Who are We to Judge Love?

One of the hot topics in recent years is the LGBT+ community and the ability of its members to be out in public and be accepted and not be ashamed for who they are as a person. It has become a major controversy for more than the last six decades even though it has been around since the ancient times.

Homosexuality has been around since the Ancient Greeks. Men had a larger range for their sexual expression as they were allowed to walk the cities alone to meet mates. Older men were usually with younger men, and they boys were either bought as slaves or courted with their father's permission. Women still became wives of these men and did bare their children to continue the family name. It was thought of as the social norm that 'women were for business and boys were for pleasure.' Ancient Rome also accepted homosexuality until it was taken over by Christian authority, from then on it was considered a sin as interpreted in the Bible.

Now in the 21st century, there are variations of acceptance (or lack of) for homosexuality. Many developed countries that have generally accepted homosexuality to be as equal as to have legal marriages are in Europe, North America, and South America.

World Map on the levels of legalization for the LGBT+ community.

Some of these do vary such as in the United States where it is state by state regulation, but about 30 states and Washington D.C are in support so far out of the 52 states. Although marriage is not legal in the other states, it is still recognized which is a great achievement for the community. Other countries are not nearly aa progressive in the acceptance of gay marriage or even gays existing.

Russia is a wonderful example of a very strange intolerance for 'gayness,' but has yet to ban it, but Russia has a "Gay Propaganda" ban, which is of course very different from banning homosexuality altogether. Russia's government doesn't mind homosexuality as along as there isn't any meeting places for gays, any PDA, or any public notion that one is gay. Gay people must be 'closeted gays' and none can ever know about or else they may face jail time. The Russian governments goal is to make it as 'safe' as possible for Russian youths to avoid anything that could encourage them to have organizations that support and advocate for gay rights. 

The iPhone monument that once stood in St. Petersburg, Russia

Many supporters of equal rights for the LGBT+ community have made jokes and have poked fun at the Russian government about their ridiculous oppression of the gay community in Russia.

An article that came out last week in The Huffington Post that mocked the Russian government after they took down a statue of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, in St. Petersburg after they discovered that the present CEO, Tim Cook, was gay. One of the most homophobic legislators in the Russian government, Vitaly Milonovo, thought that they should ban the CEO from Russia since 'among other things, 'sodomites' spread Ebola." I can't even read this quote in my head without letting out a small chuckle of how utterly ridiculous this is. First of all they had a monument of a two meter tall (about 6 feet) iPhone in the middle of St. Petersburg to worship their technology god, then they decided that because Cook would bring  "Ebola, AIDS, and Gonorrhea" if he was allowed in the country for being gay, they tore the statue down to detach themselves from the diseased company. I'm sure that Cook was very upset that he couldn't get a selfie with this piece of work (the monument not Milonovo).

Homophobic Russian legislator Vitaly Milonovo (left), out and proud gay CEO of Apple Tim Cook (right)

As laughable and ridiculous Russia's gay propaganda ban is, there are other countries such as Uganda, Nigeria and Egypt, particularly Cairo, around the world that have life imprisonment and the death pentaly in store for those that come out. 

It is illegal to be gay in Uganda, and that is how it is. The Ugandan government refuses to believe that homosexuality is a genetic trait as it cannot be pin pointed to a single gene in human DNA, what they ignore is that one gene also does not determine hair color, a combination does. Since they feel that science can't prove it, they have determined that homosexuality in a social behavior that will not be tolerated as they feel that their people should be able change how they feel. It is vey clear that the Ugandans that feel this way are very ignorant and very much wanting to shuffle around any type of research or data to match their desires as when people use interpretations of the Bible to stake their claim as fact and that it should be used as law.

In Nigeria, life is very much the same. It aims to 'sanitize' itself as gays re an abomination in their eyes. In this Times article, a man was whipped 20 times for being gay, this is considered a kind punishment as the usual is death. Of course, many Nigerians were outraged by the fact that he did not receive the death penalty and threw things at the man as well as the judge that gave the punishment. Anything and everything gay is prohibited in the country and a Pew Research survey found that 98 percent of Nigerians opposed homosexuality and believe that it should not be accepted. This is a nearly unanimous survey, but my hope is that either there are people that lied for their own safety, or simply did not take it for the same fear and it is thought to be 'un-African'.

In Northeastern Africa, the opposition for homosexuality is fairly new, but rapidly growing in Cairo, Egypt. All was happy and peaceful in Cairo and it felt like a friendly community one man stated, but then everything changed when 52 egyptian men were arrested in a police raid on the Queen Boat, a typical gay hangout. About half were convicted for debauchery and sentenced to three years in jail which led to an uproar in Western governments and civil rights groups. The Egyptians have not outlawed homosexuality, but they go around that by condition of debauchery which is the excessive indulgence of sexual pleasure. Since the Egyptian government wasn't too fond of their differences, this was used as their core reason of conviction to reduce the amount of out homosexuals. While in jail one man, Mr. Abyad, said that they did was shaving their heads, the guards harassed them, and they were forced to sleep on the cold concrete floor without any toilet. The Egyptians are beginning to treat their people as slaves because of their genetic sexual orientation.

What these countries do to their people, to humans, is barbaric on many levels, unfortunately, as in the past with other forms of human opposition such as the Holocaust and slavery, people need to continue to fight for the freedom and equality of these human beings. The determination of activists and time are the keys to setting these people free from their hostile environments.