Do the math

[rm]

Yesterday afternoon the most visible gay-rights activist in Uganda was been beaten to death with a hammer. The government says the motive was robbery. Raise your hand if you believe that. Ugandan activists directly blame the climate fostered, in part, by religious activists from the US.

Among other things, this murder increases the urgency of Brenda Namigadde's fight against deportation to Uganda from the UK. She is scheduled to be deported tomorrow, but the UK has denied her asylum request because they say there's not enough evidence she's actually lesbian.

Meanwhile, many conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Liberty University, and the Heritage Foundation are boycotting this year's CPAC because one of the co-sponsors is LGBT Republican group, GOProud.

Accepting homophobia and other forms of bigotry because we don't want to step on other people's religious beliefs (and we love to do this in the US -- "We don't have to stick up for LGBT people, because that would offend people's faith!" Yet you can, obviously, be a Christian (or of any other faith) and support the intrinsic humanity and civil rights of LGBT people -- so why do we keep letting people use God to justify their hate? My theory? Because more often than not we are, as a group, lazy cowards.) is how people wind up dead, and when it's too hard to get away with advocating the murder and execution of LGBT people in the US (which many of these anti-gay activists do do, just often in places where you don't happen to hear them), they are perfectly happy to go to some other country and exploit its circumstances to do the same, simply because they know most people in the US simply don't care about what's going on in places that aren't white or rich.

You can't fight homophobia without also fighting racism. You can't fight homophobia without also fighting ableism. You can't fight homophobia without also fighting sexism. The lies we are prone, as humans, to tell about people who aren't exactly like us, are often rooted in (and sadly, not limited to at all) sex, gender, and sexuality.

All this shit goes together (also, all this shit is not all the same, but it connects a lot more often than I think is necessarily obvious). And it's far too easy to not look and not care because it's too much, too awful, too big, too challenging, too hard, too faraway, too uncomfortable to fucking deal with. I can be as guilty as anyone.

But we all need to know. And we all need to do the math. And we need to try. And we need to keep speaking out. Especially when it's probably never going to cost us what it cost David Kato.

Hate not solved, runs and will find a way to destroy someone, somewhere, whether you see it or not.

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Worse, than the cops in Uganda are saying 'robbers' they're also saying their main suspect is the guy who was living with David Kato -- ie: possibly his lover. Considering the culture there, I fear they will frame the man, whether or not he was involved, simly because he's also gay and was Kato's lover.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

That's such a horrible story.

I recently found out about a fund that supports the LGBT-inclusive Unitarian church in Uganda, led by a Ugandan minister. It sounds like a great way to support the situation.

[tree00faery.livejournal.com]

This. So much this, everything you said.

[podle.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for what you have written here.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about an LJ entry about not making religions exempt from certain taxes (like property tax, for example). Then I was thinking about working conditions, then I thought about discrimination.

Then my brain went thunk.

The reason religions are exempt from most working condition laws (for religious workers) is because they want to be bigoted and inhumane in ways we don't permit in the society as a whole.

My entire universe has been shaking all day from the reverberations of that realization. I haven't had enough time to coalesce it into a bigger post, so I'll just plop it here for the moment.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Screaming internally. Also donating to that link above. DAMN them.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

The link about the boycott is broken.

Which is a shame, because I'm inappropriately excited by the possibility that the bigoted "Christian" wing of the Republicans might schism, even slightly, from the libertarian "zero taxes! small government!" wing. Life would be so much easier if they were seperate fringe groups that couldn't aggregate each others' votes.

On the good news front: I recently read about a survey that said if Americans over 60 controlled every vote, gay marriage would be illegal in every state, but if Americans under 30 controlled them all, it would be legal in 38 states. Time is, quite happily, on our side.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

:/ :/ :/

Oh, how I do not have words.

that would offend people's faith
lol

[idunn.livejournal.com]

She is scheduled to be deported tomorrow, but the UK has denied her asylum request because they say there's not enough evidence she's actually lesbian.

WTFF, what does she have to do to prove it, eat another woman out for the audience?

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this post. It's wonderful. (And horrible, but that's because what you're writing about is horrible.)

Hate not solved, runs and will find a way to destroy someone, somewhere, whether you see it or not.

Yes, yes, so much word to this.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

the UK has denied her asylum request because they say there's not enough evidence she's actually lesbian.

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what is this i dont even

No seriously what does she need to do make out with a girl in front of the Houses of Parliament or what? What?

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Amen.

We need to connect the hate speech to the deaths. Stop letting those who peddle hatred and bigotry dodge from the pain they cause. They are guilty, they have blood on their hands