The Trump administration is launching a global campaign to end the criminalization of homosexuality in dozens of nations where it’s still illegal to be gay, U.S. officials tell NBC News, a bid aimed in part at denouncing Iran over its human rights record.
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, is leading the effort, which kicks off Tuesday evening in Berlin. The U.S. embassy is flying in LGBT activists from across Europe for a strategy dinner to plan to push for decriminalization in places that still outlaw homosexuality — mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.
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Although the decriminalization strategy is still being hashed out, officials say it’s likely to include working with global organizations like the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as other countries whose laws already allow for gay rights. Other U.S. embassies and diplomatic posts throughout Europe, including the U.S. Mission to the E.U., are involved, as is the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
So a plan to work for an end to laws that punish people for having consenting adult sex worldwide. Who could be opposed to that? Well, apparently out.com could. The title of this thread comes from an article they published in response to the Trump Administration’s plan. Excerpt:
The truth is, this is part of an old colonialist handbook. In her essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term “White men saving brown women from brown men” to describe the racist, paternalistic process by which colonizing powers would decry the way men in power treated oppressed groups, like women, to justify attacking them. Spivak was referencing the British colonial agenda in India. But Grennell’s attack might be a case of white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men, to the same end.
There are several signs that this decision is denoted in a colonial sense of paternalism rather than any true altruism.
I imagine many people would view “postcolonial theorist” as one of the most useless occupations on the planet and this argument shows why. This postcolonial theorist apparently believes that it was bad when women’s rights advanced in countries where “brown women” benefited, because there certainly were cases in which “brown women” received basic rights from colonial rule, which had been previously denied to them. The abolition of the practice of suttee in India is one example. And now apparently, by the same logic, some say that white activists should not push for laws decriminalizing homosexuality in Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean because that would be racist and paternalistic.
It seems to be that if we could find local activists in countries like Sudan and Yemen willing to fight for basic rights for gays, that would be great, but given the danger involved such people might be hard to find. In which case, work by white activists on the international scene would be better than nothing.
Or perhaps the issue is more that some people simply have to oppose whatever the Trump Administration does. If Trump were to post on Twitter that 2+2=4, certain outlets would feel the need to declare that 2+2 is not 4 because math is racist and colonialist.
