Human Rights Day 2011: Gay Rights are Human Rights too

All human beings are born free

Today, the 10th of December marks the International Human Rights Day [1] and it is the 63^rd year since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) [2] was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948.

There are 30 articles in the UDHR divided into 4 columns as described in the second reference but the one of most particular import is Article 1.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Our humanity should come before all else

I believe this article embodies the purpose, reason and sense of our humanity regardless of culture, tradition, religion, creed, race or law – it presents an non-religious concept that draws on our empathy, our compassion, our quest for fairness and justice for ourselves and fellow human-beings.

On the 6^th of December 2011, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Programmes Headquarters in Geneva in commemoration of Human Rights Day 2011 in which she addressed the next human rights issue that the world faces today.

It pertains to the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) persons all around the world and in it she made five fundamental points in support of the human rights issues with regards to LGBT persons. It is essential to keep the core tenet of Article 1 in mind as you review the themes of her historic speech.

The core points about LGBT rights

Gay rights are human rights; it goes to the heart of being born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality; there are gays everywhere in the world including in places where certain leaders and people pretend there isn’t.

Violence to other human-beings is not cultural or religious; it is criminal, it is the duty of our governments to protect first and prosecute the criminals, not the victims.

Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination; it tends to divide our humanity and gives rise to other inequalities in our societies.

Progress comes from being willing to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes; what if by some circumstance probably unimaginable to some, you found you were in that minority that is being discriminated against, where you had no rights because of who you were?

There is much I can do try and flesh out each theme that she covered but the case she made was clear; it is first about our humanity than anything that distinguishes us; the matter is global; we cannot criminalise people for who are naturally are regardless of your views of those people and if you were by happenstance of those people, what will you fight for?

The shaky ground on which we stand to condemn others

However, in concluding this piece which in some cases will probably have a deeply religious readership from some parts of the globe, I can only conclude with a comment I saw on Facebook because it goes to the core of the matter of rights, of culture, of beliefs and of our fairness to our fellow human beings.

One of the best comments against a supporter of the anti-gay bill (The Nigerian Senate passed a Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition bill recently with even more homophobic sanctions.) I've (This was on Jeremy Weate’s Facebook wall.) read today (re-quoted with permission).

"I don't need to be a homo to respect the freedom of a homo. Your biblical quotes are the same quotes handed to you by invaders as they took your relatives into slavery. You have been freed physically, but not mentally. Weren't your ancestors spiritual people before the missionaries showed up? For an African with a long history, you cling blindly to a religion that was recently handed to you. Simply put, you are a lost cause. Goodluck releasing yourself from yourself devised blindfold." Taken from Jeremy Weate's Facebook status

In all, human rights is about protecting the rights of others in order to ensure ours are protected and enshrined in law despite our differences, disagreements and disputing; the greatest goal of our human existence can only be to appreciate the best in others who we may naturally not find ourselves associating with. There are few for all sorts of reasons who have dared to reach that goal.

Sources

[1] Human Rights Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Transcript of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's on LGBT rights

Europe: No hiding place for Homo-nationalism

Minority is not inferiority

This represents a difficult subject and one of a very intimate nature that would well benefit from the kind of articulation I have brought to many issues that I have covered on my blog in the last 6 years.

I have been fortunate to have been born in Europe but had part of my development experience in Africa making me a product of the influence of all the cultures in which I have lived.

As a person of colour, one is in a minority but it does not then mean one should as well assume an inferiority complex. I have been blessed with a sense of awareness and being that has allowed me wade through the unfortunate scrapes with racism, snide belittlement and patronising conduct without being so negatively affected.

Comfortable in one’s skin

One somehow has a quality of assertiveness, if not wit where such encounters occur but not the legs to run when those situations have turned unnecessarily violent; in any case, I have refused to allow those experiences to take root and destroy the quality of self-esteem I believe I possess.

One place however where I have had some difficulty is where within a minority you then find vestiges of bigoted, intolerant, reprehensible behaviour, that just leaves you almost speechless, agitated and occasionally annoyed.

As I attended the Berlin Christopher Street Day [1] (CSD) celebrations, whilst I got wind of the event beforehand, I did not stay to witness it because I was quite exhausted and wanted to return to my hotel to rest.

Distancing from Homo-nationalism

Judith Butler [2], a renowned philosopher was being honoured with the ZivilCourage prize by the Berlin CSD, she was present but in the speech that they thought would be an acceptance speech, she declined the award castigating the pall of homo-nationalism that had become integral to the LGBT [3] movement in Germany and Europe to the exclusion of the recognition of the work, activities and plight of LGBT minorities.

It was a bold and brave stance to take [4] though the Berlin CSD organisers refused to engage or address the issues she raised and exhorted everyone to party on regardless.

A debate must ensue beyond the stereotypes that suppose that immigrants from the Global South are generally homophobic, intolerant, isolationist and illiberal in what has become a racist complicity perpetrated by organisations that are supposed to know better with their history of struggles for recognition, rights, fairness and justice.

A minority ignoring their minorities

The fact is we find such attitudes too amongst right-wing elements of Western societies and their fundamentalist counterparts around the world who abuse the purpose of religion to alienate, castigate, bastardise and condemn others in their quest for some sort of communal purity.

In the process, we forget that even amongst the indigenes of the Global South are people very much like us who suffer persecution in their homelands, rejection from their communities and in some cases serious violence amongst us in the West as their so-called loved ones portend to restore honour to their flawed ideals of perfection by eliminating what they consider as different or in the extreme abominable.

It is a shame that the seemingly emancipated networks of support created by organisations like the CSD cater mainly for their own without giving recognition to the activities, travails or issues that similar organisations catering for minorities try to address.

You come out to their public activities and might well assume that all minorities are heterosexual apart from the token few that dot the landscape only for their brazenness and boldness.

Killed for her sexuality

I am therefore pleased that not only has Judith Butler shed light on a subject many do not want to address, Angela Davis [5] has added her voice [6] to the matter.

What is interesting on the whole is that this situation is not limited to Berlin or Germany. In October 2009, an 18-year old Belgo-Moroccan girl, Layla Hachichi [7], was brutally murdered by her parents in an exorcism ritual which on examination was to rid the girl of her lesbianism.

The parents for all sorts of absurd reasons with the fact that they live in the West have surely not been able to understand the society they reside in. Whilst they might not have been able to accept the idea of their daughter’s homosexuality, the heinous crime of murder described in ways that make mediaeval torture tame is completely unforgiveable.

A silence so despicable

The sadder aspect of this is that it took almost six months for the Belgian umbrella LGBT organisation, Çavaria [8], to comment on the matter with the excuse that they did not have enough detail on the matter.

When an organisation like Çavaria is afraid to speak up for one of their own who just happens to be of immigrant stock for the fear of hurting the sensibilities of the community that has committed such atrocious crimes against a person for their sexuality, you begin to wonder if those organisation are from hence worthy of existence having failed to speak up for the voiceless, the helpless, the incapable and the unfortunate.

To redeem themselves they have assumed the stance of amicus curiae in the case giving them access to all facts of the case seeking justice for the girl. Though one must state that the facts leading to the murder of the girl had appeared in more than 60 articles, the excuse is flimsy at best.

No hiding place for Homo-nationalism

With Judith Butler, Angela Davis and many other commentators giving voice to this travesty, LGBT organisations would no longer have a hiding place when they are derelict in their responsibilities to all their constituency; obvious members, the oppressed, the ostracised or the afraid - that includes minorities in the West and those that suffer under unspeakable sanction in faraway lands.

Any LGBT gathering that fails to accommodate the minorities as part and parcel of the whole representation of the LGBT community at home first and abroad would cast the organisers as hypocritical and devoid of values, seriously unworthy of the social justice mantle they claim to have and detriment to any further struggle for rights and fairness as they will be open to justifiable criticism and derision. They have no hiding place anymore.

Sources

[1] Christopher Street Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Judith Butler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] LGBT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Judith Butler turns down civil courage award from Berlin Pride: ‘I must distance myself from racist complicity’ Loomnie

[5] Angela Davis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] Angela Davis on Judith Butler’s refusal of the CSD Civil Courage Prize

[7] Gay News ® : Letter from Brussels - Thousand and One Nights

[8] Çavaria | opkomen voor holebi's en transgenders

[9] News in brief | Flanders Today Published November 2009

Four weddings and a lesbian

Strangely not fiction

You probably have heard it said, there is no smoke without fire; well, that is the accepted wisdom in all places but the home country - it is never smoke or fire, it is usually an explosion, how and why is usually unfathomable.

News is a strange commodity in Nigeria; the truth is hard to gather, rumour and speculation is rife, everything seems to be stranger than fiction, superstition hinders objective analysis, urban legends have no time to develop because all is sudden like a miracle and impossible to investigate like waiting for a miracle.

I do, I do, I do and I do

Take for instance, a "devout" Muslim man is allowed to take up to four wives but rarely have we seen the four wives taken at one wedding ceremony; one such ceremony allegedly took place in Kano State last weekend. The venue where the event took place has now been flattened because it did not meet planning regulations apparently.

Civil law enforcement would not have been too concerned about the event but religious law enforcement using a vigilante volunteer force of busy-body people working in parallel or sometimes at odds with the police are out enforcing Islamic law and are after the "bridegroom" and brides who all seem to have gone into hiding.

Funding fo(u)r weddings

The big gathering was not a wedding, we are told by the "groom", but a fundraising event to provide for the weddings of the four brides who presumably are singular brides of different grooms, in fact, the "groom" refers to the brides as sisters and it appears "Big Brother" was just trying to help out little sisters - plausible enough, one can accept that at face value - weddings are an expensive business in Nigeria.

Those who have besmirched the name of the "groom" will find a robust counter-offensive to clear the good name of this benevolent sibling, considering the "groom" until now never knew the adjective used to describe the fiesta ever existed, talk less of the practical consequences of the noun as a lifestyle.

Only in Nigeria

Now, gender equality still has a long way to go in Nigeria, and we cannot even begin to talk about sexuality issues where homosexuality is viewed as abominable and un-African - we know where they are coming from - heap on that the concept of Lesbianism and people go into hiding, buildings fall, Islamic courts are agog and maybe we have a news story or a Nigerian farce.

So, imagine a situation where the groom is anatomically female going by the name Aunty Maiduguri and the incredible is almost drowned out by the derisive laughter around the world - It is Nigeria, where things do happen so differently, you can always expect to be pleasantly surprised, shocked or confounded.

This is not a good time for sexual orientation rights in Nigeria and it is not enhanced by this unravelling saga.