By snoadmin
Whenever a majority group institutionalizes policy that gives a thumbs-down to a minor group based almost solely upon groupthink ideologies, whether religious or political, our societies become flawed, fragmented and artificially homogenized.
Two women in Kaduna, Nigeria, recently received six months in prison and 20 lashes for having a lesbian relationship – a violation of Islamic Shariah law practiced in Nigerian courts. They celebrated their union and lived as a married couple for five years, according to the website pinknews.co.uk, a European gay news agency. Nigeria isn’t near us so it shouldn’t bother us, right?
The day before the women were sentenced, five men in Egypt were each sentenced to three years in prison for “consensual homosexual acts.”
The basis of their convictions was a law that deems that, if a man is accused of the crime, he is subjected to forced HIV/AIDS testing. If the test comes back positive, he’s gay – also not in the Western Hemisphere.
The cases in both Nigeria and Egypt allegedly included attempts to physically coerce information about others involved in same-sex relationships.
Great thinkers throughout our human archive have learned and taught that rights of individuals should be civil, human and equally distributed. Without one of those elements, the other two components are insignificant because they can’t be ethically argued. They are terminally shackled by laws and policies.
Yet our arcane national psyche and legal policies still stack the deck against humans in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other marginalized communities in our country.
If equal rights distribution were valid as U.S. practice, the Maine Human Rights Act wouldn’t be on the chopping block, as reported in the Banghor Daily News. Yet Maine is considering deleting sexual orientation protection, same-sex marriage, child adoption or any form of civil unions. The referendum petition comes from the head of the Christian Civic League of Maine.
In effect, Maine is re-opening roads to hate-mongering and prejudice many thought had been closed.
We still allow moral paranoia, religious pomposity and political ultra-conservative ideology to determine and dictate how we arbitrarily mete out civil and human rights.
The U.S. by no means has the worst track record for human rights violations. Currently, seven countries still have the death penalty for homosexuality and 76 use imprisonment as persecution.
While discussions of human and civil rights for LGBT communities should be on our societal tongues daily, it pans out more like a flavor of the month sampler on political lips during election years.
By not allowing every individual to enjoy the rights we defend, our national identity is one of confusion and lacks the integrity to address human rights issues in the global forum. We lose international credibility because we don’t practice what we preach.
