With the elimination of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, is it illegal in any significant sense anywhere for a person to have a non-mainstream sexual orientation even if they do not act on it by participating in the associated sexual acts?
For example, can a person go to jail or be denied a government-recognized benefit simply for being gay (or for having a kinky fetish, or for being a pedophile, or for being poly, or for being bi, etc.) if they do NOT actually have gay sex, kinky sex, sex with children, sex with multiple lovers, sex with both sexes, etc. in the jurisdictions to which the law applies?
I know that consensual sodomy is a crime in several jurisdictions around the world. This question does NOT concern those laws, but concerns e.g. someone who would like to commit sodomy, but refrains because they know it is against the law, while recognizing that being gay is something that they are. Is that very essence considered punishable anywhere? Keep in mind that in the Common Law tradition, being tempted to steal is not a crime, nor is being so mad at someone that you must resist urges to kill them.
For the purposes of this question, being involuntarily committed to a mental institution counts as being denied a government-recognized benefit (right to live freely).
In the vast majority of cases, laws are established not only according to the lawmakers’ sense of right and wrong, but also according to the government’s ability to enforce the law. It is very rare for a government to create a law which they know from the beginning will be totally impossible to enforce.
What I’m getting at is this: If someone has a certain sexual orientation, but never acts on it, how is the government going to prove that he has such an orientation?
Hmmm… I suppose if a person went to a cop and said, “I am gay. Arrest me”, then maybe the gov’t would have a case.
I seem to recall a discussion here some time back saying that under some laws possession of computer generated images of child pornography (involving no real children) was illegal. I don’t know if this falls under your meaning of “participating in the associated sexual acts”.
I would say that this involves behavior, but it is debatable. I’d call it a good potential response.
Also, I will mention that I am aware of the gay marriage debate etc. Let’s exclude the obvious fact that not everyone can marry everyone everywhere, but also marriage is about behavior and not essence as, for example, a 25 year old male pedophile-in-fact could marry a 23 year old woman and have a fully legally recognized marriage. I would consider marriage to be an example of, or be inextricably tied together with, the “associated sexual acts”.
I don’t know whether you’d consider ability to serve in the military a government-recognized benefit, but until pretty recently US servicemen and women could be discharged for self-identifying as gay or bi. That’s what the “don’t tell” part of DADT referred to.
I know, and that’s why I specifically mentioned DADT’s retirement. I was asking about the situation now. It was pretty widely known that simply identifying yourself as gay could mean discharge, and possibly an undesirable one at that.
And yes, it counts as a government benefit. Remember, under the rules of my OP, if this is the case with respect to another military, then the very essence of being gay must be problematic, regardless of whether the serviceperson engages in any gay sexual behavior.
For the pedants, it is obvious by what I have said that simply verbally identifying yourself as gay is not a sexual act in and of itself.
Also, the rules for blood donation, at least in the US, relate specifically to sexual behavior. If you are straight, but you had gay sex with a man since 1977 because you were curious, you’re still out, and a gay person who hasn’t had sex since 1977 can donate.
There are places where the belief that you’re gay could get you beat up. It’s not going to be on the books that way, though. I can’t think of any written system of law that can allow you to be convicted or punished for something that there’s no evidence of one way or the other.
Even the example of the US Military requires that you do or say something.
As I mentioned above, I am treating a person admitting that they are gay to not be an act within the meaning of my OP. This is similar to the fact that if a person admits that they are a thief, that statement does not constitute an act of theft in the sense that saying that you are a thief is considered an act of theft separate and distinct from the actual thefts committed.
It is illegal to be gay here in Trinidad&Tobago, the law is not enforced and there have been no prosecutions in a long time. Immigration and naturalization is also supposed to keep the gays from visiting or immigrating, which they don’t either(Elton John and other famous openly gay celebs). No clue how they proved it back in the day.
Why don’t they repeal these unenforced laws? Its a political hot potato probably, it would bring out the fundies frothing at the mouth, so they leave it on the books but ignore it.
Sorry, I must have skimmed over the first few words of your OP. I had meant to add that I could believe there are parts of the word where openly identifying oneself as a homosexual would lead to arrest, but I don’t have a cite or anything on that.
It doesn’t talk about identity being legal or illegal, but if there is a ban on adoption I doubt the gov’t is asking “Have you had gay sex?” but “are you gay?”
This was just reported last Sunday: In St. Petersburg (Russia) there’s a law forbidding homosexuality - not only two men holding hands or kissing in public*, but also any discussion or talking about equal rights for gays or that being gay is not deviant, is forbidden.
This law is now on the step of being enacted for all of Russia, because Putin can not only ally with the conservative Orthodox Church, but also provide easy scapegoats for the population (a tradition in Russia for the rulers).
The reporter showed footage of previous demonstrations of gays who were hunted down by right-wingers to beat them, with the police helping the chasing, as well as arrests of men and women demonstrating against this law.
the reporter alluded to how much the tradition of Russian old men swapping kisses during official visits in the 80s has changed under über-macho Putin
I doubt most places that have sodomy laws would even recognize that there is such a thing as a gay person, as in one who has an innate tendency towards homosexuality. Iran, for example, famously does not. They imagine that the laws are there not to discriminate against a class of person, but to protect the general public against the temptation of gay sex, as if the only thing stopping us all from yielding to the great convenience (if nothing else) of dispensing with the opposite sex altogether is religious and civil laws against it. Once you concede that same-sex attraction is (for the most part) limited only to a certain group of people who are never going to be “cured” of it, it becomes much harder to establish any sort of rational basis for laws against it.