and all-powerful, and all-knowing, and 'good') God cooked up in a couple of days. So, if anything, even on their own perspective, it's probably not a good idea to question God's laws of nature and the conduct that happens as a result of God's magnificent work (including, of course, genocides, rapes, and other such niceties). If I was God, I certainly would be pretty miffed if my underlings (sorry, my chosen one's) would question my grand scheme of things.

There's other problems with 'nature'. We have seen already that so many things 'go' in nature that are clearly bad, that it is obvious to anyone other than Ms Benneth and Dr Buturo that nature is probably a bad yardstick to measure any kind of behaviour against. There's a logical reason for that, too, it's called a naturalistic fallacy. A naturalistic fallacy occurs each time when someone derives normative conclusions from a matter of fact. You can't do that. You always need normative arguments and analysis to achieve that feast. So, gay activists, from the fact that homosexuality occurs in nature it follows that it is natural. It does not follow that it is good. The same is true for ice cream, the new Boeing Dreamliner, sunshine and other such things.

What Ms Benneth and Dr Buturo REALLY are trying to sell to the unsuspecting public is a normative (as opposed to a scientific) understanding of nature. Ie they have decided that certain things in nature are bad and they label them unnatural. We can probably all agree that there's plenty of things in nature that are not nice. The thing is though, Dr Buturo and Ms Benneth need to argue their case. Some of their ilk have argued that homosexual sex is unnatural because it is not leading to reproduction. That is, the homosexuals' use of our sexual organs is unnatural because it doesn't lead to breeding. So, in that sense then some guy sticking his penis in another guys bum is an abuse of the penis (and presumably the bum), because the sperm is wasted in the wrong spot so to speak. Well, there's several problems with this: 1) Most heterosexual sex acts involving the penis and the vagina (or other orifices of the heterosexual sex partner) do not lead to reproduction. Should we outlaw those, too? 2) Why should we accept the argument that our bodily organs serve only one purpose and no other. After all, we are using our tongue to lick stamps these days, as well as ice cream and any number of other things. What is the natural function of the tongue in these circumstances? And, who is to decide? Hyacinth and her buddy from Uganda? 3) Why should we accept the idea that sex serves only one purpose, namely to breed? I mean, why can't we accept the novel idea that sex (hopefully more often than not) is kinda FUN, Ms Benneth and Dr Buturo? As you can see, your claim that some kind of conduct or other is unnatural alone won't cut it. In fact, if anything, it is begging the question.

Unethical HIV research

ACT UP Paris has been critical of currently ongoing clinical HIV trials in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Check out this link for further detailled information. The organisation is concerned about standards of care, informed consent issues and claims that patients in these trials are subjected to unnecessary risks.