Gay rights and the global culture

Is there really such a thing as a global culture? Consider gay rights.

Last Thursday the Indian Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality. Last April a court in Trinidad and Tobago found colonial-era laws banning gay sex to be unconstitutional. And late last year, Australia became the umpteenth state to legalize samesex marriage. There is a slow-motion avalanche going on.

Yes, 35 of the 63 Commonwealth countries, mostly in Africa or the West Indies, still make homosexual acts a criminal offence. Yes, some countries, including Nigeria and Uganda, have even tightened their antigay laws.

And in the ultra-conservative Malaysian state of Terengganu last week, two women were lashed six times with a cane and fined $800 for ‘trying to have sex’ (whatever that means) in a car.

Change was never achieved easily, and it still isn’t. Section

Nobody on the Indian Supreme Court will admit this in public, but the real reason for the aboutface was that the consensus global definition of human rights has expanded far enough to make its previous ruling untenable. No grown-up country that is fully engaged with the rest of the world wants to be embarrassed by laws that make it look medieval.

Conservative religious and political leaders in developing countries often condemn the repeal of anti-gay laws as an unwelcome import from the West, somehow contrary to the local culture, but they should (and often do) know better. It was Western countries that imposed anti-gay laws on their empires in the first place, in the 19th century, and its local activists, not foreign gays, that are struggling to get rid of them.

This is not to say that the situation of gays outside the West was good before the rise of the European empires. On the contrary, very few cultures, Western or otherwise, have ever accorded gays the same rights and respect as the rest of the population. The activists are breaking new ground in the West as much as they are in the developing world.

What we are really seeing here is the halting but probably unstoppable emergence of a global standard on human rights.

It has been underway for at least 250 years and it may have another century to go, but gay rights belong to the same category of social innovation as the end of slavery, the rise of feminism, and the abolition of the death penalty.

None of these changes are happening because they correspond to some natural law. They are being consciously created by people who want there to be more justice and more equity in the world. The activists are a small minority, but they are making progress because their ideas resonate with a much larger group in every society who share their ideals if not their energy.

This is long-wave change. The rise of democracy was part of it. Decolonization was part of it. The struggle against racism is part of it. The goal is equality of rights, and this decade is turning out to be the decade when the gays get it.

Or rather, it’s the decade when they get in legal terms, although they will have to wait a while longer before sexual orientation becomes a completely neutral attribute like hair colour. Basically, they have to wait until the older generation dies off. Most of the urban young get it already.

Meanwhile, you might like to note that with the change in India, five-sixths of the world’s people now live in countries where homosexuality is not a crime. All material in this publication is the property of SaltWire Network., and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for statements or claims by advertisers. The publisher shall not be liable for slight changes of typographical efforts that do not lessen the value of an advertisement or for omitting to publish an advertisement. Liability is strictly limited to the publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of any monies paid for that advertisement.