Natural? Yes! - Abnormal? Yes!

Goodness, reading stuff from gay activists is sometimes as annoying as reading stuff from religious fanatics. There has been this fight between the two sides over two questions: 1) whether homosexuality is natural; and 2) whether homosexuality is normal.

Well people, let me settle it for ya. Homosexuality is, of course, natural unless you assume that something that has been occurring in nature for as long as we can trace natural history back isn't natural. Oh, your god says 'unnatural'. Well, that proves it then, doesn't it? Umpf, your god, natural or unnatural? Just asking. - Anyhow, admit it: you really have a normative understanding of naturalness, not a scientific understanding of nature. Let me put it to you then: You're cheating. Surely in physics you wouldn't suddenly redefine laws of physics to suit your bible stuff, or would you? Well, may be you would do even that.

The good news for you Bible people out there is that it actually doesn't matter whether homosexuality is natural or unnatural. There is so much nasty stuff going on there that is natural (rape being just one of those things) and that is immoral, that you can stick to your righteous condemnation of homosexuality. Enjoy!

Now, is homosexuality abnormal? Well, I must say, likely much to the horror of my fellow gays, of course homosexuality is abnormal. Any sensible understanding of normality would acknowledge that normal must refer to a statistical average. The statistical average behaviour, last time I checked, is heterosexuality. So, we are abnormal.

God people, hold your guns. The problem is that this ain't going to win you anything. I'm a university professor, my job security is higher than that of our prime minister, pretty abnormal wouldn't you say? I'm also someone who lived all his life without ever holding a driver's license. Pretty abnormal. I love collecting really expensive watches. Pretty abnormal. I do own a smartphone based on android, pretty normal. I'm Caucasian living in a town that is overwhelmingly Caucasian as far as its population is concerned, I'm pretty normal here. Try for your own person and ask yourself which features by the standards of your local community are average and how many of the features (or dispositions) are abnormal. You are the only Caucasian person in a rural area of sub-Saharan Africa? Abnormal! Anyhow, do the exercise for yourself. You will find that it's probably going to be a mixed bag. You will likely find that much of what you do is normal, that is, most around you, or even most around the globe do what you do (eat every day, for instance). If you are honest to yourself (or honest to your god) you will also find that some of the stuff you do (watching the Met Opera performances in your local cinema in a live broadcast) is pretty abnormal. Hell, for  all I know you might be driving a Rolls Royce around town. Abnormal!

The thing is, whether something is normal or abnormal tells us nothing, zero, zilch about the question of whether that something is a morally good or bad thing. It would be a naturalistic fallacy (ie a logic error) to assume that we could deduce from how certain things are like (or the majority of things) that they are morally good or bad or neutral. The same, incidentally applies to the naturalness questions I addressed earlier.

So, can we all move now on from here and argue our respective cases without engaging in these skirmishing activities?

AP drops 'homophobia'

I have been arguing for some time that it is inappropriate to label most forms of anti-gay (speech) acts as homophobic. The reason being essentially that phobias are anxiety disorders. Most of the actions described today as homophobic are simply anti-gay, those undertaking them are fully competent and the actions they engage in are not in any way expressions of anxiety disorders. Labelling them as homophobic suggests limited personal responsibility for their actions, because of the anxiety disorder link. 

I am delighted therefore that the Associated Press, in its revised style guide, asks journalists to refrain from using the term 'homophobic' or 'homophobia' precisely because these terms mislabel anti-gay actions, and because they suggest limited responsibility on the part of those who engage in anti-gay manners. AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn explains, 'Homophobia especially -- it's just off the mark. It's ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't have. It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case.'

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.

Gay men of integrity and spineless homosexuals

You might find this a very odd comparison, but it's kind of apt I think.

On the one hand there are Malawians Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 33. They, were arrested in December 2009 after they threw themselves an engagement party at the Blantyre lodge where Mr. Chimbalanga worked as a cook and a housekeeper. They were eventually found guilty of some 'unnatural' (a contradiction in terms) or other by a Malawian court and sentenced to 14 years jail by a Christian judge keen on 'deterring' others from engaging in homosexual conduct in that country. Well, Malawi, being just another more or less failed African state depending on Western hand-outs, was told literally by the world (from the Canadian foreign minister to the newly elected UK Prime Minister to very many other people) to get a grip. The current UK's international development minister (ie the guy in charge of the Malawian international aid) is an openly gay man. The UN general secretary told Malawi's president that this verdict violated international human rights. Duly, and no doubt to the great disappointment of US evangelicals that usually have a hand in these sorts of homophobic actions, the Malawian president pardoned the gay men and they'd be free by now. There are a lot of aspects to this that are worth commenting on. However, I mean to compare the integrity with which these gay men have conducted themselves with the deeply embarrassing conduct of other gay men. Think of David Laws, the former UK Treasury Chief. He was caught with his hands in the till, well, sort of. Laws resigned after it became public knowledge today that as an MP he had himself reimbursed from the public purse for 'renting' a room in his same-sex partners properties. 'The Daily Telegraph disclosed that he claimed as much as £950 a month in parliamentary expenses for eight years to rent rooms in two London properties.The houses were owned by his partner, James Lundie, a political lobbyist. In 2006, MPs were banned from “leasing accommodation from a partner”. ' Laws says that he kept his sexual orientation a secret from both his family and the public, and hence did not disclose that his partner was his partner. Laws was probably not motivated by greed, being an independently wealthy former investment banker.

So, here's this rich guy then who doesn't have to worry about losing his job, who doesn't have to worry about jail sentences, who lives in a society where the civil rights of gay people are very well protected, and yet he engages in embarrassing shenanigans to hide what doesn't need to be hidden. He serves in a conservative-liberal government with other openly gay ministers, yet he remains in the closet. Worse, he's a member of the Liberal Democrats, so by any stretch of imagination he had no reason to worry about negative political repercussions if his sexual orientation ever became public knowledge. Compare Laws' lack of personal integrity with how the two Malawian gay men have conducted themselves under much much more difficult circumstances.

Strange times.

I have to be honest, I have no sympathy for gay people who choose to hide their sexual orientation (by means of living a life designed to deceive everyone around them, from their families to their business partners, friends etc etc) when there is no good reason to do so. All other things being equal, anyone who, like Laws, is independently wealthy, has little reason to reside in a closet. If you live in places where your life might be threatened or other serious repercussions are to be feared, you might have a reason to keep your sexual orientation a secret, but otherwise, you do not deserve any sympathy when you are found out (Laws being a case in point). This deceitful behavior is offensive to other gay people who are open about who they are.

Britain does away with conscientious objection nonsense

A victory for sanity in Britain. A Christian counsellor (photo to the left), employed by the state, lost a court case that's essentially focused on conscientious objection. The guidance counsellor refused to provide services to gay couples, on religious reasons. The Guardian reports 'Lord Justice Laws said legislation to protect views held purely on religious grounds could not be justified. He said it was an irrational idea "but it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary". Laws is correct here. The truth of religious belief cannot be established, there's competing and importantly conflicting religious beliefs about. Surely the question of whether someone receives professional services without a great deal of fuzz must not depend on whatever private beliefs a professional services provider holds.

Says Laws, "We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic....The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself."

Church people like the evangelical former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey suggested that rulings such as these could lead to 'public unrest' because special rules and special dispensation ain't provided to him and his fellow religious believers. Says Carey, "The comparison of a Christian, in effect, with a 'bigot' (ie, a person with an irrational dislike to homosexuals) begs further questions. It is further evidence of a disparaging attitude to the Christian faith and its values." Makes you wonder how else you'd described someone who irrationally discriminates against fellow citizens. 'Bigot' seems an appropriate description, adding 'God' as justification does precious little to change that situation.

Carey also claims, “It is, of course, but a short step from the dismissal of a sincere Christian from employment to a religious bar to any employment by Christians." This is utter nonsense, of course, a good teaching case for showing how unsubstantiated slippery slope claims are used for rhetorical gain. There is no short step of any kind here. All the court is saying is that Christians got to do their jobs like like everyone else, muslim or atheist, communist or liberal. If they don't feel like doing particular jobs they'd try to find other jobs. It's really a bit like a communist saying that she has conscientious objections to working for Deutsche Bank. We'd think that's funny, too, and suggest that perhaps she's in the wrong job.

The crux of it is, of course, that if you offer public services (particularly so if you're in the pay of taxpayers) you can't choose who you offer these services to, based on arbitrary criteria such as skin color, sex or sexual orientation. Nobody forced you to enter a profession that would require you to provide services to people whom your religious ideology tells you to discriminate again. Do something else, like for instance working in a church - if there is one not subsidized one way or another by the state - and enjoy the intellectual incest that goes with interacting with people like yourself. You certainly are not entitled to have your prejudiced life sponsored by tax monies.

'Passing as straight'

I thought, there we go again! I talked to a gay male friend the other night, you know, one of those all-over-the-place type chit-chats. Anyhow, at one point he tells me with some pride that one of his closest straight female friends complimented him the other day by saying that he'd 'pass as straight' easily. 'Passing as straight' is a primary preoccupation of many gay (I presume mostly male) folks. Goes also under 'straight acting', and stuff like that. The price is yours if you 'pass as straight', you lose if you fail and people can 'tell' that you're gay.

Now, what is it that makes gay men 'pass' as straight? Well, you guessed it, looking as if they're REAL men (I'm being half tongue in cheek here). What's a real man like? Well, you gotta have a deep voice naturally, you don't flap around too much with your hands, and, if at all possible, you make sexist jokes on the odd occasion (mind you, most drag queens are sadly excelling at that), it also helps to be dressed not too fashionably (mind you, metrosexuals are good at dressing properly these days, too). I suspect you also better have a pint instead of a glass of chardonnay, but I might be off on that one...

It's funny, I have had this 'compliment' more often than I can recall, both from straight and gay folks whom I know/knew. I always thought of it as seriously offensive to be honest. After all, I happen to be gay, and I'd much rather be identified as such if someone sees the need to identify me according to sexual orientation. What's the point of gay men mistaking me for a straight guy? Same is true for straight women... - defeats the purpose, doesn't it? What kind of compliment is it to tell someone who's gay that they don't 'look' gay. I mean, how often have you heard someone telling straight folks that they look 'soooo gay', and that one would have never thought that they might be heterosexual? And of the few who might have heard this 'compliment', how many would have taken pride in this in the same manner that very many gay folks take pride in 'passing' as straight?

What's even more puzzling is that this seemingly innocent 'compliment' also reveals a LOT about people's silly stereotypes. I mean, to be a gay man, does one really have to talk in a high-pitch voice and flap a lot around with one's hands? Isn't that at best a reflection of age-old stereotypical assumptions about gay men being some kind of stereotypical women? And that to be a 'proper' lesbian you got to be REALLY 'butch'. I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the drift.

Much of this is based on the age-old assumption that gay folks really are the 'other' sex, and that they'd behave like that. I doubt that there's a biological hardwiring that ties this kind of behavior to sexual orientation. Certainly there's no good reason to take pride in 'passing' one way or another. Better to call people out on the prejudices that such 'compliments' reveal.

Stepping off my soap box now :).

Ps: It goes without saying, should you feel like acting it out camp or should you really feel like camp is you, it's REALLY fine, too. None of this matters one way or another!

'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.

Good ol British hypocrisy

There it is the land of the free, the defender of freedom of thought and speech, notorious for tolerating people with quirky habits and beliefs... that is, unless you're criticizing Islam. Why did I add hypocrisy in the title of today's post? Well, there's different standards for different people. A notorious, rightwing Dutch MP by the name Geert Wilders called the Koran a 'fascist book' in an anti-Islamic video some time ago. As we know by now, many Muslims respond to this sort of stuff with mayhem - you know, burning effiges of people who are not Muslims, killing other Muslims while they're at it, that sort of thing. So, one arguably over-the-top and offensive statement by Wilders leads to an even more problematic and out of proportion response by Muslims. Wilders, an EU citizen, wanted to visit the UK but has been banned by the UK Home Office on the grounds that his presence would threaten 'public security'. So, the presumed Muslim response determines whether one of Islam's critics may enter the country. It would follow then that the more out of proportion Muslims' responses to critics' views of that ideology is, the less likely it is that people who publicly hold such views would be permitted to enter the UK.

Here's the bit that really interests me in this: The UK Home Office also permits Caribbean singers to enter the UK, even though these shady characters routinely call for violence against gays and lesbians in their songs (including the murder of such people, just for good measure). It seems to me as if gays and lesbians are well advised to go on the streets, burn cars and create a lot of mayhem, because according to the screwed logic of the UK Home Office, that would then constitute a sufficient reason for not letting such 'artists' enter the country. If on the other hand you protest peacefully, 'public security' is not threatened and people advocating violence against gays and lesbians may freely enter the country.

QED

ps, in case you care to find out... here's an ineresting piece Russell Blackford wrote on the same issue: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2009/02/geert-wilders-refused-entry-to-uk.html

Being gay in Iraq isn't fun these days...

I reproduce here a circular human rights activist and fellow humanist Peter Tatchell has send me. You might want to consider supporting the cause. There is information about donations at the end of his post.

Sexual cleansing in Iraq

Islamist death squads are hunting down gay Iraqis and summarily executing them

WATCH the video link below – and weep

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uB7TcPGXlHY

By Peter Tatchell

The Guardian – Comment Is Free – 25 September 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/iraq.humanrights

STOP PRESS: This morning, after this article was published, news came from Iraq that the coordinator of Iraqi LGBT in Baghdad, Bashar, aged 27, has been assassinated in a barber shop. Militias burst in and sprayed his body with bullets.

The so-called improved security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not gay ones. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree, with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/155656

One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Shia Islam, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "worst, most severe way possible."

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=18202189&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

The short film, Queer Fear - Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq, produced by David Grey for Village Film, documents the tragic fates of a several individual gay Iraqis. You can view it here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uB7TcPGXlHY

Watch and weep. A truly poignant and moving revelation about the terrorisation and murder of Iraqi lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Since this film was made, the killings have continued and, many say, got worse.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/24/gay.iraqis/index.html

For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don't experience any new-found respect human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.

It is a death sentence in today's "liberated" Iraq to love a person of the same-sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his / her faith or embrace another religion.

The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city's inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads. Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.

The death squads of the Badr Brigades and the Madhi Army are targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all "perverts and sodomites" in many of the major cities.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/05/world/fg-iraqgay5

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17008100&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17008200&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=18605093&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

You can view photos of a few of the LGBT victims of these summary executions here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/outrage/sets/72157600042494571/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/outrage/sets/72057594087304767/

My friends in Iraq have relayed to me the tragic story of five gay activists, who belonged to the underground movement gay rights movement, Iraqi LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender).

Eye-witnesses confirm that they saw the men being led out of a house at gun-point by officers in police uniform. Yes, Iraqi police! Nothing has been heard of the five victims since then. In all probability, they have been executed by the police - or by Islamist death squads who have infiltrated the Iraqi police and who are using their uniforms to carry out so-called honour killings of gay people, unchaste women and many others.

The arrested and disappeared men were Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. As members of Iraq's covert gay rights movement, for the previous few months they had been documenting the killing of lesbians and gays, relaying details of the murders to the outside world, and providing safe houses and support to other gay people fleeing the death squads.

Their abduction is just one of many outrages by anti-gay death squads. lslamist killers burst into the home of two lesbians in city of Najaf. They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child who the women had rescued from the sex trade. The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men who were being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have since fled to Baghdad and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house there.

Large parts of Iraq are now under the de facto control of the militias and their death squad units. They enforce a harsh interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for what they denounce as "crimes against Islam." These "crimes" include listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber's shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of major parties in the Bush and Brown-backed Iraqi government. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad's governing coalition. Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship. The allied occupation of Iraq is bad enough. But if the Madhi or Badr militias gain in influence and strength, as seems likely in the long-term, it could result in a reign of religious terror many times worse.

Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant. I campaigned against his blood-stained misrule for nearly 30 years. But while Saddam was President, there was certainly no danger of gay people being assassinated in their homes and in the street by religious fanatics.

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17008362&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of lesbians and gays is much worse.

http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/2007/08/for-gays-in-iraq-life-of-constant-fear.html

Even children suspected of being gay are abducted and later found shot in the head.

http://gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17008362&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

Lesbian and gay Iraqis cannot seek the protection of the police, since the police are heavily infiltrated by fundamentalists, especially the Badr militia. The death squads can kill with impunity. Pro-fundamentalist ministers in the Iraqi government are turning a blind eye to the killings, and helping to protect the killers. Some "liberation".

* Iraqi LGBT is appealing for funds to help the work of their members in Iraq. Since they don't yet have a bank account, they request that cheques should be made payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT.

More information on Iraqi LGBT or to make a donation by PayPal: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

Gays 'hated to death': Jamaica Gleaner on the anti-gay campaign trail

Jamaica has earned itself notoriety in recent years for anti-gay hate crimes that seem to be condoned to some extent by the country's law enforcement agencies. The US based human rights organisation Human Richts Watch has ensured for some time now that the world gets to know about the Jamaican state's failure to protect the civil rights of its gay citizens. You might want to read the full report of Human Rights Watch, particularly in light of what follows below.

True to form, Christian church leaders have been quick to respond to the charges made by Human Rights Watch. As usual their near-pathological homophobia is carefully cloaked under the guise of 'ethics' and 'morals', which is somewhat amusing, considering the criminal history of the Christian churches the world all over.

One would expect journalists to take one of the basic tenets of journalism ethics seriously, namely to report in an unbiased manner about the issues at stake. A Jamaican paper, the Jamaica Gleaner has instead taken it upon itself to propagate the religious ideologies that are at the heart of anti-gay hate crimes.

This post documents how that works: the paper published on February 18, 2008 a piece which quotes uncritically Christian leaders in the country making mostly unintelligible, and arguably offensive remarks about homosexuality. In fact, this was the 'lead' story of the day, if one assumes that the article's URL is anything to go by. The article was carefully 'balanced' by deploying subheadings such as 'Immoral in every way'.

Fair enough, you might say, may be they published a biased article. After all, the Caribbean is known to have somewhat Neandertalish views on the matter at hand. Surely, however, the paper would have published a couple of letters to the editor that were critical of the stance taken by the church leaders and probably even of the journalist who permitted himself or herself to be used as a tool to propagate sectarian views as 'news'.

Well, this is how the story continues. I decided to write a brief letter to the editor outlining logic errors in the church leaders' stance. This is what I had to say:

Editor,

Your article ‘Gay lobby rebuked - Church says won't accept homosexual lifestyle in Jamaica’ in today’s Jamaica Gleaner was brought to my attention by one of my students. As someone who thinks about ethics professionally, I am surprised about many of the assertions made by your country’s religious leaders. For instance, they claim that homosexuality is abnormal and that that is one good reason to disapprove of it. There might be good reasons to disapprove of homosexuality, but its abnormality is not one of them. Lots of things are abnormal in the same sense that homosexuality is abnormal. Normality defines a statistical average, no more, no less. No doubt then, homosexuality is abnormal – in the same sense that driving a Rolls Royce is abnormal (ie a minority of people do it). Statistical claims are insufficient to base moral judgment on. It would be a logical fallacy to do so.

Equally, they claim that homosexuality is morally wrong from a ‘physical’ stand point. This statement is unintelligible. Things that are morally wrong are wrong for moral reasons, not ever for physical reasons. It’s like saying that blue is bad because it’s hot. It’s an error in category.

They also suggest that homosexuality is morally wrong for social reasons. There may be good social reasons to condemn homosexuality, yet they have not been provided by the church leaders you mention in your article. The impartial observer must wonder what these good social reasons might be? The evidence in support of the claim is certainly missing.

There are more such oddities in the church leaders’ line of reasoning: they also say that the majority of Jamaicans deem homosexuality ‘wrong’. Assuming this is correct, what is the moral value of knowing this? Assume, for the sake of the argument, that the majority of Jamaicans thought that Chinese or German people were racially inferior. That tells us nothing about the fact of the matter, because the majority of Jamaicans could be mistaken. The same is true for any value judgments the majority of Jamaicans make on homosexuality or any number of issues. Ethics is distinctly not a matter of majority vote but of sound reasoning. Sadly this seems lacking in the statements put forward by Jamaica’s church leaders.

Udo Schuklenk
Professor of Philosophy
Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics
Queen’s University, ON, Canada

Well, you gathered from me having to reproduce my Letter here, that the paper chose not to publish this Letter to the Editor as it didn't fit the propaganda the paper decided to support in its 'news' section. Another breach of journalism ethics.

The paper instead chose to publish a Letter to the Editor in support of its campaign, which more or less reiterated the church leaders' remarks, peppered with the usual bunch of quotes from the Bible. I give you a brief flavour of the letter in question so you are enabled to judge how serious the editorial failing of the Jamaica Gleaner has been in this regard.

'The Bible, therefore, clearly and unequivocally condemns homosexual acts (Gen 1:27-28; Gen 2:24; Matt 19: 4-6; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10 etc.). There is also no scientific evidence to confirm homosexual activity as a normal behaviour. Homosexuality is neither an entirely innate condition nor is it unchangeable. The so-called 'gay gene' has never been found.'

My Letter clearly dealt with the claim from abnormality as well as some others, yet the paper chose not to give its readers a chance to make up their own mind by permitting the other side of the argument to be heard. In rhetoric the continuing repetition of arguments is called 'propaganda'. Note also that propaganda usually relies on the selective or misleading presentations of the facts of the matter. Something this letter writer also happens to be guilty of. As the grand master of propaganda, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels pointed out himself, 'The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.' This precisely describes the strategy followed by the Jamaican church leaders, their local paper, and assorted letter writers over many years by now.

One would have expected a professionally edited newspaper to publish a critical Letter from an expert who has written on this issue in leading international bioethics and medical journals... The Jamaica Gleaner chose not to. A sad indictment indeed.

For what it's worth, here's a link to a paper I published (with colleagues in the US and Australia) some 10 years ago on the ethical issue of sexual orientation research as well as the ethics of homosexuality, it deals with most of the 'arguments' put forward in the campaign items published under various guises by the Jamaica Gleaner. It's been reprinted in a number of bioethics textbooks as well as gender and feminist studies text books. Mind you, there is even a Russian translation :-).

The Empire of the Flat Earth Strikes Again

The Observer newspaper in the UK reports today that flat earthers are highly incensed about a pilot scheme tested in some of the country's schools. Kids ages 4-11 receive booklets featuring a prince who's turning down a couple of princesses before finally falling in love with his prince. Goes without saying that this isn't about sex but about love. Educationalists have pointed out that the power of children's books in terms of shaping future social values is very substantial. Omitting gay people from such literature likely contributes to homophobic societal values. I have no idea whether these factual claims are correct, but they do not sound utterly implausible.
Of course, the empire of the flat earth is pretty horrified. Says the education spokesman (of course a spokesman) of the Muslim Council of Britain, 'This is not consistent with Islamic teachings and from our point of view many parents would be concerned.' Other flat earthers have suggested that these books 'promote' homosexuality. Leaving aside the question of whether or not that would be a bad thing (if it was possible to promote some sexual orientation to such an extent that people change their's), the same could probably be said for the prince-meets-princess type children's literature. So, unless one thinks there's something inherently wrong about homosexuality one would probably have to worry about any kind of sexual orientation bias in children's books. Quite arguably children's booklets showing the diversity of relationships we have in modern societies (of course, the Vatican, Iran and similar oddities are not, strictly speaking modern, civilised societies :) are desireable.

Steven Purcell is gay - who cares?

The papers reported yesterday that the leader of Glasgow City Council, a New Labour politician by the name Steven Purcell 'outed' himself. It seems he split up with his wife some time in summer and for some reason or other thought it worthwhile holding a press conference announcing that he is gay. What puzzled me about this case is that actually even the broadsheets reported this amazing amazing revelation. - I mean, really, this is the 21st century, who cares?

My little letter to the editor of Scottish daily newspapers

The background of the letter (ie the story) can be found here.

And this is my letter:

Perth SNP MSP Roseanna Cunningham's views on adoption of children by same sex couples are remarkable. They are remarkable because they are not even tainted by any attempt to provide sound reasons (harm to children, that sort of stuff) for her prejudices against gay people. Rather, according to her, adoption of children by same sex couples is 'against nature's design'. Feel free to substitute 'God', 'the Almighty' etc etc for 'nature' if you wish, it's the same type of 'reasoning'. Scottish and other philosophers will be deeply grateful to Ms Cunningham as this little piece of 'wisdom' makes for a nice hook to begin a Philosophy 101 module: 'How not to make your case' might be a good heading for that class. The types of ideologues peddling such 'wisdom' tried to convince us a few hundred years back that the earth is flat, among other things. Big surprise then that they have also discovered further moral guidance in nature, telling us that gay adoption is bad. We all know that some people hold prejudices against gay people, ethnic minorities, single parents and other easy targets. What is remarkable is that the Scottish parliament is abused as a venue to propagate such prejudices. I call on the SNP to tell us prior to the next elections what its considered stance on this issue is. Scotland is the most secular part of the UK, surely Scots will want to know whether they can expect from a potential future SNP government gutter driven policies such as those propagated by its MSP Roseanna Cunningham.