Most adults have figured out that everything is not about them. But some leading international LGBT rights activists based in the U.S. can hardly focus on our great, multifaceted global struggle without making it about their grievances against America. Take Paula Ettelbrick. Please.
Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), is quoted in the March 29 Bay Area Reporter justifying her silence on the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006 by saying, "Who is the U.S. to issue a report on every other government in the world on its human rights activities, especially in light of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib?"
If only the perfectly virtuous were fit to report on human rights practices, there would be no reporting. But since Ettelbrick gives the impression that the reports are simply an extension of President Bush, let's look at the State Department's description of those who did the work: "This information-gathering can be hazardous, and US Foreign Service Officers regularly go to great lengths, under trying and sometimes dangerous conditions, to investigate reports of human rights abuse, monitor elections, and come to the aid of individuals at risk...."
The work of hundreds of foreign service officers should not be reduced to a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush. My main impression from the LGBT- and HIV/AIDS-related excerpts is of the bravery and determination of LGBT people around the world in the face of often brutal repression-people who endure incredible suffering yet refuse to be victims. It is quite humbling. I see no need to interrupt it for a commercial denouncing America.
Scott Long, director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch (HRW), sent a culling from the State Department reports to activists around the world in early March, noting that "the usefulness of this will very much depend on how much or little credibility the US's own human rights record leaves its reporting in your own country or community." In a March 16 email to blogger Michael Petrelis, he wrote, "We are not going to web-post the compilation we have done without being in a position to perform a critique of its comprehensiveness and accuracy...." It is unclear why they can't simply post a disclaimer.
In a March 14 email, Long insisted "that we ... recognize the structures of power in which we are implicated...." On March 29 I accused him of post-colonial Western guilt. Long replied on March 30, "No, Rick, 'structures of power' are a fact ... and there are people who suffer and die because of them. I am sitting here in Geneva, as it happens, but surrounded by LGBT activists from the South-Argentina, Brazil, South Africa-and when I read this exchange aloud to them they alternate between anger and hilarity at the US's incomprehension of its actions and its reputation now in the world, not in some colonial past...."
Notice how glibly I am turned into a mere stand-in for the United States. Is this supposed to show how much more sophisticated people are in Geneva? If I thought things were fine in my country I would not have become an activist. My refusal to pander does not blind me to the faults of the Bush Administration; but why are only Westerners expected to recite their nations' sins?
The left loves to dwell on Western oppression without acknowledging Western reforms, which range from Britain's prohibition of the slave trade two centuries ago to the creation of global human rights structures. Treating the West as the root of all oppression infantilizes others in the world by denying their own responsibility, and gives comfort to despots like Robert Mugabe, who routinely deflects criticism with denunciations of Britain.
In his March 30 email, Long notes that the State Department's concern about homophobia in (say) Uganda means nothing to gay Ugandans when the U.S. simultaneously uses the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to fund "evangelical churches that promote that homophobia and create a climate of violence that has endangered quite a few lives." Fair point, but I didn't say that anyone should be grateful to America. I said that the State Department reports should be recognized as a tool-not the only tool, and not perfect, but valuable nonetheless.
Consider some context. In a March 23 speech before the UN Human Rights Council, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch said, "This Council has, after all, done something. It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel ... The entire rest of the world-millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries-continue to go ignored." The Council president responded by condemning Neuer's remarks, despite having thanked many others for testimony filled with slanders.
Six decades after the birth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council repeatedly attacks one besieged democracy while refusing to scrutinize the likes of Iran, Cuba, Myanmar and North Korea. One-sided guilt-mongering by Western leftists makes them complicit in this travesty and subordinates the global LGBT struggle to other disputes.
Petrelis blogged on March 8, "I grieve for my community and how it doesn't demand consistent quality gay advocacy on crucial global gay rights abuses from our paid advocates." The answer, as Petrelis has demonstrated, is twofold: more scrutiny and more independent organizing. This is your movement; don't be a silent partner.
25 Comments for “Gay Rights or America-Bashing?”
posted by Brian Miller on
There’s little question that Long and Ettelbrick have hijacked the gay rights movement for promotion of a far-left agenda. However, this isn’t anything new — few, if any, gay rights “luminaries” view themselves as accountable to the broader community.
They speak for themselves yet posture as though they speak for all gay people. Long, in particular, is adept at this — he spends the vast majority of his media time attacking other gay activists and his own country rather than focusing on the needs of LGBT people around the world.
If you really want a laugh, have a look at his criticisms of western activists like Britain’s Peter Tatchell. If you believe Long, Mr. Tatchell lacks the perspective of a hard-grinding non-western LGBT life and Long has a comprehensive understanding of this.
Except that Tatchell lives in dingy welfare housing in South London, and Long posts from swanky offices on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
It’s time that the LGBT community made it clear that IGLHRC and HRW’s closed, undemocratic pronouncements are not only unrepresentative of the community as a whole — but they actively undermine the cause of LGBT advocacy by sacrificing the well-being of gay people around the world on an altar of far-left victimhood politics.
Let’s not even get into the incredibly high salaries that these folks earn, and the sheer hypocrisy of their denunciations of western imperialism from their privileged positions in western power hubs like New York (and Geneva).
posted by Shameka on
suck it up, i compare IGLHRC to the NAACP
bunch of whimpering money hungry monster trying to prove a point that will never happen
posted by xstate on
For what it’s worth, I am TG. However, I’d say that the USA is overall a much better place for LGBT people overall than most of the Third World. Most people, especially most of the “LGBT” groups in the United States, don’t have a clue as to how hard life can be for LGBT people in a place like, Nigeria, where being gay or TG is likely to result in death or dismemberment. Granted, some of the state republics that make up the USA don’t treat their LGBT populations well, but I’d say that places like New York and the East Coast and parts of the West Coast states treat us pretty well (another reality: the US states are sovereign, not the feds so each of the 50 states technically are sovereign countries). Even Israel, which is far from an ideal country, treats its LGBT population much better than Iraq or Iran. People who defend these countries as being innocent really should take a good look at what they defend.
posted by Blueflash on
Umm, actually there was a great deal of outrage among gay liberals regarding the execution of two teenage boys in Iran accused of raping another boy. There seems to be no protest, however, on the part of our government regarding the regilar beheading of gay men in Saudi Arabia and the US government was alone among nations a year ago in siding with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan in denying observer status to a highly regarded international gay rights group. Of course, we in the United States have a precious tradition of civil government and civil servants who strive to fulfill their missions with the utmost integrity, but it’s plain for all to see that the Bush administration has been working fast and furious to undermine this tradtion and, unfortunately, the Bush administration is now the face of America.
posted by Blueflash on
I should also mention that there’s not been a peep from this administration regarding the growing movement among African Christians to adopt Old Testament laws – stoning of homosexuals among them (whether or not they actually dine out together) in a hellish downward spiral of competition with fundamentalist Islam. Keeping up with the Joneses, I guess. But, then, they dare not offend their budding acolytes at Falwell’s and Robertson’s universities.
posted by Brian Miller on
actually there was a great deal of outrage among gay liberals regarding the execution of two teenage boys in Iran accused of raping another boy
You’re not reading, you’re reacting.
There was a TON of outrage by liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians and others responding to that story.
However, Scott Long of HRW spent most of his time insisting that we shouldn’t condemn the Iranians and that doing so would help Bush build a case to invade Iran based on gay rights.
No joke.
Long even wrote an editorial condemning a worldwide protest against the Tehran regime’s activities:
http://www.indegayforum.org/news/printer/31019.html
While acknowledging that Iran tortures and kills people for homosexual conduct, Long stated, ?There is no basis whatever for imputing a Westernized ?gay? identity to these youths? ? thereby employing a Western social-constructionist trope belied by the involvement of self-identified gay Iranians in the July 19 organizing. Long contradicted his professed respect for Tatchell?s work by injecting lines like ?I do not play games with the dead? (as if Tatchell does), ?Look at the world, not just London and New York,? and ?Do you have a plan for change, or just for catharsis??
The other irony is that Long himself is a resident of New York City, and his offices are on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue — hardly a place from which to condescend against others, eh?
posted by Blueflash on
Brian Miller – I don’t know who this Long fellow is but I can assure you that I’m utterly disgusted by multi-culti crap that lets vicious people off the hook because of nonsense like their “non-Western discourse is different from the oppressors or however they put it”. I’m familialar with it. Years ago an English major friend in college tried it on me in a discussion regarding homoerotic medieval poetry. I pointed out the simple fact that all people of whatever time or place have but one of two choices in terms of sexual attraction – male or female. It has nothing to do with the alien or exotic when we’re speaking of such a basic level of human experience. The lexicon that surrounds it is irrelevant. It shut him up. Nevertheless I would still be classified as a liberal by any generally accepted modern American standards.
posted by What happened to Liberals? on
Brian Miller,
Nevertheless I would still be classified as a liberal by any generally accepted modern American standards.
I don’t even know what that means anymore. I’m being serious: I don’t know what “liberal” is supposed to mean nowadays.
I used to understand what “liberal” meant. It meant resisting racism, resisting sexism, promoting individual freedom of conscience, and caring for the poor. I like all of those ideas (though, on the last one, I despise government solutions).
Nowadays, “liberal” actively and openly promote white guilt, western guilt, radical earth-worship, Islam (eeew), “multiculturalism” (which means that all cultures are equal, and some are more equal than others), all of which seem insane to me. Insane, and suicidal, even.
I know that there must be some good old liberals of the “old” kind out there, and I wish they would explain to me what happened to “liberal” that turned crazy into cool. (Not “cool” to me, mind you. Che Guevara sucks and always will.)
I have made this point many times, and the typical knee-jerk reaction is for the “liberal” to start talking about how evil the Bush regime is and bring up Abu Graihb. I probably agree with all your criticisms about Bush. Will you be able to stay on topic and tell me why “liberal” went from “bleeding heart” to “batshit insane”?
posted by What happened to Liberals? on
Sorry, was meant for Blueflash, not Brian Miller.
posted by Brian Miller on
I suspect it happened around the time that “liberal” became a label that US socialists used to describe themselves and their often-illiberal policies. It switched from a term that described those with faith in individual potential and the ability to achieve new heights through innovation to a term used by those who believed they could better run society as a centralized “machine.”
At that point, the game changed from arguments in favor of the rights of the individual to a situation where various influence groups compete for attention of the oh-so-wise master-planner. A great deal of Long’s beef, I would argue, is that he hasn’t yet been handed the title of chief master-planner of international LGBT lobbying and that the process is entirely too democratic.
Thus, if he cannot own the process, he will do his utmost to destroy it — using any clich
posted by What happened to Liberals? on
Brian Miller, do you mean to say that you think the “liberal” movement in America was infiltrated by communists? I can accept that, considering that ANSWER is quite clearly a N.Korea-apologist, communist organization, yet they promote themselves as an “anti-racist” group. I.e., communists adopted liberal policies as their own.
Why did the good-guy liberals allow this to happen?
posted by kittynboi on
“”There was a TON of outrage by liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians and others responding to that story.
However, Scott Long of HRW spent most of his time insisting that we shouldn’t condemn the Iranians and that doing so would help Bush build a case to invade Iran based on gay rights.
No joke.””
I think the problem is that, while many of the rank and file are outraged by these sort of atrocities, the movement leaders are the ones who are spineless.
One problem is that many other groups on the left, many “antiracist’ groups, essentially, simply throw the term racism at anyone they disagree with, especially if tis criticism of “other cultures”.
posted by Brian Miller on
Brian Miller, do you mean to say that you think the “liberal” movement in America was infiltrated by communists?
That’s certainly part of it. I know that lots of “liberals” got very angry with me when I criticized ANSWER as a member of the anti-war movement who didn’t want my stance against the Iraq War conflated with the hard-left agenda ANSWER was listing.
But I don’t think it’s *all* of it. There’s little room, as kittynboi notes, for accountability in gay political organizations (or politics in general). None of the “movement leaders” feels in the slightest bit accountable to the “movement” — in fact, they get annoyed and condescending when the uppity proletariat starts asking questions (or even “worse” gets critical of something they’ve done).
Perhaps the solution is to stop accepting them as “leaders” entirely, and having the grass roots write into media outlets en masse to inform those outlets that said person “does not represent me or most other gay people.”
More of us should be willing to go to the local media (and even national when required) and speak for ourselves as archetypes of gay life — rather than be defined by the unaccountable “leaders” in terms of their policy agenda, which is often in direct contradiction to our own perspectives on issues.
posted by Blueflash on
What joy to be a gay conservative! If all goes well you get to be stoned to death in the public square before the Rapture. God didn’t create Adam and Steve! And if, for some strange reason, the Rapture gets postponed again you might live to see secular humanist scientists extract the potential of homosexual sin by means of genetic engineering.
posted by Craig2 on
Uh huh, and what about Reagan and Thatcher playing both ends against the middle in the eighties, when the Republicans and UK Tories financed arms sales to Saddam’s Iraq and Khomeini’s Iran?
Added to which, for some mysterious reason, Third World LGBTs seem to have mysteriously vanished from this argument. I agree with you that we should not tolerate the regimes of Zimbabwe and Nigeria when it comes to their virulently homophobic governments, as well as Iraq’s Sunni and Shia death squads.
However, what about Russia and Poland? Much the same could be said of the current right-wing Mayor of Moscow and the vile “Law and Justice/League of
Polish Families” coalition regime
in Warsaw.
Where’s the centre-right criticism of the latter?
Craig2
Wellington,
New Zealand
posted by Brian Miller on
I don’t know what’s funnier — “liberals” who attack conservatives passionately for their anti-gay views (while equally passionately defending their own bigoted anti-gay candidates such as Hillary Clinton or John Kerry). . . or “liberals” who assume that all critics of their blinkered policies are “conservatives.”
My candidate in the 2004 presidential election was busy calling for gay marriage, was the only candidate to participate in a gay pride parade (San Francisco’s, in fact), and was the only candidate planning to launch gay tax equality initiatives. The candidate you likely supported, John Kerry, was busy supporting anti-gay laws in Missouri and elsewhere, opposed to gay tax equality, and called his first press conference after losing the election to condemn those in his Massachusetts party affiliate who were supportive of gay marriage.
Incidentally, the comments on gay conservatives also illustrate a bit of bigotry. I disagree with conservatives on a whole host of issues (just like I disagree with liberals on a whole host of issues), but the stereotyping and hatred directed towards them is the sort of closed-minded bigotry that “liberals” claim they abhor.
From both old parties, I’m seeing a lot of noise, heat and hatred. . . but precious little support for REAL equality under the law. Instead, it’s “let’s create a bunch of new privileges under the law to make up for our unconstitutional actions, and then bully the hell out of gay people who don’t want to be third-class citizens.”
That’s *so* over, guys. It was getting old 5 years ago, now it’s positively ancient.
It will be amusing to see the partisan Democrats engage the partisan Republicans on gay rights when the tickets are Clinton versus Guiliani, and both candidates have identical views on most issues (including gay issues). It will only further underscore my party’s difference in the 2008 elections — and its ongoing support of *real* equality, without the need of the Ann Coulter/Janeane Garafalo hysteria that so often characterizes political “debate” in the old-party mold.
posted by dj on
i think that they should just let gay peole be. because it sux that people get beat up just cuz they are gay
posted by xstate on
In reality, all of the political parties that exist now have the sole purpose of inflating government’s influence over everyone’s lives. It is a fact. There’s no such thing as a limited government poltical party. There’s no such thing as liberal or conservative, they are the same thing. Do you really think that some Red State politician is going to let you keep your hard earned cash, fiat or otherwise? Probably not. Likewise your “Blue State” politician certainly isn’t going to level the playing field for the LGBT people. No way. They work together, mostly since the elites in this country are trying to hold together a country that will inevitably fall apart. Setting up a dictatorship? Hardly. The dictatorship was set up generations ago. No poltician in America will free anyone from bondage. It is the nature of the business. All of the LGBT groups in AMerica were duped when they thought Bush was going to be a tyrant. Bush is a moron, not a tyrant. The police-state apparatus in this country is coming apart, and no one even cares. In reality, secession could be a reality, and it could be over LGBT issues.
posted by Brian Miller on
I’m not as pessimistic as you are, and I’m certainly a member of a limited-government political party which would actually shrink the size of government (since most of its candidates don’t want a career in politics!)
That said, I think Bush is the bumbling moronic mask on a very clever anti-liberty movement. People “misunderestimate” him, as he notes, at their peril.
posted by xstate on
Bush is a moron, I’ll agree. I don’t buy the idea that any political movement or party will ever shrink down the feds. Why? If we ever did start following the Constitution as it is (as opposed to the jive opinions of politicians), the economy would fall apart. Most of our country operates outside of both the state and Federal Constitutions, and I don’t think many people are as open to liberty as we may think (or they believe in liberty for themselves only).
Pessimist? Hardly. I am a realist, and this is reality. I try to be as logical as I can with my views, and logic suggests that the feds are on their last legs. It’s not the end of the world, the states will take care of themselves. Look at how they behave, with California and Massachutsetts going their separate ways on health care. Granted, I don’t agree with their approaches to health care but they are both sovereign states. They have the right to do so.
posted by Brian Miller on
If we ever did start following the Constitution as it is (as opposed to the jive opinions of politicians), the economy would fall apart
I don’t think it would. For one thing, the government consumes about 1/2 of the average person’s paycheck.
The other problem is that an increasing number of jobs are shifting from the productive sector (private business) to the non-productive sector (government employment). The fewer private sector employees there are to pay taxes, the less cash there is for government jobs.
And as wages stagnate and taxes increase, many in the private sector will simply give up and stop working longer hours and improving productivity.
We’re already starting to see the economy unravel as a result. Once the faux prosperity of the housing bubble finishes deflating and people run out of credit to spend on goods and services, the real pain will begin for all of us — and government employment will be hit just as hard, if not harder, than private sector employment.
In short, government as a mega-employer of about 1/2 the population (directly or indirectly) is unsustainable. Government will either get smaller because smart people make it smaller, or it will get smaller because it won’t be able to pay the salaries of its employees.
posted by Brian Miller on
It’s not the end of the world, the states will take care of themselves. Look at how they behave, with California and Massachutsetts going their separate ways on health care.
Yes, and those idiotic health care policies will be yet another straw on an already stressed camel spine.
Californians like myself can “look forward” to even higher taxes on our earnings and even higher insurance premiums and co-pays, since they’re taxing people who pay for their health care to pay for free health care for others.
I earn $5,000 more per year than I earned back in 2001. But thanks to repeated local and state tax increases, my paycheck every month is $400 LESS — and my insurance premium is almost double what it was due to the various initiatives to provide “universal care.”
In the mean time, the housing bubble has roughly doubled the cost to purchase a home and rents have almost doubled as well. Utilities, gas, and food are all a lot more expensive too. That means I cannot afford to save as much as I did before — and I’m hardly unusual in that regard.
Eventually, people will tire of the charade and they’ll either join the unproductive sector and fall to the net consumption side of the equation after being taxed to death, or they’ll leave for other locales with a lower cost of living.
It’s already happening in Europe — 1 in 15 Germans and Frenchmen are working elsewhere in Europe (a plurality in the UK) due to the incredible taxes to be found in their home countries. And in the UK, 1 in 10 Britons now lives abroad due to the high taxes and cost of living that 50 years of socialism have delivered. I see little reason to believe the same won’t happen to Massachusetts and California.
posted by James on
Brian Miller – Aside from your non-sensical use of the word plurality, your assertion is ridiculous. Europeans who work in foreign countries within Europe do so for the same reasons Americans end up living in states where they weren’t born – economic integration. Funny, also, how most Europeans would rather catch plague than emmigrate to the US. A low tax heaven for the wealthy they increasingly regard as a social and cultural banana republic. By the way, Libertarians, your advocacy of a society without a safety net and the economic insecurity that necessarily entails is also favored by the would-be Republican theocrats. Not coincidentally, since it would force the anxious and desperate with mouths to feed right into their churches. Not a pretty prospect for us gays.
posted by Brian Miller on
Europeans who work in foreign countries within Europe do so for the same reasons Americans end up living in states where they weren’t born – economic integration.
Have you lived in Europe?
I have, and I can assure you that you’re quite incorrect. The reason they move is for jobs, which don’t exist in the sclerotic French and German economies.
Funny, also, how most Europeans would rather catch plague than emmigrate to the US.
Actually, Europeans flood the H1-B and green card lotteries every year. One of the EU’s bitterest complaints to the US government is the lack of visas relative to demand for them, and the London, Paris and Frankfurt papers are full of stories of people who have had to delay transfers to New York due to visa caps being reached.
There’s no such problem the other way — immigration to the UK from the USA is quite low. More Britons move to the island of Manhattan every year than Americans move to the island of Great Britain.
France and Germany? Even worse.
A low tax heaven for the wealthy they increasingly regard as a social and cultural banana republic.
Yes, yes, European arrogance about Europe’s “cultural superiority” to the US (and the rest of the world) remains somewhat alive and well. The French complain ceaselessly about American culture and how lucky they are to be French while munching at McDonald’s after watching Spiderman 2. The British ceaselessly complain of a “lack of cultural understanding” in American television while viewing ABC dramas on freeview and trying to order “Desperate Housewives” DVDs from eBay.
When I lived in the UK and traveled throughout Europe as part of my job, I very often was asked by Europeans how to get to the United States and land a job. I never *once* got asked by an American (or Canadian) about how to move to Europe and land a job.
Why is that? Because the “European utopia” ain’t so grand. The opportunities are limited, the economy is choked off, the taxes are high, and the pace of reform is glacial.
Libertarians, your advocacy of a society without a safety net and the economic insecurity that necessarily entails
I am a Libertarian who paid high taxes in the UK for years for the “safety net” of “economic security.” Last time I checked, the benevolent socialist UK government had stamped “no recourse to public benefits” in my passport — but was more than happy to take taxes from my paycheck. If I’d lost my job, I had 5 days to leave the country and no right to claim any “economic security” benefits, despite having paid them.
The reality is that it’s not about economic security — it’s about funding indolence and a lack of ambition on the backs of the productive. Arguing to the contrary is just plain silly.
It’s further demonstrated in where people are moving. If “economic security” is so compelling, why are so few Americans scrambling to move to the European socialist utopia?
Why are the hot spots places like New York, Silicon Valley, and LA — not Frankfurt, Toulouse, and Milan?
The answer is simple — intelligent people know that “economic security” comes not from welfare state handouts, but from hard work in a free market economy that pays them for their labor.
posted by Abe on
Brian Miller wrote: “The answer is simple — intelligent people know that “economic security” comes not from welfare state handouts, but from hard work in a free market economy that pays them for their labor.”
Yes and no. Economic growth often comes from free market economy, BUT economic growth does NOT necessarily mean “economic security”. In effect, you will have more jobs and better economic conditions with free market economy, but at the same time there will be those who will not enjoy the fruits of this economic growth. If the number of these disadvantaged people grows and wealth disparity widens rapidly, then there will be no “economic security” since there will be class conflicts within the state. More often than not, the disadvantaged are the prime targets of religious fanatics or socialists and they use these people’s disadvantage to further their own agenda.