Belize LGBT Activists Mount Historic Challenge to Anti-Gay Laws

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
December 1, 2011

A November 16, 2011 Guardian newspaper report announced a new challenge in Belize to its anti-gay laws. The legal suit is the first contest by a new human rights organization that intends to overturn all post-UK former colonies that have laws criminalizing homosexuality. "The Human Dignity Trust (HDT), which launched its campaign in London on Thursday, is targeting the 80-odd states where consensual sexual activity between adults of the same gender is outlawed. More than half are Commonwealth countries which inherited their regulations from British colonial rule. In some like Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon and Ghana the laws are seen by some as justification for violent attacks on gay and lesbian people."

(photo right: for tourists Belize is a paradise; for gays it is less than that.)

Not surprising, Belize's Anglican, evangelical, and Catholic 'spiritual leaders' have united to oppose the effort. They will announce their objections in a court hearing this week. As if to add injury to insult they insist they have evidence that homosexuality can be 'cured'--against all scientific studies to the contrary. It will be a contest between intelligent modern thinking and archaic religious bigotry.

It is endlessly frustrating to read the same old, absurd and morally-twisted arguments of such people as Belize Catholic bishop Dorick Wright, Anglican bishop Philip Wright and Evangelical Rev Eugene Crawford in Belize City. These supposed 'good Christians' are quoted as saying, "the people of Belize will not surrender our constitution, our moral foundations, and our way of life to predatory foreign interests."

Indeed! These are the very ones who are devoid of moral foundation in their modern use of ancient books of ambivalent religious mystery that have no factual source or verifiable accuracy; they justify their bigotry purely on prejudicial misinterpretations and mistranslations of alleged scriptures that were in fact 'invented' by highly fallible writers (with no acknowledgement of dissenting views) and politically imposed upon an ancient nomadic populace who could not read or write, hence violating their native animist belief system. (photo left: courthouse in Belize City)

It is a pathetic miscarriage of Christian justice to use such fragmented, unreliable, multiply-translated, man-made, opinionated and selected bits of 'scripture' as a basis for a guide to daily life nearly two thousand years later. These old texts are about as accurate and truthful for today's science-based life as using ancient Egyptian pharonic scribblings on medical procedures as a guide for surgery today. Would anyone in their right mind allow a physician schooled in these antique lessons to perform life-saving procedures to heal injuries or disease?! For the same reasoning, how do modern religious believers follow equally archaic words?

It takes a huge leap of blind foolishness to state in a modern public forum such prejudicial ignorant opinions against scientifically verified aspects regarding human sexuality. Homosexual behavior is an inherent variety of human nature that has existed in every society that's ever emerged on the planet. There is no sound verification of homosexuality being 'imported' or forced on a people from alien sources.
(photo right: activist Caleb Oroczo, head of UniBam--leading the court suit against the government)

Modern 'thinkers' who claim spiritual leadership would do well to go back to deeper research and investigation into their alleged sources in culture and language. There, if they have the intellectual open-mindedness, will they not find any specific reference or rule regarding the sexual nature of human beings, other than some comments on marriage. Modern religious bigotry against homosexuality has no true scriptural standing. Prejudice is just that--opinion without truth.

And speaking of "predatory foreign interests", it was the Christian armies, missionaries and inquisition that targeted violence against peoples of other territories, tribes and cultures in the mad crusade of 'saving the heathen' from their native beliefs and worship rituals, which had served them well enough for thousands of years.

Shame, shame on Catholic bishop Dorick Wright, the Anglican bishop Philip Wright and the evangelical Rev Eugene Crawford. Let's hope their irrational hateful beliefs are crushed under the truth and science of modern enlightened thinking.

In front of the Anglican cathedral in Belize City there is a 'peace post' with the inscription: May peace prevail on Earth. Let's hope this bit of hypocrisy reverses to become a reality. (photo left)

Read more about LGBT life in Belize here.

How Far Away is Hope For LGBT People?

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
September 1, 2011

As I travel the world interviewing LGBT people about their lives, their cultures and countries I hear stories of effort, strategy, frustration and achievement. One question I have failed to ask these courageous activists, some risking their lives, is "how far away is hope?"

How far away is hope for equality, tolerance, acceptance, relationship recognition, political participation, religious compassion, social calmness...? And what is keeping it in the ever seemingly receding distance?

Another way to ask the question is how long will it take humankind to unlearn the teachings of religion against human sexuality. Indeed, can humanity unlearn something so ingrained in mind from religious prohibitions against sexuality--period. This most human of appetites is the most proscribed against.

The desire for another person is diminished by using the word sex; it reduces it to a genital activity when in truth there are more significant needs that are desired.

Even in the 'crass' exchange of money-for-sex , the so-called "world's oldest profession," there is good reason for that title. The desire for sexual intimacy has become hard-wired in our brains over milennia, beyond the instinct to procreate. With the developing mind becoming more learned by acquiring knowledge and sophisticated systems for survival, came also an increase in more sophisticated desire called intimacy, mental contact, emotional affection, nurturing, warmth, touch...

This want runs so deep that people will kill for it. Crimes of passion are a common occurrence in 'civilized' humanity, some resort to murder when it is frustrated , denied or betrayed.

The challenging question is, given this core aspect of human nature why is it that the religious/spiritual thought/belief systems that have emerged recently, over two or three thousand years, have become so antagonistic toward a human's fundamental need for intimacy and sexual desire? And why/where/when has come this fanatical obsession to reject, discriminate, punish or kill people whose desire for intimacy leans toward their own gender?

It is one of the greatest paradoxes that such an essential trait has become so stigmatized, sometimes to the degree that torture and murder feel justified in an effort to eliminate it.

How far away is hope? About as far away as modern human sexuality is from the human truth that people are different; people are born straight, gay and in-between.

Homophobes refuse to see this truth and prefer to cling instead to their hostile opinions; they refuse to see these opinions as imaginary fabricated beliefs made up by a (very) few tribal men and scribbled down--for what reason scribbled down?--despite their own inherent human desire for intimacy. Why would these early scribes 'legislate' or opine against their own nature? At the time, the reasons were likely less religious than political. Indeed, were they in fact writing about intimacy and sexuality at all or something more public--the various language translations and the inevitable changes of word meanings, in addition to the uncertain original meanings, have obscured the initial intent.

So the current anathema against homosexual desire continues unabated, unexamined, unintelligent and has little to do with any kind of divine source. Simplicity is dangerous in the minds of ignorant people who will not look beyond their own fears. Gay people are not some modern scourge; same-sex desire is not a recent 'problem'. Ancient attitudes about homosexuality are not authoritatively known. It's claimed the Bible is the 'word of god' without realizing there were many gods back then. Was there a God of gods who took a consensus and decided that sex had to be confined and controlled and homesex was a no-no? The questions into the past become ludicrous the further back we look and try to think clearly.

How far away is hope? Fortunately modern civilization has improved in certain countries--in fits and starts, stumbling along but for the better--so that things like democracy, equality and human rights have taken root and helped create an international judicial belief system that parallels the religious system. Judicial thought and action has begun to turn back the excesses and abuses of religion and forwarded human rights as an equal and better way of managing civilization. Slowly in one country after another, officially sanctioned legal decisions have blocked religious persecution (in the guise of discriminatory political statutes) from advancing further against homosexually-inclined citizens.

Slowly, gays rights have become part of the fabric of human rights as one bias after another is being taken down: gay relationships are legal, gay marriage is legal (and published in the New York Times); gays in the military will soon be legal; discrimination in jobs, housing, health care and inheritance are illegal; child adoption by gay couples is legal... All of which were opposed and prayed about by religious institutions. (Imagine praying to one's God on behalf of discrimination and bigotry!)

How far away is hope? In Zimbabwe or Iran it is far distant. In Holland, UK or, unevenly, in USA hope has already arrived.

The Disease of Homophobia

Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
Mat 14, 2010

Hopefully some day coming out won’t be such a big deal and won’t be news--or do we gay (LGBT people) secretly like the rush of notoriety, the fuss, the ‘news worthy’ event, by appearing to win one more to our club, gaining over the homophobes and discovering the inside thrill of breaking into freedom.

In Iraq or Palestine coming out will get you killed. But in the West it would appear that it’s no big deal.

So why the headlines when an entertainer or movie star comes out: singer Ricky Martin and actress Cynthia Nixon (photo below left) recently announced publicly they are gay. Big deal or not?

Greg Louganis, Matthew Mitcham (photo right) are famous athletes who came out, not with a bang but with whispers and gossip, not willing but not unwilling. Others were infamously outed in the press with some fanfare and scandal: “did you hear about Ted Haggard!?”

The Wall Street Journal considers coming out as noteworthy news: When Your Teenager Says She's Gay.

Coming out, regardless how it’s done, willing or unwilling, is a kind of rebirth from fear and hiding into truth and honesty. It’s a gay version of a bar/bat mitzvah going from child to adult; a step away from shame toward integrity. Even Haggard can be more honest—even while trying to affirm his “heterosexual side.”

Coming out is no small event; it’s a major rite of passage to declare oneself different from one’s family tradition, from hetero society, from religious conservancy. The world shifts for a person when they come out. There’s no going back to ‘normal’. The cut is made and can’t be undone. It’s an irreversible stage of growing up, from victim to victor.

But unlike other natural changes (voice change, crevice hair, height growth, sexual awareness) this one takes courage to embrace in most cases because of toxic social homophobia that muddles nearly all cultures with a historic pale of forbidding and cursing from long-ago, mostly based on vague religious origins that fundamentalists
now take as ‘gospel truth’.

Such blind belief, buried in mystery and codified into sanctimonious absolutes and legal codes--without close examination of the validity of the sources--is another wonder of human nature: to believe that myth is truth, that fiction is fact, that sexual varieties don’t exist, that women are less; that Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha had direct links to the Divine. All are myths solidified by habitual unquestioned retelling and surrounded by officious systems.

Human sexuality is probably one of humanity’s most mysterious and fearful forces because it exposes in overt behavior the deepest covert feelings and hidden urges of an individual. Sex reveals secrets. Observe the numerous fundamentalist male preachers who are caught with their pants down with an escort. Observe the Catholic priests imposing sexual pleasure on under-age parishioners. (photo left Cynthia Nixon with fiancee Christine Marinoni)

And it’s not just the church folks who protest too much. Homosexuality is being portrayed as a disease by notable people featured in this week’s tabloids. Anti-gay Christian activist George Rekers who has been ‘involved’ with a younger man is vehemently denying such charges: “I will fight these false reports
because I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever. I am not gay and never have been...” (He should bite more than dust for his hypocrisy and also should be pitied for the soulful anguish his internal homophobia is causing him to suffer.)

Followed today by Elizabeth Taylor’s verbal offense against Michael Jackson’s former doctor who outed Jackson.

Such use of sexual orientation as a weapon of hostility and derogatory slander are pathetic in their shallowness and ignorance. It’s like trying to degrade a person for having freckles. Ridiculous.

Sexual desire trumps just about everything—wealth, religion, race, fame, power. Where are these predators coming from in their deep souls to fabricate such facades or auras of lies about their essential craven truth? Hiding sexual desire behind the mask of religious garb is a most shameful form of toxic internal homophobia. (Hate who you are but don’t hate others by victimizing them.)

Coming out would ‘cure’ the abuse and hypocrisy of closeted clerical cravings. Something like ‘the truth will set you free’. What do we lose by coming out? We lose a lie, a false identity, an ill-fitting mask of conformity.

In these modern times, we are seeing that the great trauma is less about revealing who we really are and more about the disease of social homophobia. We are highly social creatures and sometimes that’s not a good thing; society can kill gays, spiritually and physically. (See also how homophobic-tinged ("Hey, Speedo-boy...!") bullying drove UK Olympic diver Tom Daley to quit his school.) (photo right)

Another aphorism underlies the integrity of coming out: to thine own self be true...and it follows thou canst not be false to any man. No need to lie; how good does that feel!

Being Gay is Political--Like It or Not

Richard Ammon. GlobalGayz.com
January 11, 2010

Someone recently reviewed my website, GlobalGayz.com, and thought it was not focused well. Was it a gay site? A travel site? A human rights advocacy site? A political site? A news reports site?

My reply was short: being openly gay at the turn of the 21st is a political act that invokes human rights activity and generates much news around the world.

I wish it were not so but so be it. Being born with a certain hormonal/genetic propensity—that has nothing to do with behavior or environment--toward same-sex attraction has always been a physiological occurrence within the humanoid species, like it or not. Just as left-handers or gregariousness or mental brilliance or genital endowment arise out of the mysterious ooze of prenatal fluids, tissues and embryos.

As these few ‘different’ people (aren’t we all different?) get to be five or nine or thirteen or twenty-seven and start to feel distinct from most others and realize their sexuality is askance they quickly realize that this is not just another difference, like freckles or red hair. This one comes with a lot of opinions and attitudes from others. This is a difference you are not supposed to have because it’s "sinful or illegal or diseased", so naturally we learn to hide it—until we can’t.

Homo or heterosexual desire (sexual orientation) is not like desire for dark chocolate that’s controlled with willing choice, prayer, medicine or threat of jail time or threat of getting hit or rejected or fired from work or killed.

Coming out as gay or lesbian is not the same ‘ripening’ that happens to heterosexual youth where a guy or girl catches your eye and you giggle or gossip with friends about it hoping for a date and then reviewing it afterwards (maybe including the intimacy that ‘just happened’, or didn’t).

Coming out is a political issue like it or not. It brings a lot of baggage such as social discrimination (rejection), unconstitutional inequality (no marital rights) and violation of privacy (i.e., mockery, presumptuous jokes about sex positions or gender roles) and unfair treatment under national laws. Sexual differences polarize people into attitudes that lead to very different behaviors, some of which are against the law (aggression and assault) but justified by religious or social conditioning. Witness the fierce stigma against people with AIDS which is still considered a gay disease by those committed to homophobia.

Gay travelers, domestic or abroad, face social problems if they show even a modicum of affection in public or aboard a non-gay cruise ship or at a straight resort. They are told not to ‘flaunt’ it or be ‘out’ in front of others.

Hence the development of the gay travel industry (ships, resorts, websites, booking and tour agencies, guidebooks) that 'protect' LGBT people from such ostracism as well as help them to enjoy world sites.

GlobalGayz is a member of this industry. It is a travel website. It is, necessarily, a political travel website. And to prove it, on this site are thousands of News articles and Reports that chronicle the worldwide political circumstances--the good, bad, ugly and brave, in which LGBT tourists often travel and negotiate around or through in order to avoid hostility or injury.

As this is being written, gay, lesbian and trans travelers, some knowing, others not, are weaving their way among countries and states that criminalize homosexuality and would be happy to deport or incarcerate those same travelers. Fortunately, in most cases, one’s sexual orientation is not outwardly visible so most return home safely from such gay-toxic places as Jamaica, Iran, Serbia or Uganda.

Christian Africa and the ‘mid-global’ Islamic countries are the most virulently anti-gay regions in the world. Fundamentalist religions in these areas have spread poisonous misinformation about gay people and nurtured exaggerated distortions and false witness about sexual orientation. Some LGBT activists as well as non-gay citizens in these places have been arrested, attacked or killed for being gay—or being suspected of such.

The most recent crime was the murder of Honduran gay activist Walter Trochez in December 2009. (photo right)

Yes, being gay is very much political and so is gay travel. So is GlobalGayz--gladly.