
The modern American gay rights movement was conceived in 1951, born in 1969, and took its first steps in 2004.

The top civil liberties story of the 2000s was our government's response to the 9/11 attacks, which threatened both domestic civil liberties and international human rights. Look back on a decade changed American civil liberties policy forever.
The question I have is, how do we as men reach out to other male allies? Clearly, if someone is attending a conference or browsing websites about stopping street harassment they at least have a little interest in the subject. There is a lot of infighting that needs to be addressed and I don't feel we male allies have been addressing it.This is a good question that I think can also be asked about straight allies on LGBT rights, white allies on racial justice issues, and anyone else who does activism dealing with identifiable groups with which s/he does not identify.
It sounds like Uganda will drop the death-penalty and life-imprisonment sentences that would have been imposed in the proposed anti-gay bill currently being considered by Uganda's legislature, but homosexuality remains a capital crime in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Sharia regions of Nigeria.
These laws tend not to actually be enforced, as journalist Andrew Rice explains; their practical function is to lock the closet door by making a death threat against lesbians and gay men. They also serve an emblematic function. Then-governor George W. Bush famously said he would veto any proposed repeal of Texas' sodomy law, prior to Lawrence v. Texas, because he considered laws criminalizing gay sex to be "a symbolic gesture of traditional values."
Opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States make a similar, mostly symbolic distinction between granting same-sex couples some marriage rights with civil union legislation and actually granting equal marriage.
One of the questions I've heard--a lot--from U.S. and Canadian gay rights activists over the course of the past week is "What can we do?" And this is an extremely difficult question to ask of countries like Uganda, where there is very little that a Westerner can do when homosexuality itself is described by political and religious leaders as a Western import.
Step one--and I realize this sounds milquetoast--might be to just be more conscious of symbols, to pay more attention to what we all say, and what we mean by it. As long as most lesbians and gay men are to a greater or lesser extent closeted, for example, then the message this sends is that same-sex relationships are dirty, scandalous, shameful things--which is exactly the message that homophobes are working so hard to spread. If we in the West can be more open about same-sex relationships, if they can play a larger, more visible, more ubiquitous role in our media and music and culture, then we will help export the message of inclusion to media consumers around the world.
This won't be enough to solve the problem on its own--this effort must meet halfway with strong, indigenous gay rights movements in countries like Uganda, movements that legislation like the recent Ugandan bill was intended to crush, movements that require heroic and preternatural courage from its leaders. I see little that the rest of us can do other than make our objections heard, keep our own houses in order, and watch for specific opportunities to provide constructive help to these leaders, to these movements.
Dissatisfied with that strategy? So am I--but that's the political reality we seem to face. Opportunities to fight horror, at a distance and at no personal risk, are not especially plentiful. We can play a support role, but the real human rights activists--in Uganda, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia--are those who live in the crosshairs themselves.
This is not to say that we have no responsibility to speak out, and to call attention to the cowardice of those in a position of greater influence who are not willing to use that influence to protect human rights; our silence, and their silence, spreads the poison of homophobia, oppression, and violence. When Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury objects to lesbian bishops but turns a blind eye to the potential of state-sponsored anti-gay violence, he both enables the malignant silence of Uganda's Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi and weakens the human rights movement in the West.
The Roman Catholic Church's representative, U.N. papal envoy Philip J. Bené, was at least willing to denounce the bill--giving Pope Benedict XVI a better record on this issue than his Anglican counterpart:
As stated during the debate of the General Assembly last year, the Holy See continues to oppose all grave violations of human rights against homosexual persons, such as the use of the death penalty, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The Holy See also opposes all forms of violence and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons, including discriminatory penal legislation which undermines the inherent dignity of the human person.Also speaking out against the proposed bill is the Rev. Rick Warren, whose reputation in Uganda may exceed that of anyone else in the United States--and his intervention, which may help determine the bill's fate, came about after a sustained three-week campaign urging him to take a stand against anti-gay violence.
As raised by some of the panelists today, the murder and abuse of homosexual persons are to be confronted on all levels, especially when such violence is perpetrated by the State. While the Holy See's position on the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity remains well known, we continue to call on all States and individuals to respect the rights of all persons and to work to promote their inherent dignity and worth.
Yesterday was World AIDS Day, and my mind is on Africa right now. Not because HIV-AIDS isn't a problem in the United States (it is), or growing in every demographic (it is), but because the scope of the problem in Africa is so terrifying. The life expectancy in Botswana, where 37% of the adult population is HIV-positive, has been reduced from 65 to 35; there are 73 million AIDS orphans in Africa, making up 7% of the African population; and the disease is spreading. HIV-AIDS in Africa is to the 21st century what the bubonic plague in Europe was to the 14th.
If you believe that every life is equally worthwhile, if you believe that we have an obligation to relieve human suffering--if you have an empathetic bone in your body, really--then this is our biggest enemy right now. Not al-Qaeda. Not even war.
Our commitment to fighting this enemy, though still small, increased substantially under the Bush administration. Its increase is, to my astonishment, slowing under Obama. I recognize that these are difficult economic times, but the global AIDS budget makes up such a small percentage of our federal spending that cutting this already small dollar amount, simply because there is less political pressure being put to bear on the issue, is inexcusable.
Bill Clinton called his failure to address the Rwandan genocide--in which 800,000 people were killed--the worst mistake of his presidency, despite the fact that U.S. intervention would have come with a very high financial and human cost. But the Obama administration is throwing away an opportunity to save untold millions of lives at very little relative cost, to improve the United States' reputation abroad (which will reduce terrorist recruitment), and to cement our country's place in history--at the cost of a fraction of one percent of the federal budget.
Addressing AIDS in Africa is our generation's Apollo mission, our preeminent global human rights crisis. Against that backdrop, all other foreign policy concerns, and all other human rights concerns, fade; no dictator could achieve killing, torture, and imprisonment on the scale that AIDS has achieved, and is poised to continue to achieve, in Africa.
This is no time for half-measures. Let President Obama know.
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