In citizenship I was set the task of writing an essay on how our understating of human rights has changed since 1945 in relation to gay people.
Pre 1945 being gay was highly criminalised around the world mainly due to the colonial influence of the British empire. The world health organisation also classed it as being a mental illness. Like every human rights issue the UDHR was what got the ball rolling in world reform.
Despite being the ones to cause it to be criminalised worldwide the UK were one of the first to legalise same sex relations. The era of disco and free love was a time of mass change, many of those in the world of celebrity 'came out'. It was in 2001 that same sex relationships were held in some regards as equal to those as a 'normal' relationship as the age of consent was lowered from 21 to that of the same as 'straight' couples. In 2005 gay people were given even more equality with the introduction of civil partnerships and now the legislation is being written up to legalise gay marriage.
What really amazed me was the perception of gay people around the world. Steven Fry's documentary 'out there' really opened my mind. Politician are so incredibly short sited when it comes to this take the Ugandan politician who said that gay rape is wrong and punishable but when a man rapes a woman it is not because it is done the right way. What the hell!!!! And then you have doctors in America providing repairative therapy to 'cure gayness' yes because you can cure someone of who they love. Oh and then there is Brazil who has a statistic of a gay person is murdered every 36 hours. But once again there is a stupid politician blocking an anti homophobia law because according to him most of those murders are done by ex partners. And then we come to Russia. Do i really need to go into how stupid their human rights reversal is. I have said it before and will say it again, how the hell can one of the world leaders take such a step backwards and re-criminalise homosexuality.
In this world gay people are not the issue it is the horrible homophobes who pollute this world with their discrimination. Attitudes have to change and what Steven Fry's documentary showed me was that politicians have to rethink their attitudes to this issue and then the people may also do the same.
But as always
Love Hayley Beth xxx
Very nice. Although you might want to bring about other names and significant points in Gay Rights history, and acceptance of sexual ambiguity.
ReplyDelete- Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, modern American music artists who released a single 'Same Love' focused on homosexuality, which is currently nominated for the Youtube Music Awards.
- The Stonewall Riots in 1969, showing the beginning of strings of riots against police and government-sponsored persecution of homosexuality.
- Christina Aguilera who released the single 'Beautiful' was a member of LBGT community, had the song soon made into an 'anthem' for the community to show empowerment and inner beauty of all peoples, not just in terms of sexuality but also race.
Apart from that, loved the addition of different countries to give a 'world-wide view'.
Thank you for your additional comments!!! I was only going off the information I was given in class but this input will really help me when I do my exam. Thank you for reading my blog and i hope you continue to in the future.
Delete