Is the struggle for equal rights about more than just liberation? Is it a matter of cultural imposition? By Jove Artistic Director David Bullen takes a look…
The past few months have been a series of bitter blows and overwhelming victories for those following the on-going struggle over global LGBT rights. Last week came the news – joyous to some, abhorrent to others – that the USA’s Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) has been struck down by the Supreme Court. The overturning paves the way for more states to adopt same-sex marriage.
On the other side of the Pacific, however, Russian LGBT activists have been faced with almost total censorship. The Russian government unanimously voted in favour of a law prohibiting the promotion of the so-called ‘gay lifestyle’ – in effect, preventing anybody from saying publically that being gay is ok. This is the first of many proposed laws that will severely impinge on the rights of LGBT individuals in the country. Putin has been accused of using the anti-LGBT cause as a rallying point for the conservative, religious vote in the country, continuing to roll back against the secularism of the Soviet Union.
The Orthodox Church has been particularly instrumental in Putin’s law making, in a way that some churches in the UK and US wish they could be. A particularly intense debate with an Orthodox friend of mine (who, for the record, is personally pro-LGBT) made me think however – for some this debate has become characterised as more than a matter of simple equality. For the Russian Orthodox being gay is simply intolerable and therefore to them a law preventing officials from condoning it makes perfect sense. The comparative liberalism of the ‘West’ comes across, in the case of LGBT rights, as nothing more than those hated states attempting to impose Western values on to Russian traditions. It has become a case of cultural colonialism.
As true as this may be, it fails to take into account a simple, unchanging truth: gay people exist. There is evidence to suggest that attraction to the same sex has existed since the inception of humanity. It existed before religion. It hasn’t been ‘cured’ since. Therefore, if this is going to become a matter of geo-politics, of colonialism and Western hegemony, perhaps we need to take a step back for a moment. The Russian government are making these laws based on the traditions of the Orthodox Church – but these are traditions that, along with those of all Christian denominations, originate in the Middle East more than two thousand years ago, in a place and time entirely remote to the 21st Century. How have these rules, made for a very specific group of people with a specific set of societal needs, come to dominate policy making across the world so many years later? Think about it for a moment – it does not make sense.
It has taken thousands of years, and millions of repressed lives, to reach a point where we can recognise that there is no way of exterminating the LGBT population, so perhaps the humane thing to do would be to recognise their status as equal human beings. Calling for a group of people who are as innocent and guilty as everybody else to be treated equally under the law is not colonialism – it is ethically correct. Remove the blinkers of Judeo-Christian religion and think the matter through logically: there is no decent argument in favour of discriminating against LGBT peoples.
For many years, the end of DOMA was considered a dream, a hope at best. Then it happened. So, let’s all pray for a miracle again – that one day, governments across the world will recognise the need to truly distinguish between church and state.
