IGF CultureWatch

Sometimes you just need to ask the right person. On April 9, 1991, three Washington activists met with Tom Williams, then director of the Country Human Rights Reports Team at State Department headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom. Michael Petrelis of ACT UP, Margaret Cantrell of Gay and Lesbian Watch, and Barrett Brick of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations wanted State to include anti-gay incidents in its annual report to Congress on human rights abuses around the world.

They had done their homework, and provided Williams with evidence of incidents that should have been in the 1990 report. Williams was persuaded, and the report has included gay-related incidents ever since.

Petrelis, now a blogger based in San Francisco, was still on the case when State released its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on March 8. Not only has he stayed in touch with State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor as well as the desk officers for individual countries, he worked with British activist Peter Tatchell last year to declare December 4-10 "Report Antigay Rights Abuses to U.S. State Dept. Week."

The success of Petrelis and his international network of collaborators is evident in the report. It includes numerous anti-gay incidents, some familiar from gay press reports:

• In Poland, gay activists braved violent counter-demonstrators to march in Warsaw and Poznan despite being denied permits; they subsequently won a Warsaw court ruling.
  
  
• In Zimbabwe, thugs again harassed Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe into withdrawing from an international book fair.
  
  
• In Jamaica, an AIDS activist was shot to death, and the gay rights group J-FLAG reported abuses "including police harassment, arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings...."
  
  
• Under Shari'a law in many Muslim countries, homosexuality was punished by death. In Iran, a number of men, including two teenagers, were executed apparently for homosexuality though charged with other crimes.

There were also some positive developments:

• In China, "Gay men and lesbians stated that official tolerance had improved in recent years."
  
  
• In lowland areas of Laos, "there was wide and growing tolerance of homosexual practice, although societal discrimination persisted."
  
  
• In the Czech Republic, "the lower house of parliament passed a law that recognizes the legal validity of gay civil partnerships."
  
  
• In Brazil, a federal court ruling granted partner benefits to same-sex couples.

Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), praised the report:

State Department officials who have worked to include documentation of human rights violations against LGBT people are to be commended, as are the many global activists who brought these violations to light.

In contrast, the Human Rights Campaign used the report's release mainly as an excuse to bash the U.S. government for its recent vote against consultative status for gay organizations at the United Nations. HRC President Joe Solmonese said:

The State Department report is enlightening but it won't be effective if the U.S. government keeps siding with abusers like Iran in supporting silencing human rights watchers.

This is patently false, since the reports are used by lawyers for asylum seekers to bolster their clients' cases.

Unfortunately, some people are so fixated on their opposition to George W. Bush that they are reluctant to give credit to anyone in the federal government who might be doing something worthwhile. Last year, when Petrelis praised the 2004 report, some gays took great offense that he would say anything nice about the Bush Administration.

But the annual human rights report has value regardless of one's views of Bush. The plight of gay people in so many countries is far too dire to subordinate it to partisan political concerns. Indeed, the 1991 breakthrough by Petrelis and his colleagues occurred during the presidency of Bush's father.

I spoke with Petrelis the other day, and he wants to ensure that activists in each country are made aware of the relevant contents of the State Department report. My own local activist group is a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), and I have pledged to make a project out of contacting as many foreign gay organizations as I can find and forwarding them the information.

When you get desperate e-mail pleas from gay people around the globe, as I occasionally do (and I am not talking about scam letters, which I also receive), it can make you feel pretty small and helpless. When I read those pleas, such as one a few years back from an Iranian in Indonesia who faced deportation back to his native country, where he would likely have been killed, I can do little more than refer the person to IGLHRC and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and offer some words of encouragement.

But small acts can help save lives. My Iranian correspondent found asylum in Canada. Of course, he is a drop in the ocean given the magnitude of the problem worldwide. Many cannot or do not wish to leave their countries. For them, international visibility and support are crucial.

You can play a part in helping oppressed gay people around the world. The Internet is an invaluable tool. Organizations offering online resources include IGLHRC, ILGA, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and UNHCR

As Michael Petrelis, Margaret Cantrell, Barrett Brick and Peter Tatchell have proven, individual voices can and do make a difference.

In his nationally syndicated column of March 17, Charles Krauthammer uses the HBO series "Big Love" (about a modern-day polygamist family in Utah) as a springboard to telling gay-rights advocates "I told you so."

Krauthammer writes:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement-the number restriction (two and only two)-is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This is what we philosophy professors call a "non-sequitur," which is a very fancy way of saying that the conclusion doesn't follow, which is a moderately fancy way of saying "Not!"

To see why, suppose I were to define marriage as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender of (3) the landowning upper class. And suppose you were to argue (correctly) that the third requirement is arbitrary. It would not follow that either of the other two requirements is similarly arbitrary. The moral of the story: each element of the legal definition of marriage must be judged on its own merits.

That fact hasn't stopped otherwise intelligent people-including Krauthammer-from invoking the slippery-slope argument from gay marriage to polygamous marriage. If you advocate any change to our understanding of marriage, they warn, then there's no principled reason for barring any other change.

This is nonsense of the first order. What's worse, it's old nonsense. The same argument has been trotted out every time the legal parameters of marriage have been changed: for example, when married women were finally allowed to own property, or when the ban on interracial marriage was lifted. Make any change, and soon the sky will fall.

Of course, the fact that the old arguments were needlessly panicky doesn't entail that the current one is. After all, each change should be evaluated on its own merits.

Precisely. (Now write it down and memorize it, please. It's going to be on the test.)

The trouble with the slippery-slope argument from gay marriage to polygamy is that it's a nice sound-bite argument that doesn't lend itself to a nice sound-bite response. "Show us why polygamy is wrong," our opponents insist, as if that's easy to do in 20 words or less. (Try it sometime.)

But here's a little secret: they can't do it either, because their favorite arguments against same-sex marriage are useless against polygamy. "It changes the very definition of marriage!" (No: marriage historically has been polygamous more often than monogamous.) "The Bible condemns it!" (Really? Ever heard of King Solomon?) "It's not open to procreation!" (Watch "Big Love" and get back to me.)

If there's a good argument against polygamy, it's likely to be a fairly complex public-policy argument having to do with marriage patterns, sexism, economics, and the like. Such arguments are as available to gay-marriage advocates as to gay-marriage opponents. So when gay-rights opponents ask me to explain why polygamy is wrong, I say to them, "You first."

Krauthammer seems to assume that those who advocate any change in the current marriage rules have a burden of proof to explain why we shouldn't make any other possible change. But this requirement is clearly too strong. One might just as well argue that those who advocate allowing men in dining rooms without neckties have a burden to explain why they must nevertheless wear pants, or that those who advocate banning abortion have a burden to explain why we shouldn't also ban contraception, interracial dating, and dancing (why not?).

While most of us would love to see our opponents spin their wheels on issues unrelated to the dispute at hand, such diversionary tactics hardly advance a debate.

But heck: what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Many of our opponents (including Krauthammer) have lamented the high rates of divorce in this country, and some have advocated the tightening of divorce laws and even the elimination of "no fault" divorce. Next time they do this, let's ask them: why not ban interracial marriage? Why not prohibit married women from owning property? After all, those who advocate any change in the current marriage rules have a burden of proof to explain why we shouldn't make any other possible change in those rules-don't they? Don't they?

Don't hold your breath for a response.