Do the math
Jan. 27th, 2011 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmYesterday 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 12:49 am (UTC)Can you elaborate? It strikes me as obvious that a church can't, say, guarantee a priest a 40-hour work week. Or vacation, for that matter, depending on where the church is. They ought to be able to guarantee the parish secretary and whoever else works in the office those things. But I can't draw the line from denying the parish secretary proper working conditions to bigotry.* On the other hand, it's pretty easy to draw that line when the Catholic Church tries to strong-arm their way to exemptions to non-discrimination laws (mainly by threatening to get out of the social service and particularly adoption/foster care business). I assume other churches try that all the time, but few of them have enough clout in the US. (I'm sure the Mormons can pull it off in Utah.) There's also the so-called 'ministerial exemption' to Title VII, but I think churches somehow got that for 'free'.
*I don't know anything about the working conditions of parish secretaries to be honest. I think you're really referencing that question on the income tax that asks if you were primarily employed by a church or as clergy. I think churches may not pay social security tax or something.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 12:58 am (UTC)Wage laws don't require 40-hour weeks or even vacations (not in the US, anyway).
Anyhow, it's a long and I really want to go into it, but it does require reading up on a recent human trafficking case for a member of a religious order. Plus I'm at work now and I don't really want to get the anger machine engaged right this minute.
I was in the audience for this Human Trafficking (in Scientology's religious order) press conference:
http://www.xenutv.com/blog/?p=4317