Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: The Bigger Picture

On December 18, 2010, the seventeen-year-old ban on homosexuals openly serving in the United States military was lifted. People across the nation felt confident that the gay rights movement was taking another step in the right direction. But, for many other parts of the world, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is not simply a military policy, but rather a national doctrine. Two extreme examples, Uganda and China, demonstrate how we are still in the early stages of the international struggle for gay rights. These countries expose how homophobia as a human rights violation has yet to be tackled.

Uganda

It read: 100 Pictures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak. This was the front-page article in Uganda’s local newspaper, The Rolling Stone, on October 9, 2010. One hundred pictures covered the paper, complete with the names and addresses of each homosexual identified. Emblazoned on a small yellow strip in the top left corner were the words “Hang Them.”

Following the publication of this issue, many Ugandans were either attacked or forced to relocate from their homes out of sheer fear. But being a homosexual in Uganda is not just dangerous – it is illegal. Homosexuals are at risk of an up to fourteen-year prison sentence. And it does not end there. Over a year ago a bill was proposed extending the criminalization of homosexuality even further. This bill would apply the death penalty to those with previous homosexuality convictions, those who are HIV positive, or those who engage in homosexual acts with persons under eighteen. Although the bill has yet to be passed, it continues to be under consideration in Parliament.

A group of Christian Evangelicals from the United States is considered to be the inspiration for this bill. These Evangelicals held conferences in Uganda espousing the destructive nature of homosexuality on the family unit. They also emphasized that homosexuals are known to sodomize teenage boys. The bill proposing the death sentence for homosexuals was published two months after the conference. Although these Evangelicals deny any relation to the passage of the bill, sources have revealed otherwise. Ugandan officials who attended the Evangelicals’ talks said they discussed the legislation with those holding the conference.

The culmination of these anti-gay sentiments came on January 26th with the murder of gay rights activist David Kato. Kato was brutally beaten to death with a hammer in his home. The Ugandan media presented Kato’s murder as a robbery gone awry rather than a hate-crime. But consider the following facts. Kato, whose picture appeared on the front page of The Rolling Stone article in 2010, recently sued the newspaper, winning the case and ending the public identification of homosexuals. He was a prominent member of the gay community and claimed to have organized the first gay rights news conference in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. He had received many death threats prior to his murder, but continued to actively lead the country towards acceptance of homosexuals.

Kato was a victim of the violence that persistently plagues homosexuals in Uganda. Kato’s murder, along with the preceding events, should serve as a reminder to the United States. We are often consumed by the civil rights movements within our own borders. However, with a simple look around, it is evident that there are pressing human rights issues that lie beyond our national boundaries. Before we allow anti-gay activists to spread their message to vulnerable populations, we must start nurturing the international gay rights movement.

In order to do this, LGBT communities need to shift their focus. The LGBT community may provide an open forum for homosexual, bisexual and transgender individuals, but it has the potential to foster effective communication with the heterosexual community as well. Awareness events should be geared not simply towards LGBT pride, but towards understanding the expectations of men and women across the world and how we all can help to dismantle gender distinctions.

With the support of the heterosexual and LGBT communities, we can challenge conventional gender roles and family stereotypes. We can achieve this by directly contacting activist movements around the globe. Let’s pair up with Sexual Minorities Uganda, the activist group that Kato belonged to, and discuss ways to educate our nations. Lets fight religious propaganda by distributing books with images and stories that portray the diversity of the family unit. Let’s unite with South African LGBT forces, which have successfully campaigned for legalization of gay-marriage in their country and may have a better cultural insight into how to tackle anti-gay sentiments across Africa. We must transform the heteronormative global culture we live in and start adjusting what it means to be a man or a woman today.

So where does China fit into this? Well, with its dubious history of human-rights violations, China makes for a particularly interesting case study as well.

China

As it surpasses Japan as the second largest global economy, China’s markets are booming. But one market seems to be getting little attention – the fake marriage market.

This market was initiated by inlemon,cn, the largest gay website in China. Fake marriage markets provide an alternative to homosexuals who force themselves into straight marriages as a result of societal or familial pressure. Similar to the classic matchmaker, the site arranges events where gay men can meet lesbian women to marry. In a culture where family honor dictates the actions of a large segment of the population, this fake marriage market opens up a realm of possibilities for homosexuals.

According to Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 80 percent of the gay population in China will engage in a heterosexual marriage, most doing so to appease their parents. It is even widely accepted in China that once a woman reaches 27 without marrying, she is labeled “leftovers.” These societal standards have caused the fake marriage market to gain popularity.

But at what cost? These markets may solve the problem of “coming out” to one’s family, but they only exacerbate the underlying social problem. More and more individuals reject their sexual preferences, masking their identity to conform to societal norms. It may be a temporary measure for Chinese homosexuals to cope with reality, but the more fake marriages occur, the more the struggle for equality remains dormant.

It is important to recognize that China has made some leaps in the past two decades. In 1997, sodomy was decriminalized and in 2001 homosexuality was no longer officially considered a mental disorder. The first gay pride festival occurred in 2009 and the first gay pageant was hosted in 2010. However, as the gay community reaches over 30 million in China, homosexual stigmatization continues to stifle the freedom for gays to live open lives. Websites about homosexuality or the LGBT community are banned and one report indicated that 70% of Chinese thought that being gay was a little or completely wrong.

It is time for the world to realize that it isn’t.

The death penalty for homosexuality and fake marriage underground markets are just some of the issues that require urgent attention. While it is unacceptable that same-sex marriage is illegal in the United States, the issue pales in comparison to some of the struggles people face in other parts of the world. President Obama may have instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to legally dismiss same-sex marriages that may have been recognized in other states, but again, this should not overshadow the continuing problems that plague other parts of the world. The United States’ progress can serve as a good example, but we should not wait until our national struggle is over before engaging the international world in the fight.

Consider the Feminist movement. Many countries today, specifically African nations, are lagging behind the Western world’s acceptance of women as equal. Rather than waiting for perfection in our own country, let’s take a second to show some encouragement for the global community. Let’s inspire activism both within our borders and outside of them. It is time to take off our “America-only goggles” and start using our peripherals. It is time for us to advance gay rights on a global scale.

Alana Hauser is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at alanahauser@wustl.edu