Last week, the US supreme court declined to hear a few cases relating to gay marriage. That was amazingly good news for American gay rights activists, because at a stroke, the existing law that gay marriage is allowed in the corresponding states was upheld. One of the leader articles in The Economist magazine this week picks up on this, but the title of the article is "The gay divide". The article points out that, perhaps as a result of all the victories for gay rights in the Western world in recent years, there's been a backlash elsewhere. The previous post on this blog about the harsh reality of gay life in Turkey just serves to emphasise what that article points out.There are also two briefing articles about gay rights in The Economist this week, one with the title Marriage equality in America, and another with the title Gay people’s rights. The latter article contains a fascinating image which shows what the situation is for basic gay rights worldwide, which is as follows:
Sources: Jingshu Zhu; IGLA; The EconomistThe Economist is a worldwide publication, and although in total the contents are the same everywhere, the order is different depending on where you buy the magazine. In the UK this week, the main leader article that appeared on the front cover was this article about "The gay divide". I can't help wondering whether they also had the courage to put the same article on the cover in Africa.
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3 comments:
Hi Gay Banker,
I am from Brazil, but I want observe a interesting thing: some country that have something against homosexuality were previously colony of Britain, such Guiana here. In all America continent is the only country that have some problem with homosexuality.
Nick
Hey GB, I haven't read the article yet but I think the chart may be somewhat misleading, possibly due to the difficulty in comparing laws. For example, Texas only struck down their anti-sodomy law (which was used to prosecute a gay couple having sex in their own home) in 2003, while we lived there. The demonstrations and celebrations were fun :) at the time it was still legal to fire someone for being gay - I don't know the current situation. I guess my point is that it may have been technically legal to be gay, it was illegal to have gay sex. There are many other weird laws in the US, though - it's a big place with rules dating back a couple of hundred years.
Singapore is also one of the countries less progressive on this issue. Good place for banking but not banging.
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