It is illustrated with the photo above.
Cooper writes; 'This perfectly timed love bomb, coming at the close of a sequence celebrating Gretna Green’s role in bringing so many people together in marriage, neatly captured Scotland’s commitment to gay and lesbian equality. Barrowman has been rightly praised. He made us all feel proud, not just of Scotland, but of the United Kingdom’s stand on LGBT rights...'
Yay! Hooray for us! Sorry, do go on...
Yay! Hooray for us! Sorry, do go on...
'But there is a deadly serious reason behind the Glasgow Kiss and the emphasis put on love and inclusion. Eighty per cent of the Commonwealth's member states criminalise homosexuality.'
The big - and rather obvious - question, of course, is which Commonwealth countries regularly and systematically - or indeed ever - actually enforce these laws.
Unless this is made clear, one runs the risk of sounding like a hyperbolic hysteric in love with perpetuating a conspiracy theory of global gay victimhood.
The big - and rather obvious - question, of course, is which Commonwealth countries regularly and systematically - or indeed ever - actually enforce these laws.
Unless this is made clear, one runs the risk of sounding like a hyperbolic hysteric in love with perpetuating a conspiracy theory of global gay victimhood.
But anyway, let's first ask Jonathan about a few of his details...
In these countries Barrowman’s expression of intimacy is more than a taboo. It’s a crime, and the star would most likely find himself in prison because of it.
Can you give me some examples of men being imprisoned for kissing? I mean in Commonwealth countries, obviously, not in AmeriKKKa.
Thinking of a holiday on the idyllic Caribbean islands of St Kitts or St Lucia? If you’re gay you too could end up on the wrong side of the law. What about going on Safari in Kenya or Tanzania?
Can you give me some examples of men being imprisoned for kissing? I mean in Commonwealth countries, obviously, not in AmeriKKKa.
Thinking of a holiday on the idyllic Caribbean islands of St Kitts or St Lucia? If you’re gay you too could end up on the wrong side of the law. What about going on Safari in Kenya or Tanzania?
Again, please can we have some examples of tourists being arrested for being gay in any of these countries?
The hypocritical Victorians, desperate to project a particular image of Britain as stiff upper lip middle-class mausoleum, felt the need to export their anxieties about sex. With typical racist fervour, they imposed them on the "resistant masses", and rolled out laws criminalising homosexuality across what is now the Commonwealth.
Didn't the Victorians usually just export the entire British penal code? Or do you have evidence stopping buggery in the Empire was a priority for them?
The British empire was dissolved 50 years ago, how are we still 'to blame'?
I could go on...
Thanks Jonathan, interested in hearing your replies.
The hypocritical Victorians, desperate to project a particular image of Britain as stiff upper lip middle-class mausoleum, felt the need to export their anxieties about sex. With typical racist fervour, they imposed them on the "resistant masses", and rolled out laws criminalising homosexuality across what is now the Commonwealth.
Didn't the Victorians usually just export the entire British penal code? Or do you have evidence stopping buggery in the Empire was a priority for them?
The British empire was dissolved 50 years ago, how are we still 'to blame'?
I could go on...
Thanks Jonathan, interested in hearing your replies.
Posts
The Glasgow kiss, as he calls it, was a tokenistic gesture that mainly captured Britain's smugness at its very belated conversion to rights for the gay and lesbian minority. It's only in the last 10 - 15 years that gay rights have become trendy and so many people have fearlessly decided that now is the time express their support for equality. In the 90s, our champion trying to get an equal age of consent was Edwina Currie, for gawd's sake. And she failed.
ReplyDeleteSuch rights that we did win were as a result of courageous lesbians and gays taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights. Instead of writing smug articles about laws in other countries that the UK was happily following just 10 - 50 years, these people might try campaigning against the right wing vilification of the Court of Human Rights and ask why the Queen, as Head of the Commonwealth, has nothing to say about the equal treatment of gay and straight people.
Despite the fact that these countries have been independent for ages and ages, in which there has been heaps of time in which they could have abolished the anti-gay laws which British imperialists imposed on the gay-friendly cultures of these nations, they have been so traumatised by the colonial experience, so intimidated by the memory of Labouchere's sneer, carry so deep within themselves the alien gay-hating oppressiveness the British imposed upon their happy natural gay-loving psyches, that, try as they will and do, they cannot bring themselves to repeal these laws.
ReplyDeletethey're like a young kd lang and michelle shocked
ReplyDelete