globalisation? homosexuality?

[lobelia321]

I want to be open to every culture on earth. I want not to be Euro / Western-centric. But it is very difficult, given current homosexuality laws throughout the world.

This makes sobering reading.

Thanks to piran for the link.

Comments

[mandalaya.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was quite impressed at how many developing countries have made gay or lesbian relationships legal! Far more than I would have thought. And wow, South America! That culture tends to have a lot of men-who-have-sex-with-men (known as MSMs in the HIV prevention biz) who stridently do not consider themselves gay, so I'm surprised that the legislatures have taken a more evolved stance.

I do find it hilarious that certain countries bothered to make lesbianism legal, but male homosexuality illegal. So silly.

[lazulus]

I do find it hilarious that certain countries bothered to make lesbianism legal, but male homosexuality illegal. So silly.

I imagine that many of them are thinking along the same lines as Queen Victoria. She didn't believe women would ever do such a thing and thus we avoided being criminalised along with gay men.

[tvillingar.livejournal.com]

What lazlet said.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

South America was an eye-opener, I have to say!! But St Lucia? Trinidad and Tobago?? I suppose I might have figured this out had I sat down to think about it but still, it shocked me. No, the death penalty did shock me: I had not expected that. We live cushioned lives, thank god.

[kaytee4ever.livejournal.com]

Damn.

*posting this as well*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I was really quite shocked by it.

[kaytee4ever.livejournal.com]

*nods* there's a small discussion going under my post for that, if you wanted to check in

[shaenie.livejournal.com]

so... shall we all move to denmark then?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Or Brazil even!

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

I know it's not surprising that homosexuality carries a death penalty in most of the Middle East, but it still made me shiver. In the unpleasant way.

Actually, I feel a little sick now. *wanders off to write soul-restoring fic about boys in love with other boys*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

We are fortunate to live in societies where we can write and think the slashy fantasies -- when you think about it, that can really only happen in a climate that is already quite accepting of the real homosexuality. I mean, imagining living in a country where anal sex carries the death penalty (I'm still shocked by that) and trying to write Sean/Orli fluff! How could you?

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am imagining a tormented and soul-tortured AU even as we speak...

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

... which I'm now going to tell you the outline of, because it won't leave me alone, yet I don't have time to write it properly.

Sean is some sort of government official. He meets Orlando by chance one day, and Orlando very much catches his eye. He does nothing, of course. What can he do? Nothing, he knows that. So that's what he does.

But and Orlando keep crossing paths. Maybe Orlando has come to work in the same office, or works nearby - a waiter at a local eatery, maybe? At any rate, they see a lot of each other, through circumstances rather than by design. Sean does nothing but look. He tries not to do even that. But he does look, now and then, just a little bit...

Orlando catches him looking, of course. And of course, he catches Sean looking because he himself is looking.

There is a tacit acknowledgment of the gaze.

And still Sean does nothing.

His desire is great, but his fear is greater. Orlando is not the first young man he has looked at. He has never done anything but look, and looking is not yet a crime. But he knows, though he never hears it; he knows that they have caught him looking. He knows that he is suspect. So he fears not only his own desires, but the very object of them.

He can't stop looking, though.

And one day Orlando does more than look. The touch is stray, casual. The words are not.

Sean does nothing.

He knows he should do something. Run. Hide. Something. But he doesn't. He stays. He lets Orlando look. He lets Orlando touch, however incidentally. He lets Orlando speak, suggest, intimate.

Sean fears he is being set up.

He does nothing.

Then one afternoon, he stops doing nothing. He takes Orlando somewhere dark, secret. Takes him there...

When they come to arrest him, Sean looks at Orlando.

And Orlando; Orlando does not look back.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Jenn, Jenn, Jenn!

You make me weep!

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you?

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Well, I just wasn't sure if that would be considered an appropriate birthday type story. But since it's you... ;p

[gabbyhope.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine here is from Yemen. He's a really sweet, open guy and one day when we were having a discussion about society's acceptance/condemnation of homosexuality, he mentioned that it's illegal in his country. On pain of death. When I asked if people were actually executed, he replied, well, only if they're caught. *sighs*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

When I asked if people were actually executed, he replied, well, only if they're caught.
I was thinking about the enforcement thing, whether it's a sort of gentleman's crime and the police choose to look the other way. But still: only if you're caught. It's terrible. And the amount of blackmail that is invited, and fear.

[ex-zarah5186.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Any particular wishes for a drabble? (And please, don't suggest anything I'm utterly incapable of writing. Demento/Dementor, for once...)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you!! Ooh, drabble! That's so generous!

I don't know what you are capable of these days. I've gone off lotrips although I read Diptych because I've always meant to, really, and it was experimental. But if it's HP, that's fine, or orig!

Ooh!

[ex-zarah5186.livejournal.com]

Orig is hard in drabbles, methinks (not enough time to build characters and such), but maybe Snape/Harry, 200 words, smut? Because I think I could write that. Heh.

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have to be more euro-centric after reading that. There are cultures on every continent where laws are liberal, and precious few anywhere that actually give equal rights. And it isn't very long since most western countries were just as illiberal as others are now.
In the US, for example, the sodomy laws may have been ruled unconstitutional, but as far as I know, many states still have them on the books, and still try to enforce them, and there are lots of legal situations where same-sex relationships are treated quite differently from heterosexual ones. For example, quite recently a mentally-handicapped boy at a residential special school was sentenced to 20 years because he admitted to having had sex with another boy at the school. The judge said he was obliged to give that sentence because the law on homosexual child molestation had a mandatory minimum sentence. (Both parties were under 18 but the one who was sentenced was older than the other.) That story and many others are on the ACLU website if you want to read up on it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your point but still, a death penalty is a death penalty and shocks me more than anything else. And the sad truth remains that in every European country, homosexuality is legal, and this is true of no other continent. Where would I rather live, England or Yemen?

England.

Now we can start having gradations, of course, and differentiate among the liberal democracies. Where would I rather live, England or the USA? England again. (And this has not always been so. I moved to the States in 1990; I loved the States.) But on the other hand, would I put up with shit in the USA if the alternative were Yemen? Yes, I would!

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

The death penalty is horrific whatever it is for. Even more so if it is for who you are rather than what you have done.
And yes, it is all relative; my point was that certain values may be more prevalent in some parts of the world than others, but it doesn't make you Euro-centric to prefer one way of thinking over another. No-one can possibly agree with everyone's values, and you don't have to apologise for believing that the mature European democracies have a lot to be proud of.