Victories for freedom in one part of the world can trigger backlashes in other parts. Bigots are forced to concentrate their efforts where they think they can win. This has happened with feminism, particularly when it comes to sexuality and reproductive freedom, and it is happening with gay rights.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., and began its life by bringing cases against the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, published a report in July about this phenomenon. Called Dangerous Liaisons: The American Religious Right and the Criminalization of Homosexuality in Belize, it connects recent victories for tolerance in the U.S., such as the gradual shift toward legal same-sex marriage, with setbacks elsewhere.
In some cases, the report suggests, these setbacks are not happening despite the victories in the U.S. but, in part, because of them. Anti-gay groups in the U.S. are spending their considerable resources to support their comrades in places where a critical mass of politicians supports their goals.
The “American hard-line religious right,” reports the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now “on the losing side of a battle that it now seems incapable of winning. As a result, these groups and individuals have increasingly shifted their attention to other nations, where anti-gay attitudes are much stronger and violence against the LGBT community far too common.”
The best-known example is Uganda, where “U.S. religious ideologues have given aid and comfort to the authors of barbaric legislation.”
Less well known is Belize, the small Central American country where homosexuality is still punishable by 10 years in prison, and where gay people are officially not even allowed past the country’s borders.
I lived in Belize as a teenager and I love the country deeply; my year there taught me a great deal.
Unfortunately, Belize also taught me that a culture that enforces a “protective” code of modesty for women is a culture that condones sexual violence and harassment against women, that these two ideas are not opposites but two expressions of the same idea. The obscene catcalls on the street and the softspoken advice to cover up and comport oneself in a ladylike manner are two ways of saying the same thing.
Of course, no culture is monolithic, and Belize has its forces of tolerance, too. But it is still quite conservative when it comes to gender and sexuality, which makes it fertile ground for U.S. groups looking to protect anti-sodomy laws where they still exist.
An activist named Caleb Orozco, and his United Belize Advocacy Movement, have been leading a constitutional challenge of the homosexuality law, in the face of death threats.
They have international support from organizations such as the International Commission of Jurists. On the other side, one of the leading figures is Scott Stirm, an evangelist pastor originally from Waco, Texas.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center report, the hardline evangelists in Belize are getting “legal and other advice” from U.S.-based groups. The report refers to a growing global alliance on this issue between fundamentalist Muslims and Christians.
So the battles in places like Belize and Uganda have become proxy wars, putting LGBT people at greater risk in those countries even while they win recognition of their rights in Canada.
Russia is another place where state-sanctioned violent homophobia is on the rise, which creates a problem at the levels of both principle and practice for the countries that plan to participate in the Sochi Winter Olympic Games next year.
There is a long list of reasons why Russia should never have won its bid to host the Olympics under the Putin regime.
Since it did, countries such as Canada must decide whether their gay athletes might be at risk.
And even if they are not, even if foreigners are relatively safe within the Olympic bubble, how can our athletes go there and smile, wave and applaud?
The war for gay rights is not yet won, not even in North America.
And while its bloodiest battles are being fought elsewhere, all the battles are connected, and many of the players are the same.
Neutrality is an untenable position.
