iPlayer-Induced Reflection

So, I just finished watching this. It's a documentary on what it's like to be a gay man or woman in the African nation of Uganda, presented by subtle homo Scott Mills. And it got me thinking for a number of reasons.

The "highlights" of the programme include:

• Gay people being forced to live in slums, because a) no-one will hire them, so they have no money and b) it's safer for them to live there than the more central areas, where they will be inevitably hounded.
• Ugandan pastors and politicians vehemently condemning everyone involved with homosexual activity, from the usual hellfire/brimstone stuff to revolting speculation about supposed gay sexual practices
• A laughably ineffective re-orientation therapy aimed at the desperately prosecuted
• Endless stories of gay-bashing, including one woman being raped in order to "teach her how to sleep with men"
• The above-mentioned pastors and politicians plugging the now-infamous Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality bill, which would enforce the death penalty for anyone caught having gay sex multiple times, imprisonment for anyone accused of acts of same-sex intimacy, and imprisonment for anyone who knows of a homosexual and does not turn them in.

What struck me most was the sheer condemnation from literally everyone he spoke to. Everyone interviewed believes homosexuality is an abomination, that homosexuals should be locked up, killed, that they aren't real people. The rife homophobia he showed was truly sickening.

It was with some grim satisfaction, though, that I noted all the homophobic views were irrational and self-contradictory. "Accepting gays is a Westernized concept"- when most cultures in that region were fine with gays until colonisation. "The anti-homosexuality bill will help people overcome homosexuality"- by which I suppose you mean they won't be able to have any more filthy, filthy gay sex when they're dead. "Gays should stop being gay because it's unhealthy and shortens their lifespan"- even assuming that wasn't a baseless assumption designed explicitly to fit with your own prejudices, homosexuality is going to be made a lot more unhealthy if gays are being forced into slums, and their lifespan might just go down a tad if you stone them to death? 

The ignorance just saddens me, more than anything else. They are judging something they have no experience of. They base what they believe about homosexuals based on heterosexual ministers, who base what they believe about homosexuals on their personal ick-factor combined with cherry-picked sections of religious texts. 

The best bit is that anti-gay activists in the US are going over to say "great work, guys! we'll keep these filthy sodomites down! yeah!" then returning to the West and saying "me? endorse violence against homosexuals? certainly not!" As much as anything else, this just reveals American "pro-family" types for what they really are. 

This has meant I've had to review my take on homophobia being something that's slowly dying. While it certainly is dying in the West and more Westernised cultures (please note that that's NOT an endorsement for westernisation), in many places this kind of hatred is just getting started. As such, I think I'm going to have to abolish Gay Fridays/Sundays, and blog about gay stuff more frequently. Not because that's going to have any effect on Ugandan law, just because pro-gay sentiment needs to be put out there as much as it ever did. 

The demonisation of homosexuals has to stop. In Africa, in the West, everywhere. All forms of homophobic sentiment feed into each other, and creates nothing but violence and discrimination. 

I keep visualising a giant multi-tentacled homophobia monster, seizing people with spite in their hearts and using them to as pawns, so it can feed on rights, dignity, and solidarity between human beings. No matter how social conservatives in the "civilised" west like to try and make their views sound decent, it's the same ugly tentacles motivating them as are motivating the pastors in Uganda.

Stand against heteronormativity. Stand up for sexual minorities. Fight the tentacles! We're better than them if we let ourselves be.