In the middle of our struggles over gay marriage, the Boy Scouts and sodomy laws, it is easy to develop blinders when it comes to what might initially appear to be peripheral causes. Surely, the past five years have been the most eventful in the gay rights movement with acceptance reaching an all-time high.
If current trends are any indication, the American gay rights cause should even be concluded within the next several decades. Gay marriage will eventually become reality across the country, and legal discrimination will come to an end.
This will not, of course, erase homophobia from society; no more than the Civil Rights Act of 1964 erased racism toward blacks. But equality for people of all sexual orientations in the United States will at the very least be written into law, thus realizing the accomplishment of the modern gay rights agenda.
But throughout the world, gays face barbaric oppression that is almost medieval in nature. Up until Afghanistan was liberated in late 2001, the Taliban would regularly flatten gays with massive stones.
Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, has cracked down on gays and publicly labeled them "worse than pigs." Egypt imprisons homosexuals, and Saudi Arabia beheads them.
In sum, Matthew Shepard-like killings, rare in this country, are a regular occurrence in other nations, particularly those headed up by Islamic fundamentalists.
We have a responsibility to stand up for gay rights not just at home, but abroad. Gay Americans have a special responsibility to speak out, for our nation has always served as a place of refuge for the oppressed.
Having achieved economic success and to a large degree, mainstream acceptance, it would be all too easy to rest on our laurels. Many gays in this country, even though they are denied countless basic rights, are ambivalent about the indignity of their inferior status, choosing to lead closeted or apathetic lives.
This attitude must change not only for the sake of gay rights in America, but for fellow gays living outside this country�s borders.
We could take some lessons from American Jews on how a domestic civil rights cause can effectively turn its focus to the international scene. For many years, national Jewish organizations spent a great deal of effort on domestic concerns, encouraging pluralism and denouncing discrimination against religious and ethnic groups.
Once Jews became largely accepted, international issues like global anti-Semitism and Israel became the raison d�etre of American Jewish groups. This is not to say that American Jewry once ignored Israel and their European brethren in favor of domestic causes, but talk to American Jewish leaders today about what concerns them most and you will almost always hear about international anti-Semitism and Israel.
When faced with decisions to fight nativity scenes on town commons or Islamist terror against Israeli civilians, American Jews have wisely made the latter crisis a priority.
This is not to suggest that the United States should traipse around the world invading nations that do not live up to our standards of gay tolerance. But there are many things that the United States can do, short of military action, to support gay rights abroad.
Employing the moral authority of the United States against our enemies, much like Ronald Reagan did against the Soviet Union, is something that left-leaning gay leaders are loathe to do. But it is undeniable that America stands on the side of human dignity: Compare our record with those states that actively persecute gays.
Withholding economic aid to repressive nations is another possibility, along with affording asylum to gays fleeing repressive states. Once gays in this country achieve full marriage equality and win the fight to erase discrimination from the books, non-profit gay money, which is quite plentiful, should be devoted to making gay rights a central part of the American international agenda.
These domestic victories are closer than many gay activists imagine them to be, and so national gay organizations would do well prepare for future battles.
With the current rapid progress, we are emerging more strident than ever in our demands for fair treatment, and these successes have empowered a new generation of gay activists. What agenda these future leaders set is impossible to predict, but advocating the use of American power to aid gay people abroad is a noble start.