On “Unalienable” Human Rights

Screen capture, launch of the Commission on Unalienable Rights

On Monday, July 8th, the U.S. State Department announced the launch of a Commission on Unalienable Rights, which is intended to rethink and reshape how human rights laws are applied around the world. This Commission was deemed necessary to ensure that “human rights discourse not be corrupted or hijacked or used for dubious or malignant purposes,” though in that founding statement, the Department failed to explain how this was supposedly happening, or who was said to be hijacking said discourse.

Reporting about this development immediately raised concerns that the Commission’s mandate could negatively impact and specifically target LGBTQ+ human rights protections, but there could be dire ramifications for reproductive rights, sex-based rights, and the rights of migrants, as well. Although the wording of the announcement is vague to a degree, religious conservatives clearly expect the project “to address concerns about religious freedom [which they feel is violated by LGBTQ+ human rights accommodations] and abortion,” at the least.

In announcing the Commission, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rationalized that by delineating protected classes in human rights laws, “politicians and bureaucrats… blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments. Unalienable rights are by nature universal. Not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right….”

This is a common talking point among religious conservatives, who argue that human rights cannot be granted by “politicians and bureaucrats” (i.e. courts and human rights commissions), but by God alone. The given rationale for that thinking is that human rights should be subsumed under “natural law and nature’s god.” Certainly, when this Commission on Unalienable Rights was first announced at the end of May, the State Department lamented that human rights “discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights” – although this phrasing proved to be so transparent to media outlets that the word “natural” was absent from the Monday’s launch.

Of course, fixating on nature is a fallacious way of limiting rights to exclude the obvious intended targets. Same-sex coupling occurs in nature. Changing sexes occurs in nature. Reproductive limiting and parental choice occurs in nature (though the means can seem shocking and visceral). Polyamory occurs in nature. What doesn’t occur in nature is “one-man-and-one-woman marriage,” and life-long monogamous exclusivity is only practiced by 3 to 5 percent of mammals (including humans) – and even less so in other species.

But make no mistake: excluding classes of people from human rights law is clearly the intention. Any attempt to more narrowly define whose rights are “unalienable” and therefore legitimate is, by reflection, also an exercise in determining whose rights are illegitimate, and therefore… alienable (perhaps even in the truest meaning of that word). While the State Department denied that the Commission would address “policy questions” like abortion rights, they asserted that it would instead “attempt to ground human rights in the founding principles of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'” That said, the Commission’s mandate never appeared designed to address specific issues or classes, but rather to create a rationalized hierarchy or criteria through which the exclusion or trumping of disfavoured rights becomes logically inevitable – which is a bit of semantic sleight-of-hand.

When the Commission on Unalienable Rights was first announced, it was originally to be under the auspices of Princeton professor and co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, Robert George, who reportedly drafted the original concept note and is described by peers as “revitalizing a strain of Catholic natural-law thinking that goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas.” Like the word “natural,” George is also absent from the launch, but the Commission’s roster is so overwhelmingly linked to him that its membership was almost certainly hand-picked by him.

 

The Commission is chaired by Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, the former ambassador to the Vatican and an anti-abortion activist, who served on the US Commission on Religious Freedom (from 2012-2016, with George). She is a board member of the anti-LGBTQ+ funding group, Becket Fund, and is perhaps best known for fighting on behalf of the Holy See to prevent the inclusion of abortion rights at the 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. She has made many troubling statements, such as: publicly condemning the Boston Globe’s expose on abuse within the Catholic Church, in 1992; referring to marriage equality as a “radical social experiment” and “not a civil rights issue, but a movement for special preference;” complaining that religious freedom is “subordinated to a whole range of other rights, claims and interests;” and calling for a “flexible universalism” in which human rights are not standardized, but contextualized according to (she quotes from the 1993 Vienna Declaration) “national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.” In her book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law, she clearly sees abortion as an infringement on the rights of the foetus, and no-fault divorce as an infringement on the rights of children. Glendon is also not known for compromise, going as far as rejecting a medal from the University of Notre Dame because that institution also conferred then-President Barack Obama with an honorary degree, despite the fact that he supported abortion access.

For what it’s worth, she also a hired Pompeo as a research assistant, when Pompeo studied law at Harvard.

Joining Glendon is a smorgasbord of Robert George -linked and similarly-minded academics:

• Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute who responded to the overturning of sodomy laws by condemning Justice Kennedy for allegedly failing “to subject the Texas statute prohibiting homosexual sodomy to ‘rational scrutiny.'” Berkowitz calls for religious conscience to be “unhampered by government coercion,” and has written several other treatises opposed to LGBTQ+ human rights.
• Paolo Carozza, a Notre Dame law professor and long-time critic of human rights laws who, among other things, advocated for a Vatican-tinged flavour of “human dignity” as a determinate for legitimacy of human rights.
• Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, an influential American-born convert to Islam and co-founder of Zaytuna College. Yusuf told religion writer Scott Korb that “I don’t want to see gay people bashed… But I also don’t want it normalized as a healthy thing for a society… I don’t want someone to say this is a normal, healthy lifestyle. It’s not. It’s pathogenic…'”
• Jacqueline Rivers, a Harvard sociology professor, and co-founder and former executive director of the Witherspoon-sponsored Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies. Rivers is an anti-abortion speaker, and GLAAD also noted that she once “insisted that marriage equality activists are undermining the Black Civil Rights movement [by demanding human rights protections], but comforted the applauding attendees by telling them ‘God will not be mocked…'”
• Rabbi Meir Yaakov Soloveichik, a spiritual leader of Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the US. Soloveichik argued that the legalization of same-sex marriage would lead to the normalization of bestiality.
• Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice. She has been pointed to as a Democrat involved with the Commission (as though she makes the project bipartisan) – but Swett is still a “religious freedom” advocate with a Mormon-leaning multifaith background, who was also on the the US Commission on Religious Freedom, along with Mary Ann Glendon and Robert George – the latter of whom reassured religious conservatives that “She was the very opposite of a partisan or an ideologue… I did not have a different vision from Katrina, and she didn’t have a different vision from me. We were the same.”
• Christopher Tollefsen, a University of South Carolina professor, senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, prolific religious conservative writer, and co-author of the anti-abortion and anti- stem cell research book Embryo (with Robert George). Tollefsen is a devotee of Paul McHugh when it comes to trans issues, and has argued that it is not only not possible to change sex, but also “a mark of a heartless culture” to make surgeries and affirming, non-psychological treatments available to trans individuals.
• David Tse-Chien Pan (a professor at the University of California at Irvine) and Russell Berman (a Stanford University professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute) are less clear, but Pan is a critic of “liberalism” (libertarianism), and Berman (not to be confused with a writer at The Atlantic by the same name) appears to be a critic of Islam, “left-fascism” and “campus anti-Semitism,” which may refer to protests in support of Palestinians.
• Named in only some of the announcements are Kiron Skinner (State Department director of policy planning, who “ignited controversy in May for framing the contentious US-China relationship as ‘the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian’”), and attorney F. Cartwright Weiland (Rapporteur), who was a Council for Life panelist, helped write amicus briefs supporting laws restricting abortion, and is a critic (in an article expounding on board chair Mary Ann Glendon’s 1991 writing about Rights Talk) of “identity politics” and LGBTQ+ inclusion in human rights.

It’s important to contextualize all of this within the current developments in the United States under the Trump administration. Catholic and Evangelical fundamentalists (who I feel are important to differentiate from other Christians, despite their sadly often successful habit of passing off their political causes as the “Christian” position) are already seeing legal successes in restricting abortion access, and expect an overturn of Roe v Wade (and perhaps even Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage) by a newly-stacked conservative Supreme Court, very soon – and have been looking for directions to refocus, in order to maintain their momentum, power and following. One of these directions has been to make abortion “unthinkable,” while another has been to formalize a means for religious freedom and religious conscience to override LGBTQ+ (and other) human rights protections. A deeply biblical rewriting of human rights law could not only create a license for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, but also completely undermine reproductive rights and entrench vastly outdated ideas about gender roles, including theological notions like “complementarianism.” For example, ThinkProgress recently noted that if a case of the so-called “Billy Graham Rule” (of religious fundamentalist men refusing to meet with women without a chaperone) were to proceed to the rightward-shifting U.S. Supreme Court while using a “religious conscience” argument, it could very well provide the basis for a legalization of sex-based discrimination, at least under specific circumstances.

This Commission is also taking place during a severe, self-inflicted crisis of anti-immigrant policy in the U.S., which has seen detention camps with atrocious conditions rightly criticized and noted for their historical parallels (even if not necessarily identical matches to past atrocities). Religious conservatives have not simply turned a blind eye to these developments, but have actually often collaboratively helped to create rationalizations for these brutal policies (especially when it comes to Muslim migrants). In this context, and under the auspices of a government that has very clearly shown the will to dehumanize migrants and refugees and trample their rights, it is not inconceivable that this Commission is designed to provide a structure by which a lesser human status for migrants is potentially justifiable.

This Commission is also contemporary to Trump’s stated intent to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide. This inevitably brought some pushback from his religious base – but only a little, while other figures took the opportunity to try to appear diplomatic, seeking to realign the center of the LGBTQ+ rights versus religious freedom (false) dichotomy by “calling for an end to all forms of physical violence against homosexuals — but [also to] refrain from imposing the values of the sexual revolution on the rest of the world.” Although the administration’s decriminalization project appears to have been driven more by U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell than by Trump himself, it is also not irreconcilable with a mandate like the Commission’s: ending overt criminal prosecution is a far cry from supporting actual human rights protections, which are a far greater level of enfranchised citizenship, and facilitate the ability to participate in society as a whole. The Commission on Unalienable Rights doesn’t have to obliterate what it determines are “illegitimate” human rights classes entirely, in order to legalize discrimination against them – it only needs to create a hierarchy which elevates those rights that it determines are “unalienable.”

And finally, this comes at a time when religious fundamentalists have successfully engineered the illusion of several false dichotomies to create the impression that human rights create irreconcilable conflicts: of LGBTQ+ rights versus religious freedom; of personhood rights versus reproductive rights; of trans rights versus sex-based rights; of parents’ rights versus childrens’ rights (though this is often treated as though the latter are non-existent); of all human rights classes versus freedom of speech; and more. Of those, personhood rights are based on a faulty premise that an undeveloped foetus that cannot exist on its own is somehow a person, and (for the most part) the remaining dichotomies are only irreconcilable if the party that wishes to do harm to the other inflexibly insists that it cannot compromise under any circumstance whatsoever – and will do whatever is necessary to frame any particular pressure to do so as persecution.

What all of this points to is a project that appears designed to rethink human rights as a structure in which some humans can be lesser.  And this is concerning, if it becomes the template by which the U.S. proceeds to push human rights discussion on the world stage, in the coming years.

If the launch of the Commission on Unalienable Rights is any indication, terms like “natural law” may be stealthily replaced by language that is far more opaque, and carefully designed to appear as though it does not target any specific groups. But in all likelihood, it will nevertheless still prioritize things like religious conscience, “dignity” (redefined as a god-granted status that is infringed upon if we make certain life choices about sexuality, a popular theme in Catholic-based discourse on “natural law”), personhood (a dog whistle that frames the foetus as a person), and (though I have not touched on it here, but it can be seen in the battles over sex education) parents’ rights, among other characteristic themes that merit further exploration.

I am sure that we will find out soon enough.

(Crossposted to rabble.ca)

Pitting “identity politics” against class struggle is backwards, and the path to self-defeat

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the first things America’s political left would do during the 2016 election post-mortem is to attack minority groups like trans* people, and “identity politics.” That narrative says Americans decided a potential fascist (when you consider his policy proposals, unilateral rhetoric, media manipulation and stoking of hatred) was a better choice than a continuation of (stalemated) progressive politics, because the latter went too far by, for example, letting trans* folks in.

But it is worth digging down to see what is meant by “identity politics.” Like “political correctness,” it’s a conveniently vague term that can be used to complain about the politics of almost anyone whose struggles one hasn’t experienced firsthand. “Identity politics” is a code for all civil rights — for people of colour, for women, for LGBTQ folks, for immigrants, for Muslims struggling against the continual conflation with terrorists, and more. Beyond Colin Jost’s barbed joke on Saturday Night Live and a columnist in the New York Times, the most-cited instance of blowback was a statement by Bernie Sanders, that “It is not good enough for someone to say, I’m a woman, vote for me.” While perhaps true on the surface (though it seems intended with more nuance than it has been given by those who cite it), the inevitable inverse suggestion that minority groups were too greedy and / or impatient in trying to acquire equal rights risks being, in its way, yet another roundabout step toward white supremacy, whether conscious or not.

It is also looking at the situation entirely backwards. Do not fault people for wanting an equal chance. Fault the chances being sucked away from everyone. Equality is not an unreasonable demand, and nor is wanting it now.

On the contrary, a civil rights perspective is what has been needed. There have been significant flaws in how it has been implemented so far, however. Between the weakness of compromised politicians, the fears of ticking off corporate funders of the organizations and institutions that have taken the issue on, and the subjectivity of corporate-controlled media which either provide or squelch voices on the issue, civil rights only progress toward — but never reach — the point at which they address economic injustice. Meanwhile, privileged people within social movements have too often been satisfied with equality on paper, almost like a placebo, and willing to leave behind their poor and disenfranchised in order to get it.

This is against a backdrop in which economic disparity has stratified wealth — and it is only helped if everyone fights each other over the scraps rather than wondering where it has all gone. Four decades of “trickle down economics” have been more than enough to prove that wealth, instead, has only been bleeding upward.

Civil rights movements have been the right direction. But between opponents and the lack of will (or corporate indebtedness) of proponents, they have been sold out, left standing only partway to justice, among a population that has been allowed to believe that equality has already been accomplished… or is at least so inevitable that it does not require any further effort. Equality has only been permitted to the point where it has not been seen to jeopardize the wealth of the richest, at a time when the greed of the latter has been simultaneously sucking society dry universally.

At this moment, the worst thing the political left can do is to fracture and feed the impulse to blame each other for wanting “too much.” It is time to recognize that political and institutional powers have instead been only willing to offer too little, and to take it only from the less affluent (and in ways that were perfectly designed to sow resentment).

The left is weak because it has been fragmented, atomized, divided into pocket communities with single-issue visions. If it chooses to continue to do so in the face of possible looming fascism, then it is well along the path to self-defeat.

At one time, the left was galvanized by the ideas of unions, collective effort, and sharing the load / sharing the benefit. It is well past time for a call to question individualism and revisit an “everyone together” vision of progress.

The Problem is Fundamentalism, Not Islam (or Christianity).

When I started my transition, the first troubles I had were with the tenants in my building, though the conflicts weren’t overt.  Instead, it seemed as though I’d had the plague: neighbours shunned me.  Someone talked loudly in the hall on more than one occasion (probably deliberately) about how they didn’t think I “should be allowed” (to live there, I assumed from the context, although there are other possible meanings), “especially in a family building, where there are children present.”  Within a week, I received notice that I’d be getting a special bonus rental increase (just a month after the last rent hike) which essentially doubled my rent — an increase that no one else in the complex received.  Since there was no proof that the increase was because I was trans*, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it, other than pay it or move.

One family I was particularly worried about in the beginning was the Middle-Eastern couple who lived downstairs from me, with a toddler and a newborn.  The husband stood about 6’3″ and was stocky, much of it muscle, and he frequently took cigarette breaks outside the back entrance. I’d often pass him on the way to and from my car.  When the family had first moved into the building, I assumed they were devout Muslims, given that when the wife (rarely) left the apartment, she was wearing a hijab and chador.  In later years, this changed a little, and I saw her travel about more frequently, in contemporary clothing plus just a lighter version of the headscarf.  My experience with religious objections to the existence of trans* people was not pleasant to begin with, and given all of the stereotypes that circulated about Muslims after 9/11, I was fairly apprehensive.

This quickly changed, about a week after I started presenting as female.  One evening after I arrived home, I heard a soft knock at the door.  I answered, and there she was, smiling slightly as I opened the door.  She was a bit nervous, but knew what she wanted to say:

“Hello.  We, um, have seen you coming and going, and wanted to let you know that we know what you are doing.  And that we support you completely…”

We spoke for about fifteen minutes while I awkwardly tried to keep my cats from racing into the hallway, and then again a couple days later over tea in their apartment — though the husband was mostly away during the latter conversation, just stopping in to pick up a few things, give a polite greeting and leave for work. (I’d only realize later how significant it was that she was the one who first came upstairs to talk to me.)

They were a fairly young Afghani couple, who had moved to Canada in the months before the war, in 2001 (they had actually started the immigration process some time before 9/11, so the timing was more luck for them than anything).  They had come to the country mostly to escape an oppressive political regime (the Taliban were not so much a religious sect as a hardline political faction), looking for the freedom to seek a direction that was still in keeping with their faith, but which they felt was truer to what they understood in their hearts.  It was not a coincidence that they seemed to westernize somewhat: they were following their faith on a personal level, and it was leading them away from fundamentalism and toward what they felt was a truer spirituality.

It turned out that they had some familiarity with trans* people (albeit in a different cultural context), through a relative on her husband’s side of the family.  In Afghanistan, there had been a fairly common practice in which girls dress as boys — especially in (but not limited to) families in which there was no male heir — so that girls could acquire a number of benefits and freedoms.  My neighbour admitted that she had even done so for awhile as a child, in order to escape scrutiny when attending school.  But her husband also had a niece [she used the word “nephew,” but that was because of some of the limits of the language and understanding about trans* people at the time] who had made the transition to live as female.  This was not looked upon quite so fondly, since crossdressing is considered punishable in a strict reading of the Quran. Afghanistan historically had an occurrence of bacha bazi, of young, effeminate males becoming dancers, concubines or sex workers, but it was most often out of coercion and exploitation, rather than something chosen because of one’s gender identity.  Nevertheless, their niece had elected to live as female, and had found a (wealthy — there may have still been some bacha bazi aspects to the arrangement) patron in Pakistan, and seemed to be quite happy in her chosen life — even though it did cost her the support of many people in her family.  My downstairs neighbour did express regret that her niece’s options in life were so limited, but they had come to accept that she had at least found a situation in which she could be happy.

I wasn’t able to get to know them well.  The rent-doubling increase had forced me to move, and so those were the only conversations we’d had.

But I think of them any time I hear people making assumptions about Muslim people, or coming up with racially, religiously and socially jaw-dropping attitudes, and offensive ideas on how to combat terrorism.

Assuming the worst about Middle Eastern peoples is not helpful. Religion can absolutely be a problem, but on a macro level, it’s a bull$#!t argument about which religion is “worse” purely based on one measure of degree or other, or to assume that everyone who subscribes to a religion is guilty of the excesses of its extremists. The problem is fundamentalism.

Christianity has gone through a number of evolutionary changes — indeed, Christianity itself is a kind of evolutionary change beyond Judaism.  The Reformation, the Renaissance era, the Anglican schism, the rise of science, a humanist evolution, the rise of LGBT-affirming churches (although that is only one measure)… there have been many stages at which ancient traditions were questioned, and when found wanting, replaced with new tenets. And yes, more are needed.

Islam has not gone through as many changes, although with the rise of the Internet and the global community, it has been forced to adapt.  Rapidly.  And this, I believe, is why fundamentalism is militantly attempting to reclaim, police and speak for Islam aggressively, visibly and sometimes violently.  And caught in the middle of this intensely polarized ideological civil war are the Muslim peoples themselves, sometimes struggling between the hardliners’ policing of their faith, and their own genuine soul-searching and life experience.

That said, Islam is not the only belief system that has a fundamentalist problem.  For all of its evolutions, there are still hardline elements within Christianity who attempt to reclaim, police and speak for that faith as well, and impose a radically polarizing version of it upon Western cultures.  There may be differences in degree (although there are certainly radicalized individuals who become capable of terrorism), but the intent is still very similar.  [In fact, there is a very specific reason that I use terms like “far right” or “religious conservative” to describe radical socially conservative personalities or organizations: I refuse to accept their assertion that they speak for all of Christianity.  It is flawed framing, and I will not perpetuate it.]

In fact, many other ideologies also have the capacity to become dangerously fundamentalist and radicalize individuals to a menacing level.  This is on all sides of the political spectrum.  The Floyd Lee Corkinses don’t happen as frequently on the political left, perhaps, but denying they exist obfuscates that fundamentalism is possible in any form.  Fundamentalism is an infectious, rotting presence that eats away at any ideology from within, until it manifests itself explosively.  Even Atheism, though not a religion of itself, can become a fundamentalist ideology when an adherent becomes militant about not just simply separation of religion from state, but the idea of eradicating faiths — again, rare (in fact, I can’t think of an example, offhand), but possible.  And with the growing awareness about economic disparity, we as a society are starting to see the harmful effects of economic / market fundamentalism — a different sort of toxicity.  The particulars can vary; the harm still results.

In the meantime, look at this statement for a moment: “Christianity promotes cannibalism.”

Of course, I don’t actually believe that statement, but bear with me, because it’s a good example that most people in Western countries will be familiar with.

Most Christian churches engage in a sacrament known as communion.  Of course, we know that it’s a traditional ritual that’s sort of done as a commemoration of the Last Supper — although it’s really not that different from some early pagan rituals that were seen to have a bit more esoteric significance.  But either way, when you look at the Last Supper, Jesus actually told his disciples that “this is my body” and “this is my blood.”  It was meant to have a totemistic significance.

Additionally, in the particularly Catholic subset of Christianity (as well as some other offshoots), there is a tradition known as transubstantiation, in which the Eucharist (wine and wafer) are said to literally be changed by a priest into the body and blood of Christ.

But for the moment, forget about whether you see this as a symbolic gesture or as a ritual in which the Eucharist acquires something more.  Look at it from the point of view of an outsider, from the verses themselves, from the tradition, and without any context.  You’d be forgiven for thinking it was ritualistic cannibalism or at least borderline (in lieu of any actual flesh and blood) — indeed, it might be hard to come to any other conclusion.

This is what Westerners are often doing when they scrutinize contextless Quranic passages, and fixate on the most violent, shocking ones they can find, and create this mythologized terror-specific form of Islam to assail.  It’s a kind of fundamentalism in mirror opposite, from the outside looking in.  And in an age where things like sex education that is carefully scaled in an age-appropriate way by grade can be spun to sound like children “as young as kindergarten age” are being encouraged to engage in anal sex, we really do have to parse and fact-check the sensationalism that we are being fed by media and ideologues.

[A Dutch YouTube duo, Dit Is Normaal, asked passersby what they thought of passages that were originally said to be from the Quran, but weren’t… — h/t Huffington Post]

I’ll admit that there is still I don’t know or understand about Islam, but I did learn one important point: a jihad, in Quranic essence (or at least as explained to me by my neighbour, years ago), is a process of keeping and safeguarding one’s faith.  Sometimes, it involves a spiritual quest.  The couple who lived downstairs from me were on a personal jihad… and it caused them to contemporize.  It only becomes the terrorizing concept of “Jihad” when poisoned by a fundamentalist will to police and impose a purist form of ideology on entire populations.  Or when responding to it in a similarly fundamentalist, purist way, framed as a righteous / religious war.

Now, personally, I’m not fond of any religion.  Religious traditions have tended not to be kind to women and other minorities, and provide excuses for bigotry.  But I do also recognize how belief can be an important means of finding strength and passage through life, and mitigate its spiritual somersaults.  I don’t care if someone believes in Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Yahweh, Brahma, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or a squirrel that farts magic coconuts.  I’m prepared to accept one’s faith up to — but not including — the point at which it seeks to define or impose upon others (and that’s where “religious freedom” legislation oversteps and becomes a license for bigoted action and special rights).  And this place of peace wasn’t achieved without a whole lot of personal hurt from a toxic influence of religion on my life, either… but I had to let go, and achieve this equilibrium.

Because that’s where my spiritual quest has led me.

I didn’t really understand all of this when my downstairs neighbour knocked on my door that evening.  I think I understand it a lot better now.

Indiana put the lie to “religious freedom.” But Canadian Evangelicals hope you didn’t notice.

Everyone’s familiar with the old adage, “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

Which is why the Evangelical leaders who held a press conference on Parliament Hill calling for greater religious freedom laws and schmoozing with Conservative politicians last month might do well to remember Indiana.

“Unfortunately, Christians in this country find themselves under attack.  This is a violation, and we are calling on the Canadian government to stop this type of violation across this country…” — Charles McVety

Because almost to the day that the collection of Canadian religious leaders held a press conference at Parliament Hill, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a piece of legislation that was exactly the kind of thing they meant.  And it went over like plutonium-based paint.

For anyone who missed the ruckus it caused, the State of Indiana proposed a “religious freedom” law that was very similar to those existing in other U.S. states and federally — except that by the omission of a small phrase, it essentially made it illegal for any government body to intervene in cases of discrimination, provided said discrimination was motivated by a person’s religious freedom of conscience.  Put simply, it would legally sanction religiously-motivated discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* (LGBT) people (and for that matter, just about anyone else), while making it illegal for any government body to intervene.  And the State of Indiana did so because of an outcry from religious groups struggling against marriage equality (with no shortage of drama) claiming that legally protecting LGBT people from discrimination is tyranny:

“This is tyranny, and it has not come to the United States from an invading nation with tanks and rockets.  It has come wrapped in a hijacked-rainbow flag, under the banner of “diversity” and “nondiscrimination.”  At this point, only the most uninformed and deceived among us cannot see that the radical homosexual movement—a movement based purely on lies and sin—has at its heart the wicked goal of tyranny over Christian freedom, expression and conscience.  Don’t doubt it.  While this particular case does not necessarily involve a Christian employer, ultimately Christians and Christianity are the true targets of this hell-born movement.  But, these activists will gladly target anyone who resists their dark agenda, as this company, Tower Loan, is sadly discovering.

“The culture in our nation today is steeped in immorality and moral relativism to the point that far too many people have no perception of the grotesque reality of homosexual behavior and how the activists and their supporters in this sexual anarchy movement are using sodomy and “transgenderism” as a foundation to create new “rights” for those who engage in these base behaviors.  These new “civil rights” for sodomites are for the purpose of destroying the rights of the majority of the American people…”

The State of Arizona had attempted a similar thing last year, until people started realizing that it might allow medical professionals who were Jehovah’s Witnesses to deny patients blood transfusions, and other unpredictable consequences.  Moreover, the clear intention had been to disenfranchise and target a specific group of people, which proved not a very popular idea with the commercial sector.  Boycotts were threatened and travel to the state was likely to become embargoed in places, while the law’s proponents demonstrated just how aggressively they intended to use the law (while still denying that it constituted a form of special rights).  Arizona backed off, and the Governor refused to sign the bill.

In Indiana, though, Governor Pence did so happily, with a smile, a flourish, and a special fringe group photo-op.

The backlash was instantaneous.  Several states and local governments banned the use of taxpayer money to fund city employees’ travel to the State.  Celebrities canceled shows and declared a boycott.  NASCAR, the NFL and other sporting figures put pressure on the State.  The Gap, Twitter, Apple, Angie’s List and several other companies spoke out with condemnation.  Ten religious groups decried the law, including the Disciples of Christ, which threatened to move its annual convention.  The Indianapolis Star published a front page with the top half black, and bearing the words, “Fix This Now.”  And the Indiana-based NCAA made it known that they were questioning whether to hold the long-awaited Final Four tournament in Indianapolis, if not make greater changes in the future.  Eventually, the State amended the law to remove the freedom to discriminate portion (although notably, Indiana still does not actually have state-wide LGBT human rights protections, so the issue is actually not over, even if the state government wants to sweep it under the rug).  Other states have had mixed reactions to the spectacle, however, and groups and individuals have taken a certain amount of inspiration from Indiana’s trial run:

“In an interview with WOOD-TV, Dieseltec owner Brian Klawiter said he is a Christian and that he doesn’t ask his customers if they are gay, but “If you want to come in here with your boyfriend and you want to openly display that, that’s just not going to be tolerated here. We don’t believe that here.”

“In the rant, posted on Tuesday, Klawiter lamented the discrimination white heterosexual Christians face everyday in the U.S. and said he is no longer going to take it…”

To be fair, the March 25th delegation of Evangelicals didn’t call upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper for an Indiana-style “religious freedom” law per-se.  By the time they got to the Hill, in fact, they’d figured out that all of their complaints were in jurisdictions outside federal control.  So they asked for a statement.

And they didn’t get it.  Instead, they came away with a lone MP who left the Conservative caucus and used the opportunity to give a weird rant in Parliament about scientists being “gagged over a false construct related to the theory of evolution.”  Not the wisest way to politically self-immolate, I suppose.

“There’s a whole generation of kids being taught that what they’re taught in Sunday School or in church is garbage, it’s wrong, it’s false, and it’s simply a form of bullying that’s no longer acceptable. It’s not scientifically tenable, it’s a disservice to science… it’s not freedom of religion if your views are put down by your peers.” — MP James Lunney

But it’s not the first time that ideological groups have called for religious-based special rights, and it’s certainly not going to be the last.  If anything, the effort seems poised to grow.  In the U.S., some states are pressing forward with new bills of the sort, while more than one Republican Presidential contender has vowed to make it a priority.  The view from the American side of the border, at least, is that LGBT acceptance and Christianity are simply incompatible:

“When two diametrically opposed and incompatible value systems (namely Christianity and hedonistic humanism) come together in the same place, there can be no peaceful coexistence.  One will necessarily dominate, while the other is necessarily subjugated.  We saw that quickly happen in Indiana last week.” — BarbWire commentator Bob Ellis

(It’s worth adding a reminder that I personally try not to use “Christian” to describe these folks, despite their rallying behind the term, because I consider it questionable whether they actually are… at least when it comes to “loving one another” by trying to disenfranchise, invalidate, and occasionally even still criminalize people whose existence they deny or object to… not to mention doing things like conflating entire groups with sexual predators as a political tactic.)

In Canada, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are tiptoeing around Indiana while strategizing further… and recognizing that their fight is a little harder in a nation that has already had marriage equality for several years and somehow managed to cope.

“… The most significant part of the HMP [“Homosexual Ministry of Propaganda”] victory is that the word “Equality”, a word twisted by the HMP to squash dissent, has once more been reinforced in the minds of the public to mean that a male + male or a female + female = marriage…” — Peter Baklinski at the Canadian website, LifeSiteNews.

The old “special rights” argument, now with actual special rights added.

The “religious freedom” tactic isn’t really all that new: only the phrasing used to convey it.  For many years, religious groups complained that extending human rights protections to LGBT people would confer “special rights” upon them.  Lest readers doubt that there was some deliberate co-ordination to all of this, Media Matters provides an in-depth look:

“Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal organization that works with 2,400 allied attorneys nationally on a $39 million (as of 2013) annual budget. ADF was founded in 1994 by several of the country’s largest national evangelical Christian ministries to “press the case for religious liberty issues in the nation’s courts” and “fend-off growing efforts by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which seek to immobilize Christians.” Today, it has become the country’s best-funded and most powerful right-wing Christian group working against what the organization calls the “myth of the so-called ‘separation of church and state.'” 

“… While the group prefers to talk about its “religious liberty” work when in the media spotlight, ADF also actively works internationally to promote and defend laws that criminalize gay sex. ADF’s formal support for anti-sodomy legislation dates to at least 2003, before the Supreme Court made its landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas. ADF, which was at the time still known as the Alliance Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief in the case, defending state laws criminalizing gay sex. In its brief, ADF spent nearly 30 pages arguing that gay sex is unhealthy, harmful, and a public health risk…”

Of course, it then became awkward trying to explain the dangers that could ensue if the “special right” to be equal might trump the then- perfectly ordinary everyday right to deny someone employment, housing, medical care, enfranchisement, and/or goods and services.  Embarassed, anti-LGBT leaders began looking for new phrasing and the lowest-hanging fruit to justify their claims.  The shift to a “religious persecution” -based tactic started with adoption agencies that were “forced to close” because they refused to assist would-be parents in gay or lesbian relationships.  Except that they weren’t really forced to shut down:

“Catholic Charities in Illinois has served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children. But now most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in Illinois are closing down rather than comply with a new requirement that says they can no longer receive state money if they turn away same-sex couples as potential foster care and adoptive parents…

That’s when the attention turned to wedding cakes and photographers.  To at least some of the public, it seems relatively trivial and nit-picky that LGBT people are expecting to be able to enjoy the same access to those services as anyone else.  Never mind that the same logic and law used to deny a wedding cake might also be used to deny housing, education, health care, security, or any other service where religious freedom of conscience might cause someone to take issue.

Canada illustrates this a bit more visibly, with religious conservatives fighting a conscience policy for medical professionals which would allow them to decline non-emergency as long as they still provide a referral to someone who will provide accurate information.  Shoulda’ went for the cakes.  Just saying.

I’ll admit that there’s a civil libertarian in me who wonders why someone would take it upon themselves to fret about anti-LGBT cake vendors, or even go looking for them for the sake of stirring up a controversy.  I just don’t see the point of wanting to give homophobes and transphobes a bunch of money.  But I get it: full enfranchisement hasn’t happened until a person can go about their business without having to worry about being blindsided by idiots trying to exclude them, just because of who they are.  And that’s why the trivial stuff matters.

But in the end, while the dust settles on Indiana’s religious freedom bill fiasco, and Canadian ideologues try to raise the issue to a national level, it’s important to look at the fallout.  Because as much as religious fundamentalists might try to pretend that they’re only interested in protecting their own freedoms and not harming others, the meltdowns that have occurred in the wake of the Indiana bill’s demise paint a different picture:

“It wasn’t broken and the alleged “fix” that the Indiana legislature, at your request, has proposed to the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), will destroy the law beyond all recognition. In fact, it will turn it into the “RFDA” – the “Religious Freedom Destruction Act.” No bill at all would have been better than this anti-Christian, sexual anarchist disaster.

“What was intended as a shield to every American’s First Amendment-guaranteed religious liberty, as proposed, will now become a sword used to destroy it. What was designed to defend people of faith against being discriminated against and bullied will, instead, codify anti-religious discrimination and bullying into law. It will unconstitutionally force people of faith, under penalty of law, to affirmatively violate their sincerely held religious conscience. It has been turned into a weapon that compels people of faith to disobey God or face government sanction.” — Matt Barber

Because the intent was clearly to discriminate.  And sometimes when anti-LGBT leaders think that only the faithful are listening, they’ll even candidly say so:

“Starting in the 1990s, the homosexual movement worked tirelessly, spending enormous funds, to get state and local governments to amend their anti-discrimination laws covering public accommodations, employment, housing, public education, etc., to include “sexual orientation.” In recent years there’s been a push to include “gender identity” (cross-dressing, transgenderism, transsexuality) also.

“There’s a big strategic reason for that. As Dr. Scott Lively has pointed out for years, these updated laws are the starting point for the whole, brutal legal jihad against Christians and others holding traditional values. Every outrage we’re now seeing — including the LGBT activism in the schools, targeting of businesses, men using women’s restrooms, sado-masochist/”swinger” conventions in hotels, etc. — emanates from these laws.

“But pro-family people have only recently started to wake up on this. They instinctively realize that citizens should be able to discriminate and refuse to promote or celebrate perversion and “gay”  marriage. But these anti-discrimination laws now make it a crime to do so…”

The fight for special rights to discriminate will continue — it’ll just change along the way.  It will persist because the will to discriminate persists:

“What should Christians and other believers do in the face of this heightening repression? They must go on the offensive—charitably but vigorously—and fight the battle on several levels… The lame discrimination complaints by homosexualist organizations against believers in human rights commissions and the pressuring of corporations to dump executives and employees who dissent at all from the homosexualist agenda should should be met consistently with lawsuits for abuse of process and defamation. That would put financial pressure on the well-heeled homosexualist organizations…” — Crisis Magazine & LifeSiteNews commentary.

So the strategizing continues.  In one American twist, anti-discrimination intervention is being said to be a violation of the separation of church and state.  In another, an organization that considers boycotts and letter-writing campaigns organized by LGBT groups to be “economic terrorism” is exercising its own boycotts and letter-writing campaigns against alleged “anti-Christian discrimination” — discrimination which apparently includes producing a TV show about the life of Dan Savage.  The hypocrisy is rampant, with the same groups that complain of being silenced having no qualms about censoring LGBT speakers or hounding them to leave their jobs with non-profit organizations.  In a moment of coinciding interest opportunism, American lobbyists and legislators are even hoping that religious freedom bills can be combined with the ruling in Hobby Lobby to grant companies the same sort of special rights:

“Georgia State Senator McKoon hopes that, if his bill passes next year, courts will find it covers companies as well as flesh-and-blood human beings, even if it doesn’t say so explicitly in the text. “I believe,” he says, “that the bill would be read as the federal bill was interpreted by the Hobby Lobby decision…”

It’s not going to drop off the Canadian radar anytime soon either, because the Supreme Court of Canada just ruled that reciting a denominational prayer at town council meetings infringes on the freedom of conscience and religion. The state, it determined, should neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, nor impose one on others.  Which, when viewed through the far-right lens means that the rival religion of secularism / atheism is persecuting Christians:

“In a sense, by prohibiting respectful, non-proselytizing, non-coercive prayer, the court is showing a clear preference to non-religious believers over religious believers, and gives an untenable status to secularism and atheism, which are themselves beliefs. So there is no balance and no reconciliation among various beliefs in this ruling but shows a preference for one belief – secularism – over all other beliefs,” Elia told LifeSiteNews.

“This is not an example of a true, authentic and robust pluralism,” Elia stressed. “In true pluralism, religious believers and non-believers can share the public square, but this decision means the public square can no longer be shared…” — LifeSiteNews.

So it becomes worth scrutinizing the recent events the Canadian delegation to Parliament pointed to as examples of attacks on religious freedoms in Canada:

• The decisions of a number of provincial bar associations not to accredit any potential law school graduate of Trinity Western University;
• The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s Professional Obligations and Human Rights policy, which ensures access to medical care for people seeking abortions, contraception or other accepted legal medical procedures; and
• A recent Statement of Support for Diversity and Inclusion signed by 72 major companies across Canada.

Because when we do so, we see that:

• The decision not to accredit Trinity Western University law school graduates was made because of TWU’s ban on sexual behaviour outside heterosexual marriage, which amounts to a creative way to shut out LGBT people;
• The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s policy in fact allows medical professionals to opt out of procedures and services that violate their religious beliefs, but they must still provide a referral to someone who will give accurate information about treatment or procedure options (which gets portrayed in far right media as forcing doctors to perform abortions); and
• Seriously, this is a statement that says “We value the range of perspectives, ideas and experiences that diversity provides, whether grounded in gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, cultural background, religion or age,” and says that the signatory businesses will “encourage greater diversity and inclusion.”

Underneath it all, the special right being sought is the right to create deliberate barriers for people whose sexuality they object to.  Even diversity policies are considered offensive:

“Gwen Landolt, a lawyer and national vice-president of Real Women of Canada, called BMO’s policy the “height of discrimination and intolerance.”

“Their position is shocking and appalling. They have applied political correctness to the absolute borderline of insanity,” she told LifeSiteNews…”

But don’t expect an equanimous approach to how “religious freedom” is interpreted.  At best, it is a selective thing:

Lunney’s defence of religious freedom does not extend to supporting the right of Muslim women to wear the niqab when being sworn in as citizens, however.

After initially avoiding the question, he eventually confirmed that he shares the views of his former party and the prime minister that those seeking to become Canadian citizens should show their faces.

“I’m not going to get tangled up in that argument,” he said.

In the end, of course, the “religious freedom” battle cry may end up amounting to nothing in the warmer social climate of Canada.  Hopefully, the general public will see it for what it is, without the benefit of a Mike Pence -like Premier to push the issue.

“Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says the opening prayer at the province’s legislature will remain despite a recent Supreme Court ruling…”

But then again, who knows?

“A little free speech for me, and a little shut-up-and-take-it-like-a-man for you.”

There’s a bit of controversy brewing in the UK press, as a result of a letter from academics and activists (including noted LGB activist Peter Tatchell, as well as some recognized trans-exclusionary reactionaries) published in The Observer (“We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals“).  In it they call for universities to stand against what they felt was intimidation, specifically pertaining to discussions on trans* issues and sex work.

As a freelance writer and journalist, I could normally understand the concern of what they term no-platforming (alienating speakers like Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel because of past controversial remarks).  And I can’t speak to the history of the controversy in the UK (of which this letter is just a part) as well as someone who has lived through it.  But as a woman of trans* history and a former sex worker, however, I see that there is also some important context which is being forgotten.

In principle, of course, free speech is ideally responded to with free speech.  Yet, when it comes to debates on issues pertaining to them, sex workers are typically either not given a platform at all, or else their perspectives are dismissed by default.  Sex workers’ perspectives are systematically eliminated from the debate either by claiming that people who choose to engage in commercial sex are the exception and statistically unimportant; or by acting like they’re too silly to realize that they’re victims; or by claiming that a woman is somehow incapable of making a decision to consent to sex the moment money is involved.

Meanwhile, trans* people are starting to find public venues in which to speak, but this is still tentative, a novelty, and not always available.  Trans* people have for decades been ignored or told to shut up and just deal with it, and after decades of being excluded from the discussion about them, all while facing a constant barrage of ignorance and invalidation, barbs eventually get through and wound.  This is why trans* people react, and often with a lot of anger.

It’s also important to take into account the context of the debates in question.  Debates on trans* issues (or at least those being protested) are often ones about whether trans* people should be accommodated within society — whether in womens’ spaces, in the health care system, in institutions like prisons (in which trans* women are often incarcerated with men or serve out entire sentences in solitary confinement), or in public spaces in general.  Other arguments are be about whether or not trans* people are mentally capable of determining who or what they are, and whether that self-determination should be respected, rather than treating them as deluded dupes who should simply be disregarded (or grateful for no longer being institutionalized and/or lobotomized).  And when it comes to sex workers, the debate is about whether they should be allowed to exist at all.  These are not merely polite academic discussions. They directly pertain to trans* people and sex workers, and potentially affect their lives.  There is much at stake.

Opinion columnists and speakers today do not usually make generalizations about or flippantly taunt most marginalized people.  This isn’t because they fear the dreaded banhammer, but because we as a society have learned enough about many minorities to realize the need to show a little decency, empathy and respect.  And if that line is crossed, the public usually understands the outcry.

Freedom of speech is not simply a question of saying anything that one might wish to say, but instead comes with a responsibility to face consequences when others call out attitudes that need to change.  This calling out is precisely what is taking place when trans* people and sex workers protest the failures to extend the same balance, empathy and respect to them.  While censorship may not be the ideal outcome (and violence or threats are unacceptable), outrage is often the only response that gets heard.  And perhaps debating a minority’s rights without that minority having a significant voice in the process is becoming something that is no longer reasonable.

The authors of Sunday’s letter have failed to realize that crass invalidation, ridicule and indifference already stifles conversation, thus maintaining a status quo in which trans* people and sex workers remain the stuff of lurid sensationalism, cheap stand-up comedy, and demonization. Defending it all by crying freedom of speech abdicates any responsibility to be conscientious about the harm one does to entire minorities.  It is also blissfully ignorant about the imbalance that exists between the reach of these speakers, versus the dearth of trans* and sex worker voices in mainstream discourse to act as a counterbalance.

And that risks becoming a case of “a little free speech for me, and a little shut-up-and-take-it-like-a-man for you.”

(Crossposted to The Bilerico Project)

Sodom: Review of a Russian Anti-Gay Documentary

On Tuesday, October 28th, Peter LaBarbera re-entered Canada for an immigration hearing, then to speak at an anti-LGBT conference, and finally on Thursday to face charges for mischief (which stem from an arrest while distributing anti-LGBT leaflets at the University of Regina).

LaBarbera (nicknamed “Porno Pete” by bloggers because of his penchant for filming pride parades and gay BDSM events in the name of “research”) has returned to Canada at the invitation of Bill “Anal Warts” Whatcott (so nicknamed because of his fondness for distributing graphic depictions of anal cancers and other deliberate shock leaflets).LaBarbera was briefly detained, searched and questioned by Canada Border Services — or as American social conservatives call it, persecuted by “homofascists.” In the process, though, border services did seize a DVD copy of the Russian anti-LGBT documentary, Sodom.  As the film is available to view in English on YouTube, LaBarbera and Whatcott proceeded to show it at their conference, anyway.

Personally, I’m not a fan of censorship. I realize there has to be a limit to propriety, and not just when someone advocates for mass-murder.  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion didn’t actually call for Jews to be put to death, for example, but it created such an inflammatory environment that violence became inevitable.

But given that LGBT people are just as at risk of being silenced in the name of propriety (maybe even for giving people snarky nicknames), I’m still not keen on censorship. Part of the whole reason for LaBarbera’s visit is to strategize about how to bring about a Russian-style “gay propaganda” ban in Canada, after all.

So, I still prefer to let people speak freely, and once they’ve had enough rope, show people what they’ve done with it.  And in that vein, I bring you:

Sodom: The Review

And yes, it will be triggery.

Sodom first aired on Russia’s government-funded Rossiya-1 station in September.  It presents itself as a sensational expose* of the sinister gay rights plot to forcibly transform society into one that accepts any and all evil, while eradicating truth, freedom, religion and decency.

You might think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Sodom was originally filmed and written for a Russian audience that had already been scared into an anti-LGBT frenzy resulting in incidents of violence noted worldwide.  This furor was accomplished by speakers like Scott Lively (who appears many times in the film), who conflated LGBT people with pedophiles, and claimed that the Nazi party started out as a gay plot.  Lively’s activism resulted in a ban on “gay propaganda,” which is essentially anything that can be seen as LGBT-positive (or perhaps even acknowledge their existence in a non-condemning way), in any environment where children might hear or see it.  In this context, Sodom is able to fearmonger unchallenged, and get away with all sorts of wild claims.  In Russia, the film received high ratings and was critically acclaimed.

But it’s a bit different for a Canadian audience: people who have coped with LGB(t) human rights for over a decade and lived with same-sex marriage since 2006 without descending into a stylish shock-troop cavalcade.  Canadians largely (with exceptions) didn’t mind having to coexist with LGBT people or do business with them in the past few years… although that’s starting to change now that Americans are framing it as a violation of principle that’s going to send them (and all society) to eternal damnation.

But belief is a powerful persuader, which can goad the faithful into ignoring all evidence and reason, in favour of conjectures, no matter how grand.  Although I refuse to dignify far right homophobia and transphobia as being a “Christian” perspective (because certainly not all Christians espouse it), it should be recognized that leaders like LaBarbera and Whatcott still manage to frame it as such, and that can have a strong influence on people who view it as their duty to believe.  Those people don’t have to question God if they don’t want to… but they should most certainly question the people who claim to be speaking for him.

I don’t speak Russian, so I can’t say how much of the English translation of Sodom was polished up for a Western audience.  I am under the impression that very little was changed, if anything.  Which is surprising, because if any film needed to sweep its extremes under the translation rug, it was this one.

Sodom’s producer, Arkady Mamontov, previously gained notice for implying that LGBT rights caused the Chelyabinsk meteorite explosion.  He hasn’t stopped seeing queer-caused calamities since then.  In Sodom, Mamontov makes several weird or inflammatory claims:

• LGBT people are repeatedly conflated with pedophiles within the film, and homosexuality is claimed to be inextricably interwoven with child molestation.  There is a suggestive undercurrent of this throughout the film, nudge-nudge-wink-wink, but at times, the narrator is also far more explicit.
• “Sodomites pay attention to mysticism and different symbols,” we are told.  With jump-cuts of historical artworks and occasional allusions to rites, the film tries to artfully connect LGBT people to devil worship without actually saying it out loud.  Because that is apparently seen by the filmmakers as the limit of believability.
• LGBT people are said to have conspired to rewrite the Bible, in order to make scripture accommodate them (rather than simply critically re-examining the clobber passages).  In the western world, apparently everyone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans* (LGBT) owns a copy of the Queen James Bible.

Language is crucial in Sodom.  It’s quite clear that the film translators much prefer the term “sodomites” to describe LGBT people.  It ties into the title of the film, and is keyed to keep the focus on sex acts in the hope that doing so will make viewers uncomfortable or outraged.  Likewise, trans* people are referred to as “transvestites,” lesbians referred to as belonging “to a new sex tribe,” and when all else fails, “perverts” will suffice. The idea of “mama and mama” is made to seem puzzling, bizarre, disgusting and scandalous.

In the early scenes of the film, Scott Lively explains that Russia is at the first stage of gay activism: “Well, let me explain how this works.  There is a five-stage process of cultural conquest.  Five steps. It begins with a request for tolerance.  Once the gays have achieved tolerance — and tolerance is just the right to be left alone — then it’s a demand for acceptance, and acceptance means equal status.  Then comes celebration — that everyone must accept homosexuality and promote it as a good, valuable thing.  Then comes forced participation: everyone must participate in gay culture.  And then comes punishment of everyone who disagrees.”  LGBT people must not be even tolerated, he argues, because that’s the first step that leads to everything else.

“The average American is not in favor of homosexuality,” Lively claims.  “But they are afraid to speak publicly about it, because the gays have so much power and they can do harm to those people.  Most people are vulnerable to some sort of intimidation, especially if they are in any position of influence, or in the media spotlight.”  Lively welcomes the initial nod of an agreeing taxi driver as evidence… though the driver later seems to change his mind and want to be left out of the discussion (“no, no”) but is creatively edited to appear as though he’s simply gesticulating.  Moments later, in front of the office building occupied by the LGBT establishment organization, Human Rights Campaign, Lively says “they are trying to declare that homosexuality is a human right. And they’re devoting massive amounts of money to promoting this agenda around the world, instead of addressing genuine human rights.”  The HRC is apparently such a monolithic fundraiser that poor, underfunded churches can’t keep up the opposition.

Next, the film makes a stop at London’s Tavistock Institute of Human Intelligence, which during World War II was exploring “new methods of psychological war, not only against fascist Germany, but also the Soviet Union.”  Tavistock is said to have conspired with the CIA to create the MKULTRA project, for the purpose of manipulating people.  While Canadians may see this as an aside, to a Russian audience, the suggestion is planted that England is still engaging in psychological warfare against them today.  Naturally, the producers find someone “who knows a lot about this” apparently super-secretive institution, Daniel Estulin, who claims that the Tavistock Institute “is the place which created and later imposed on the consciousness of European youth such cultural accents as ‘free love,’ orgy, and civil marriage.”

MKULTRA did indeed experiment with hypnosis, behaviour modification, physical and sexual abuse, LSD, and sensory deprivation.  There have also long been claims that Tavistock contributed to the program.  But in Estulin’s estimation, MKULTRA was really a “fifty- or hundred-year plan” to normalize homosexuality and sexual liberation, “literally to change the paradigm of modern society.”  The film also alleges that “the psychological components of the Ukrainian Revolution — chants, behaviour models, slogans — were also created here.” Estulin cautions that the endgame is “genetic manipulation to eliminate memory,” and warns that after lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans* people are accorded equality, “… then you can have transhuman.  You can have post-human.  You can have man-machines, such as the Terminator.  You can have cyborgs.  You can have beings that are not totally human as a result of synthetic biology, because today you can literally create a human being in a laboratory.” And frighteningly enough, I guess, they might all want human rights.

The filmmakers also pay a trip to The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, where the segment opens with the clinic doctor bragging that they’ve become world-famous for being able to choose a boy or a girl.  Here, they examine LGBT parenting by taking viewers through the clinical process of in-vitro fertilization, complete with ominous music, in a way that is meant to create a chill over the cold sterility of the process.  They make repetitive claims that gays always want boys and lesbians always want girls (and of course, there could be no alternate explanation for that, nudge-nudge-wink-wink): “Green is genetic disorders, like Down’s Syndrome, or they have a genetic problem. Okay? But most of them have boys and girls.  The male gays want boys, and the female gays want girls,” the clinician generalizes with a large grin that is lingered on, suggestively.

There is ample film time spent on Pride parades, as the film editors cut in every example of nudity or garish costumes that they can find, interspersed with footage of kids and teens in attendance.  BDSM folks turn up frequently, and some of the footage looks like it actually comes from the Folsom Street Fair, in a way that makes one wonder if Porno Peter LaBarbera was behind the camera (alas, I can’t find the film credits, or I’d check).  “Aren’t you afraid your child would want to become like them?” The narrator asks one parade onlooker, being careful to stay within the perception of choice and whim, and avoid any thought that sexuality could be something intrinsic and individually-rooted.  “Naw,” is the reply, “we actually want to encourage him to see everything, everything in the world…”

“Sodomites unconsciously understand that what they are doing is wrong,” the narrator assures us, as the camera searches the crowd for any expressions that could seem sad, scared, or otherwise negative.  “However, on the surface, everyone makes an effort to express joy,” he adds, coming up short of appropriate footage and needing an explanation.  Then, they do their level best to depict children of LGBT people as unhappy, ashamed or even terrorized… rather than simply intimidated by being in a large crowd with so much activity taking place.  “The child’s soul feels that everything around them contradicts nature’s law.”

Surrogacy is the next focus of attention.  Remember that Russia is currently debating banning out-of-country adoptions and / or adoptions by LGBT parents.  “Where there is no woman,” the narrator asserts, “there is no continuation of life.  But sodomites try to bypass the laws of nature.  Large sums of money are spent on exactly this: mother-mother, father father.”  At this point in the film, IVF and surrogacy are both portrayed as human trafficking.  “The sodomites have paid for and received living goods for their money.”  The film returns to the assertion that gay parents want only boys, and lesbians want only girls: “for what?  Perverted acts?”  Naturally, a pair of men in New Zealand that subjected their adopted child to heinous abuse and were convicted of molestation are now given ample screen time, and portrayed as evidence that this is the norm.  They allege by extension that all children of LGBT parents are brainwashed into covering up abuse and “to think that this sort of behaviour was acceptable.”  The surrogate mother in this case had been Russian: the intended lesson is clearly that western LGBT people are taking advantage of Russian mothers to provide exploitable children through adoption.  IVF is even framed as a genocide in which one child is created but many others are destroyed.  “It’s an unnatural process.”

Sodom also takes aim at a lawsuit against a florist, Baronelle Stutzman, who refused to sell flowers to an LGBT couple.  Because of the gay mens’ intolerance and ignorance, we are told, Stutzman is likely to lose her house and her business.  Viewers are manipulated into tears and rage at the thought that the special right to have equal access to goods and services has trumped the perfectly ordinary, everyday, sensible right to deny someone else exactly those things.  “But why are the rights of all the other people violated in the light of the first?” the narrator later asks.

There is an undercurrent of discussion about neocolonialism that infuses the film — or more honestly, one that hijacks the discussion of neocolonialism.  There are plenty of examples of anti-LGBT conferences and meetings with religious and political leaders by people like Scott Lively, and it is actually American groups’ homophobia that has been trying to change Asian, European and African nations through fearmongering and lobbying.  But the film reverses this so that the American government is portrayed as deliberately promoting homosexuality around the planet, “as plague, as cancer.”  Yet corporate globalization, militaristic interference, and widespread espionage are not identified as colonial problems… only homosexuality.  One Moldovan political leader relates how his attempts to ban a pride parade resulted in a stern talking-to from an American-connected diplomat.  How fascist.

Later in the film, prison rape takes centre stage, with abuses in Gldanskaya (a Georgian prison) that are claimed to have been directed by an American puppet dictator and inspired by Abu Ghraib.  The abuses are portrayed as a deliberate attempt to spread homosexuality through non-consensual torture.  “There was one goal: to break, diminish and humiliate.”  They later add, “the same thing awaits people who aren’t accordant with the regime in Ukraine.  The pro-American regime will use the same methods in jails and prisons.  There are currently thousands imprisoned from Kiev to Odessa, and only God knows what is being done to them.”

As the film winds to its conclusion, it presents Russia’s law banning “gay propaganda” as the solution, warning that any insufficiently condemning representation of LGBT people is dangerous.  Father Mikhail, prior of the Saint Georgiy temple in Tblisi explains: “Everything begins with a harmless character in a movie or a sitcom.  This man is obviously homosexual, but he is funny, witty, and then it stops.  He disappears.  Then another film, then a few more.  It’s like a poison in small doses.  It won’t do anything to you right away.  But with time it gets bigger and stronger, and the tolerance of the system weakens, accepting it more and more each time.”  It underscores Father Mikhail’s point with visions of HIV and gay BDSM.  “Russia occupies one of the leading positions” in restoring order, the narrator says.  “The law banning gay propaganda, a return to traditional values, and the strengthening of the faith of the nation… all this postpones the end of times.”

What separates Sodom from something like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (aside from the choice of minority group that is targeted) in a place like Canada is the context.  Here, everyone has a friend, or a family member, or a co-worker who is gay or lesbian, or bisexual, or trans*.  There is a familiarity that is comfortable.  There are certainly people who are closed-minded to LGBT rights, or are susceptible to a feeling of culture shock at social change, or don’t know (or don’t care to know) any of the issues LGBT people face… but for the most part, Canadians recognize people as people, and don’t feel all that threatened when those people fail to adhere to rigid cultural hegemonic expectations.

The situation is far different in Russia.  Fewer people know LGBT persons, and with the “gay propaganda” law and potential for violence driving them further into the closet, the next generation is far less likely to have any familiarity with them.  In this environment, Sodom is a tinderbox, ready to ignite.  In this context, Sodom cannot help but trigger violence and rage.  There isn’t even the usual lip service to loving the sinner but hating the sin.

LaBarbera and Scott Lively have formed the Coalition for Family Values specifically for the purpose of bringing Russia-inspired laws banning gay “propaganda” to western nations:

“The Coalition for Family Values will be encouraging our current and future affiliates throughout the world to lobby their own governments to follow the Russian example. While the LGBT agenda has seemed like an unstoppable political juggernaut in North America and Europe, the vast majority of the people of the world do not accept the notion that sexual deviance should be normalized. It is time that these voices are heard on the world stage before the so-called elites of the Western powers impose their inverted morality on everyone through the manipulation of international law, which they clearly intend to do…”

And that starts with eliminating LGBT-positive portrayals and human rights protections.  But they’ll have the public believe that they are the true victims of a colonial and fascist agenda.

So now you know.

(Crossposted to Rabble.ca and The Bilerico Project)

Our destinies are bound together (even if our needs are diverse and sometimes at odds)

Monica Roberts at TransGriot is exploring the future of the trans* movement:

“One of the things I was pondering recently was triggered by me seeing a pic of a five year old trans girl.  I began to ponder what her Trans World that we 2K10’s activists are fighting tooth and nail to shape, would be like 10 to 20 years from now…”

Blogger apparently won’t accept a comment this long, so I’ll post my thoughts here instead:

Any time we try to wax prescient about a social issue and its future, we have to be careful not to forget the pendulum effect of social progress.  We have a period of great strides, then a stage of regression, then more advances.  I believe Dr. King understood this before anyone in human rights movements, when he spoke of the arc of the moral universe being long but bending toward justice: it is glacial, and fraught with forward-then-backward strides, but it eventually inches forward.  The trans* movement is definitely in a forward swing, no doubt about it, but eventually we’ll hit another backward slide before advancing once again.

But it’s also crucial to see our own social movement as part of a much larger picture.  More on that in a moment.

Trans* communities still have a few more years of forward motion, no doubt.  The far-right religious persecution complex is unconvincing, and the longer washroom panic is touted but fails to manifest in actual harm, the faster that tactic evaporates.  If Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERFism) manages to change some of the thinking within feminism, that contraction could come sooner, but I don’t believe it will, unless we play too eagerly into TERF persecution games.  More likely, that contraction will happen because of changing priorities.  Something more urgent will come to the fore, and we’ll once again be seen as a 0.01% -sized minority… and that will trigger the next stagnation or regression.

We also have to keep in mind that social movements have a horrible track record of turning on their own, as the difficulties of earlier generations becomes forgotten.  I see a time coming when youth (not this particular generation of youth, who are fighting pioneering battles of their own, but perhaps the generation that comes after them) start being unable to understand how it could have been so difficult to come out or why people would have waited until their late 30s, 40s, 50s or older to begin transition.  And with we older folks being more ravaged by incongruent hormones (especially for trans women, since testosterone is such a vicious chemical), lookism will become a serious issue, as well as greater inter-movement criticism about socialization (sometimes deserved, sometimes overstated).  There will inevitably be a new quest for the “appropriate face” of the movement, as if such a thing could exist, and increasingly those who pioneered progress for trans* people will become seen as a liability to that.

There is a bright side, though, which is found by looking at the larger picture.  Social progressives have reached a wall.  The corporate, religious and political worlds have merged into an oligarchic monolith that we cannot face any other way.  In order for *any* social movements to progress in the larger scheme of things, there has to be a coming together, and getting away from colonial / umbrella-style thinking so that we can all rediscover what it means to be an alliance: that it’s not an assimilationist melting pot, the borders of which need to be rigidly policed and people either belong or they don’t (we keep trying that and failing), but rather a critical mass of varied and unique individuals who all deserve a voice and (the harder part) who all also need to listen… and who stand together for mutual advancement, equitably.  Feminism, racial justice, environmentalism, labour rights, sexual minority equality (LGBTTIQQA2S, as well as poly people, sex workers and other emerging groups), issues of global climate change, reproductive rights, classism, privacy rights and personal liberties (as opposed to neoliberalism), the rights of the disabled, the rights of youth (as opposed to parental ownership), economic justice… in the near-term, all of our destinies are bound together, even if our objectives differ and sometimes even conflict.  The political left is going to have to decolonize if it is to survive.  It will take time, but the need will be for everyone to have a seat at the table.  We no longer have the luxury of infighting… it’s time to either work this stuff out, or else to put the differences aside.

Those lessons will be hard.  The lesbian and gay establishment is still learning that it cannot speak for trans* people, but rather need to empower them.  Some pockets of feminism, likewise, remain too blinded by dubious data and an ideology that says that all sex work is inherently victimizing to actually listen to sex workers when they speak out about what will either harm or empower them.  It’s seductively easy to slip into patronizing condescension and predisposed belief than to listen to and learn from profound lived experience.

It’s also difficult to get others to care about an issue without ceding “ownership” of the issue.  One can’t say labour rights “is an LGBT issue” in a way that means that LGBT people should be dictating what labour needs — but one must still recognize how the systematic dismantling of labour harms the economically vulnerable (including many LGBT people), and amplifies inequality in a deep and systemic way.  Social movements usually see things as an all-or-nothing endeavor: either we own it, or we don’t have an obligation to care about it.  That has to change.  Incrementalism is a lie and steals fire from true, substantial change.  Individual movements must let go of the “us first” impulse and start seeing “everyone together” as the goal.

In these ways, social movements might almost ever be stumbling recklessly toward unity.

So as much as things like lookism will surface in later generations for the trans* movement, it will be mitigated by the larger evolution of social movements.  And as much as TERFism might seek to alienate trans* people from the feminist movement and the greater conversation about gender, it will similarly be mitigated by this.  Exclusion will be a lesser factor (eventually).  Learning to look inward and deal with our own biases and challenge ourselves to rise above them will be the next (and probably much harder) step.  And it will be absolutely necessary.

It also won’t be complete or perfect.  Social movements have a horrible record of backlash and subterfuge, mixed with self-sabotage.  So it all might fail.  Oligarchism might siphon off individual movements one at a time and absorb them.  The lesbian and gay establishment are already vulnerable to this, for example, given the classism that infects the hierarchied LGB(T) establishment.  It is here that the lateness of trans* empowerment and the emergence of poly folks, sex workers, asexuals, et al could prove a saving grace, and in which the LGB community’s gradual (stumbling) learning of how to support trans* people without trying to speak for them could provide lessons for changes to come.

But other assimilations could still be on the horizon.  If the energy industry did a public about-face (for whatever motive), for example, it could possibly absorb the movement against global climate change.  If that resulted in substantial reduction to the harm humans do to the planet, that would be great, yet I could see this sort of a time coming: environmentally-conscious alternatives become available and harnessed by the corporate sector, but the change will require wealth, and those who can’t afford to adapt are seen as the real / new menace.  In this way, people who once lobbied against oil and gas become suddenly not able to afford the progress they fought for… one more way to keep the masses turned upon each other.

Each time the co-option of a movement happens, it steals progressives’ fire, and a movement toward critical mass to address oppression on a grander scale could fail.  Society is at a pivotal time.

And as the political world polarizes, militarizes and veers into mass espionage, that could bode badly overall for social movements, which have historically been viewed as radical and threatening.  So the political pressures will be very much against a coming together of progressives.

And the greatest fear of all is that the general public is remarkably and tragically apathetic.  Just getting people to vote is a difficult task (and that’s if they’re allowed to under growing suppression).  If progress is to happen, it needs something to motivate people in a grand way: not just to scare people about how bad things are getting (which there’s already plenty of, and can be demotivating of itself), but to inspire people with a new vision of how things can be.  That vision is still being formulated.

So that’s the lens I look through.

Returning to trans* communities, the science will improve, certainly.  As Monica says, we’ll see advances in surgical options, probably the biggest leaps deriving from cloning.  Surgical advances on genital-specific health care are more challenging for trans* people, though, because it’s not just about a penis or vagina: the surface stuff can almost be done now (not quite for the guys, but the technology is almost there), but a lot of the inner biological infrastructure will take longer.

Additionally, we might discover the biological triggers (I suspect there’s more than one) that contribute to (as opposed to exclusively cause) someone being trans* — and that could be a mixed blessing of its own, depending on what that future generation decides to do with that new information.

The human rights advances will continue in the west, although Asia and Africa will take longer.  If the social-left decolonizing of activism I wrote of earlier happens, this will significantly help in those regions, as much of the anti-LGBT sentiment there has gained traction because the political right figured out how to hijack the language of decolonialism and mask their own colonial aims.  If the left comes together, the deceptive spin will eventually fail, and LGBT people will become properly recognized as the oppressed class rather than as a potential oppressor to fear.

The backlash to that will be that the political, corporate and social right will seek to dismantle the human rights mechanisms themselves: human rights commissions, rights laws, diversity policies… all of that will be framed as no longer relevant (i.e. “racism is over” / “feminists are the real oppressors,” etc.) and an impediment to the nation’s best interests (a slier way of saying corporate and religious interests).  That’s a looming fight we’re just seeing emerge right now.  We’re winning a lot of the battles, but the war is shifting to a new and larger front.

I apologize for that sounding preachy, something that is certainly not helped by referring to the royal “we.”  I know we have our own individual limitations.  We can’t do everything.  Living in rural Alberta now, I’m very conscious about how much less I do and can do than before, so I don’t say any of the above with judgment.  It’s simply my limited, fallible observation.

Push, pull, forward, backward.  And gradually, we’ll get somewhere.  But it will be rocky.

The Shocking Dr. Levin

The long, twisty and sordid legal saga of Aubrey Levin has finally come to an end.  Originally found guilty on three counts of sexual assault in January 2013, Levin’s five year prison sentence was upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal, Wednesday.

The case has garnered international attention, due to the Calgary psychiatrist’s past as a military psychiatrist in apartheid-era South Africa. It is often alleged that during this time, he was affiliated with or led a project aimed at “curing” soldiers of being gay, by subjecting them to electroshock therapy or worse — allegations he continues to deny.

The 2012/3 Trial

It is important to separate what was said to have occurred in South Africa from what he was charged with in Calgary, in the interest of clarity.

Levin was charged with 10 counts of sexual assault (one was later stayed), after an initial accusation in March, 2010 inspired as many as 22 former patients to come forward with allegations of abuse, in incidents dating back as far as 1999.  Levin was convicted on three of those counts and acquitted of two, with the jury deadlocked on another four (two of those four were retried, but that too resulted in a mistrial).  In the process, Levin’s wife Erica was charged with attempting to bribe a juror (and that case is ongoing).

The 2010 charges stem from incidents in which Aubrey Levin was said to have fondled patients’ genitals.  The first patient to have come forward was so concerned about being believed that he used a spy camera to record multiple sessions.

In his defense, Levin said that he was not fondling patients, but using a urological technique called bulbocavernosus reflex (BVR) procedure, which is used to address erectile issues.  In one of the videos, though, Levin is seen fondling the patient’s genitals for more than ten minutes, causing Calgary-area urologist Ethan Grober to dispute this claim, saying “What I saw was a prolonged … fondling of the penis.  This was not a simple elicitation of a reflex.”  And even if the technique could be characterized as a BVR test, there was no logical reason that Levin, a psychiatrist, should have been conducting it.

Levin’s trial was a circus of delays and confusion.  The length of time taken to bring him to trial was unusual in the first place — 2 1/2 years, while police followed up with several former patients to determine how many charges could be laid.  From the beginning, Levin’s attorneys sought extended delays because of health issues.  The first was a request for 3-month respite so Levin could get his fragile health in order.  Calgary Sun reporter Kevin Martin elaborated:

Two doctors testified Levin was in such poor health that he needed to get in shape before he could sustain the mental and physical strain of what was then to be a six-week hearing.

They said that perhaps in three months, should Levin be given the chance to rehabilitate his degenerating body, he’d be able to survive such an ordeal.

Had they seen Levin leaving court after his conviction — to a gauntlet of news cameramen — they might have thought his recovery miraculous.

Using his wheeled walker as more of a weapon than a crutch, the good doctor raced at the photographers with the agility of a much younger man, forcing those with cameras to evade being struck.

As that request failed, there were questions about Levin’s mental health, and claims of vascular dementia (Martin noted: “But once he was declared fit, Levin became a new man, taking notes and instructing his counsel”).  Then, a drop in heart rate precipitated a medical emergency for which he was briefly hospitalized.  Then, he fired his lawyers and began to represent himself.  Then, he seemed unable to represent himself (certainly unable to cross-examine), and a new legal team needed to be found.  The judge had to consult with the jury whether they could remain through the extensions, and there were fears the proceedings would collapse if they couldn’t.  All in all, the trial that was expected to last six weeks had been deferred from August 19th, 2011 to October 10th of the following year, and wrapped up three and a half months later.

In addition to attempting to undermine the credibility of his former patients, a key part of Levin’s defense was to claim that the things that happened between them were consensual (we’ll come back to this point), and then were later mischaracterized or maliciously distorted by his accusers.  It’s an argument that he and his legal teams argued successfully enough to achieve an acquittal on two charges and a mistrial on four others.  In this way, his case became difficult to prosecute even beyond the circus-style atmosphere of the trial.

Levin’s defense tried to cut down the complainants’ testimonies by focusing on their records or troubles, by accusing them of having ulterior motives (including one claim that they were motivated by money), or even alleging that the complainant who recorded the abuse had made passes at Levin, and then edited those parts out:

“I’m going to suggest to you … that portion of the video shows you taking out your penis and waving it at the doctor,” Archer said.

During the trial, all effort was made to keep Levin’s past from playing a part, but occasionally revelations slipped out.  On November 15, 2012 the Calgary Herald reported (page now offline):

R.B. said Levin would take down books from his shelves and show him “pictures of penises and vaginas. He would show me different parts that were sensitive for sexual acts.”

“Other times, he would tell me about his past, when he was in the army, forcing men to rape women,” he said.

Immediately, Wister cut off the witness and asked Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Donna Shelley to dismiss the jury. Following discussions, Shelley recalled the jury and told them that there will be inadmissible evidence heard in the court room and it should be disregarded.

“Not everything you hear will be admissible,” said the judge. “To the extent (R.B.) has said anything not relevant to what happened between 2001 and 2010, it is not relevant to these proceedings. It is not evidence. Disregard everything not related to these charges.”

Authorities feared that a complete mistrial was inevitable if the jury heard too much of the shocking nature of allegations made about his years in South Africa.

The Aversion Project

What has drawn international attention to this case is that Aubrey Levin was said to have led the South African military project in the 1970s and 1980s designed to “cure” military recruits of being gay — a program that allegedly included things like shock therapy (for which Levin was nicknamed “Dr. Shock”), chemical castration, and even forced genital reassignment surgery.  While there are no mentions of Levin or the Aversion Project by name in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final reports, it’s generally accepted that something of an indeterminate nature took place at Ward 22, Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital, Pretoria.

The National Post had originally raised questions about these allegations, but quickly retracted them after Levin threatened to sue.  Other media took notice and avoided mentioning Levin’s rumoured South African activities over the years that followed, although this did not deter international publications like The Guardian in the U.K. and South Africa’s Mail and Guardian.

When he came to Canada, Aubrey Levin did not apply for amnesty — nor was he granted it — so he could have been subpoenaed to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission… but TRC never chose to make the attempt.  While the allegations were raised on record, there was also considerable frustration among the public that the TRC did not pursue the line of inquiry.  For example, in the Health and Human Rights Project (HHRP)’s verbal submission on day 2 of the Health Sector Hearings on June 18, 1997, the group expressed some frustration that the Aversion Project was not being focused on:

“After those comments I just want to digress a little bit and particularly for the benefit of the lawyers who’ve trooped into this hearing, I think we, as the [HHRP] Project, want to register our concern for this whole process which has led to a situation where many of the cases that we have brought to the attention of the Truth Commission we cannot actually name the particular health professionals involved. We are not going to name those health professionals but we feel it is really a travesty of the process of truth to arrive at a situation where we cannot speak openly. We fought for many years for a situation where people will be free to speak the truth and it seems that legal mechanisms have been invoked to limit the extent to which the truth could be disclosed. We would like the TRC to take note of that, particularly the fact that as far as the Project was concerned we were able to supply the TRC with the names of the doctors as far as we understand within the required time.

“Just in that regard we can talk about the kinds of cases we would have discussed…

“We also raise issues around military health personnel and we particularly want to challenge the SAMS whose presentation yesterday did not touch on any of the issues that we’ve raised and I think Commissioner Ramashala has certainly posed the question to them, but we have presented evidence regarding programmes which involved the re-programming, the use of aversion therapy for gay men in the military and we believe that these cases require further investigation, and the TRC, we would hope, would follow up in that regard.”

The South African Press Association (SAPA) described the shock therapy allegations raised by the HHRP in 1997:

The HHRP said Levine was first named in a December 1986/January 1987 edition of the War Resister, a publication of the Committee of SA War Resisters.

According to the publication, Levin was chief psychiatrist at the military hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte near Pretoria in the 1970s, when he practiced aversion therapy with gay conscripts who were admitted to the psychiatric ward.

Electrodes were strapped to the arms of the subject and wires leading from these were in turn connected to a machine. The subject was then shown a picture of a naked man and encouraged to fantasise freely.

While he was doing this, he would be subjected to electric shocks.

“The increase in the current would cause the muscles of the forearm to contract – an extremely painful sensation,” the article said.

When the subject was screaming with pain, the current would be switched off and a colour Playboy centrefold substituted for the previous pictures.

“The pscyhiatrist [sic] (in most cases Levine) would then verbally describe the woman portrayed in glowing and positive terms. Sessions were held twice daily for three to four days.”

The HHRP said although the subjects had to give their consent, most were between the age of 18 and 24 and were still coming to terms with their sexualtiy [sic].

It said the practice of aversion therapy appeared to stop when Levine left the hospital.

The last comment is curious, as Aubrey Levin has denied participating in aversion techniques — yet some of the allegations seem to point to him having championed them.  The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE, now known as the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project and which asked for a commission to investigate the medical torture allegations) claimed to have:

two boxes of papers documenting the 1968 Immorality Amendment Bill. Item B106 is an eager letter from a loyal member of the ruling, pro-apartheid National Party who claims to have successfully ‘treated’ homosexuals and wants to be invited to address the all-white Parliament on this subject. The letter is signed by Dr. Aubrey Levin, “medical practitioner and psychiatrist in training.”

What is widely alleged is that as a colonel in the South African military and chief psychiatrist in Pretoria in the 1970s and 80s, Levin was in charge of a unit where electric shocks were administered to “cure” gay white conscripts. Levin was also claimed to have overseen the use of electroshocks and powerful drugs against conscientious objectors refusing to fight for the apartheid army in Angola or suppress dissent in the black townships.  From The Guardian:

Levin also treated drug users, principally soldiers who smoked marijuana, and men who objected to serving in the apartheid-era military on moral grounds, who were classified as “disturbed”.

Levin subjected some patients to narco-analysis or a “truth drug”, involving the slow injection of a barbiturate before the questioning began. In an interview with the Guardian 10 years ago, he did not deny its use but said it was solely to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Levin said he left South Africa only because of the high crime rate, and denied abusing human rights. He said electric shock therapy was a standard “treatment” for gay people at the time and those subjected to it did so voluntarily.

“Nobody was held against his or her will. We did not keep human guinea pigs, like Russian communists; we only had patients who wanted to be cured and were there voluntarily,” he told the Guardian in 2000.

Aubrey Levin Comes to Canada

In the dying days of apartheid in South Africa, anxiety was high about the nation’s transition to full democracy, about whether the transition of power could remain (mostly) peaceful, and about what the implications could be for people of authority (especially if English or Afrikaaner) under the old regime.  In 1994, a general election was held amid car bombings and other scattered violence, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was proposed. The inquiry would commence the following year.

Whether or not he left South Africa because of fears of crime as he claimed, amid that tide of change, the colonel and chief psychiatrist at Ward 22 in the Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital in Pretoria (and former head of psychiatry at the University of the Orange Free State) did what anyone afraid of uncertain consequences might do: he fled to a place that he felt was most friendly to his worldview, and most willing to look the other way about anything he might be alleged to have done, regardless of whether those allegations were true or not.

And so, before he could be called to testify at the TRC, Aubrey Levin fled to Canada.  There, after a brief stint as regional director for the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, he became a professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Calgary, and established a practice at the Peter Lougheed Hospital.

Canadian media continue to fear looking at the Aversion Project, due to the fact that the allegations remain untested in court.  But in looking at this past, some patterns emerge.

“Consent” and the Clinic

The Daily Mail and Guardian published a 132-page study entitled “The Aversion Project,” although it is now difficult to find it archived online.  In that report, we find the one peculiar link that does in fact connect what happened in South Africa (whether Levin was involved or directed the Project, or not) to the incidents of abuse in Calgary for which Levin was charged: a gross distortion of the idea of “consent” within a clinical setting in which patients didn’t genuinely have an option on whether to consent, and little to no information about what they’d be subject to.

The medical profession is reputed for pathologising any form of behaviour. For example, it is known that the military has a history of doing sex change operations— many sex changes were done in Military hospitals. One has to ask to what extent this was experimental. (Workshop 1999) Although in any medical advancement there is always a cutting edge of experimentation, in total institutions there is a captive audience. The question then reverts to one of ‘informed consent’ and whether the choices people are given are limited because they cannot say ‘no’.

In any total institution, one has a captive audience, and the medics have protective insularity through their profession, so the environment is open for abuses to take place. Therefore special care should be taken not to abuse people’s rights. The Bill of Rights perspective should not only be applied to homosexuals, but seen in a broader light. There is the problem of marginalising groups again, but on the other hand the issues of the minority group should remain visible.

In a July interview for the Mail and Guardian for that study (now offline but referenced by the Gully), Levin was said to have admitted participating in aversion therapy, but denied some even more shocking allegations of forced gender reassignment.  The Gully articles claimed that former army surgeons estimated as many as 900 surgeries took place (a number that seems to come from journalist Paul Kirk and writer Terry Bell, although it’s not certain if this number includes chemical castrations or other medical procedures that differ from contemporary sex reassignment).  It’s important to repeat that Levin has never been publicly charged with any of the things alleged here, and rumours and allegations should not be confused with convictions.

When Levin has referred to treatments administered at Voortrekkerhoogte, his claims that the treatments were given to consenting patients may seem true from his own perspective… if one overlooks the participants’ situational vulnerability, the lack of information given to them, and the many various things that they could be threatened with — dishonourable discharge, outing to families and communities, the potential for trumped up charges, rewards for co-operation, and even the manipulation of internalized homophobic guilt, stigma and shame (which would have been much more common and seemed more monolithic in the context of the 1970s and 1980s).

The question of whether one can consent when the subject is a captive audience is a profound (though circumstantial) link between the Aversion Project and Levin’s Canadian convictions.  Even if he were simply present at Voortrekkerhoogte during the practices that the Aversion Project is known for, the application of those practices could have provided Aubrey Levin with the strategies to carry out his later abuses in Canada.  And to him, they might have all seemed technically “consensual.”

The Captive Audience

The power disparity, too, cannot be discounted.

I’ve never been to Calgary’s Forensic Assessment Outpatient Service (FAOS), but I am familiar with its Edmonton counterpart, Forensic Assessment Community Services (FACS). FACS was the downtown clinic that dealt with many of the city’s “hard” cases — people who needed medication to manage psychosis, who were ordered by the courts to undergo psychiatric evaluation, who got into trouble and couldn’t afford reputable help, who had no money or community supports, or who had been referred by hospitals after attempting to self-harm.  In Edmonton’s clinic, it was also one of the two clinics in the Province of Alberta that treated transitioning transsexuals… so I became amply familiar with it.  It was a space thick with desperation and rage, a high-security clinic where the waiting room would at once be awash with tension and hopelessness and fear.  One had to be buzzed into the back where the therapists offices are, often escorted. I hesitate to portray the clinics too negatively, because many of the people there have been held down by poverty and strife, and sincerely try to rise above the circumstances that resulted in their treatment.  The clinicians, too, are often dedicated to their work, even if the extension of one hand in empathy is balanced with readying for conflict, with the other.  Yet, the setting can’t help but feel oppressive.  Some of the doctors were burned out; others had an intense dedication to their work, but the circumstances in which they practiced left them hardened, jaded.  When one is at a clinic like FAOS or FACS, it’s often because they have no choice, whether legal, economic or otherwise — one has nowhere else to go, and usually has several hoops to jump through in order to access the care that ones life is dependent on, in some way.

People are particularly vulnerable in a place like FAOS and FACS, and often not very respected when they go into care.  There are often conditions at every step, such as required follow-up reports to probation officers, or else subsidized housing or income (such as Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped support) are dependent on continued treatment.  It’s also a setting where small gestures easily put one into a dependence scenario.  In a clinic like FACS or FAOS, a therapist is in a position of control from which he could threaten to withdraw his support for a patient’s social assistance, or even terminate care in a way that would land them back in jail.  And although outside of the mandate at FAOS, it’s certainly possible that a therapist could increase patients’ dependence by providing some food or loose change — as happens, in that setting.  This was all in addition to the intimidation patients would experience by the visible respect forensic therapists had within the psychiatric and legal communities.  It’s obvious to me why the original complainant felt he had to record the sessions more than once in order to be believed by authorities (and why prosecutors found the trial particularly difficult).  When a therapist takes someone to the private examination room, they could be more or less helpless to do anything other than play along.  From the testimony of RB, the complainant (his name is under a publication ban) who secretly filmed two visits, and who was seeing Dr. Levin by court order:

“I didn’t know what to do, because I knew Dr. Levin could send me to jail by the snap of his fingers,” the man said.

“Now that I think about it I think he would say that I was delusional.

“I was scared that they would tell Dr. Levin that I said that … he would deny it and I would be in jail, or a straight jacket — who knows.”

Whether or not anything regarding Aubrey Levin’s alleged association with The Aversion Project can ever be substantiated, the overlapping similarities between those things that are known provide some important lessons.

What remains to be seen is whether anyone hears and learns from them.

(Crossposted to The Bilerico Project)

Uganda passes its Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Uganda has passed its Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.  A Parliamentary spokesperson, Helen Kawesa, has confirmed it.  The bill now goes to Ugandan President Yowari Museveni, for a signature. Museveni previously said he was not in favour of the bill, but he can’t stop it constitutionally — only delay it at best.  In 2012, Parliamentary Speaker Rebecca Kadaga had promised to pass the bill as a “Christmas present” to her people, following a vocal exchange with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird at a summit in Quebec City.

The bill gained international notoriety in 2009, becoming commonly known as the “Kill The Gays Bill.”  At its inception, the bill contained a death sentence for a number of situations.  Proponents of the death sentence characterized it as applying to pedophiles and HIV-positive persons, erasing that it also applied in cases of “serial” homosexuality.

The version that was passed contains a life sentence rather than a death sentence, in these cases.  Uganda’s New Vision has published a copy of the text, and reports that an amendment to reduce this to a 14-year sentence was voted down.  A coalition of LGBT advocates reports that the life sentence amendment is the only one that had been made to the controversial bill, while the Daily Monitor indicates that MPs also passed a motion to thank the Speaker for the “gift.”

The bill also bans advocacy for LGBT people, and criminalizes anyone who fails to report them to authorities.  Provisions (which had been dissected clause-by-clause at Box Turtle Bulletin) include:

• A definition of “homosexuality” which is so vague that almost anyone could be convicted of it;
• A definition of “aggravated homosexuality” which is overly-broad, and includes “serial” offences;
• A weird “intent to commit” clause that could open any physical contact to interpretation;
• A financial incentive for people to accuse others of trying to seduce them;
• The targeting of friends, family and landowners for aiding / abetting LGBT people, for failing to report LGBT people, and for renting a room to LGBT people;
• The criminalization of advocacy for or even defending an LGBT person with a sentence of 5 – 7 years; and
• The criminalization of anyone who fails to report in under 24 hours anyone who is gay, who witnessed a same-sex wedding (it’s unclear if said wedding had to occur in Uganda), who rents a room to a gay person, and more, with a sentence of up to 3 years.

UPDATE: According to Box Turtle Bulletin, some of these clauses may have been amended after all.

Anti-LGBT legislation has become popular in Africa and Russia because of sensitivity to colonialism, which has been exploited by right-wing western organizations.  These groups have portrayed affirmation of LGBT people, HIV relief and LGBT-positive education as imposing homosexuality on those nations.  Ironically, LGBT people have always existed worldwide — it’s the extreme right homophobic worldview which is in fact being exported to these nations.  In Political Research Associates’ report entitled Colonizing African Values – How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa, researchers noted:

“Homophobia proved a powerful rallying point for many established leaders on the continent… These leaders found they could earn easy support from religious factions, while winning nationalist votes for denouncing the West as neocolonial.

Africans working for U.S. rightist groups also lodge the charge. Human Life International’s regional coordinator Emil Hagamu praised the Ugandan parliament as “typically African” for promoting the “Kill the Gays” bill. “It strives to protect African traditional and cultural values against Western encroachment in areas such as homosexuality and same-sex unions…”“

When Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, clashed with Ugandan Parliamentary Speaker Rebecca Kadaga at the 2012 Inter-Parliamentary Union conference, it was this claim of colonialism that was threaded through Kadaga’s response.  This claim makes it difficult for the international community to support LGBT Ugandans, without further fuelling the hatred toward them and providing seeming validation of the claim of colonialism.

This blogger has proposed that the most effective way that North Americans can address this tactic is to call out the religious organizations which are fomenting anti-LGBT hatred worldwide, and to also challenge those who support them to explain themselves.  One such challenge was issued to the Canadian website LifeSiteNews (LSN), which has provided ample publicity and a forum to Human Life International (HLI), one of three significant organizations fueling hatred in Africa identified in Colonizing African Values.  Since that challenge, LSN has not replied, but contributions by HLI have diminished, while those by HLI offshoots, like the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) have multiplied significantly.

Other Canadian far-right personalities have previously expressed support for Uganda’s and other pieces of anti-LGBT legislation, although they’re not known to have meddled in Africa in the ways that HLI has, or provided connectable support in the same way that LSN has.  REAL Women of Canada (RWoC) recently lambasted John Baird for his support for LGBT people in Uganda, and the current and former leaders of the Christian Heritage Party have supportively portrayed the Anti-Homosexuality Act as a bill that would curb the spread of HIV.

Another reason that anti-LGBT hatred has been focused on Africa has been the large amount of HIV relief aid funding available in the region, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) fund provided by the US. Of PEPFAR’s 2009 figure of $285 million spent in Uganda, the only recipient organization which assisted the highest risk group (gay males) was the Most at Risk Populations Network (to the tune of $5000).  The remainder went to religious organizations that teach abstinence-only principles.  Under the Anti Homosexuality Bill, groups like the Most at Risk Populations Network would be illegal and their leadership could be imprisoned for up to 7 years for “aiding and abetting homosexuality” — thus making the most in-need population completely ineligible for the funding (groups that provide support to sex workers are also banned from PEPFAR funding, due to an amendment passed by US Congress). By stirring up anti-gay hysteria and pushing for laws like Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the extreme right has found an opportunity to have virtually exclusive access to billions of dollars in AIDS-related relief funds — not for condoms, but to proselytize in the guise of abstinence-only education.

John Becker reports at The Bilerico Project that earlier this week, Nigeria has also enacted several anti-LGBT provisions, mostly phrased around same-sex marriage (which is already illegal there, anyway):

But the bill goes far beyond marriage, imposing 5-year prison sentences for a host of activities including providing services for gay and lesbian couples, public displays of same-sex affection, and LGBT rights advocacy of any kind.

Homosexuality is already punishable by up to 14 years in prison, in Nigeria, and 12 Nigerian states are even known to apply the death penalty.  Nigeria’s latest law is probably most clearly understood as a misinformed anti-colonial gesture, as well as criminalizing LGBT advocacy.

(Crossposted to rabble.ca)

Trans kids, washrooms and the new harassment

On October 13th, a story appeared at the Christian Broadcasting Network about girls being harassed by a trans youth in the washroom of a Colorado-area school.  Soon afterward, the story was picked up by the Daily Mail, the Examiner, FOX News, and several webmedia outlets.  One even embellished it with a claim that the girls were threatened with hate crime charges).  After a few years of using the spectre of a fabled bathroom predator to scare people about the prospect of human rights law inclusion for trans people, it almost seemed like the far right was clapping with glee at finally having found one.

Except that it wasn’t true.

Almost immediately after the story broke, it was debunked, and some media — including the Daily Mail and the Examiner — had retracted it.  This was because Transadvocate’s Cristan Williams contacted Superintendent Rhonda Vendetti, and was told that:

“This is one parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the media because they weren’t getting the responses that they hoped they would get from the district, from parents of students at the high school, or from the board and myself. So I think it’s just an attempt to elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be drawn to that in the hope of having a different outcome. But to our knowledge and based on our investigation, none of those things have actually happened. We do have a transgender student at the high school and she has been using the women’s restroom. There has not been a situation.”

That hasn’t stopped the story from spreading like wildfire, including at least one Canadian far-right website.  With Bill C-279 proposing to add gender identity to Canadian human rights legislation now winding its way back through the Senate, it will almost certainly come up again.

CBN’s report originated with a far-right ex-gay group called the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a group which has been actively fighting against a recently-passed law in California, AB 1266, which provides protections and accommodation for trans students. Along with several other anti-LGBT groups, PJI is trying to mount up a petition effort similar to the Proposition 8 campaign, to put this law on the ballot and ultimately repeal it.

JPI is continuing to insist that the student in question (who is not being named) was harassing other girls in the washroom.

Because the student was there.

After the original story was debunked, PJI’s spokesperson wrote that:

“It is our position that the intrusion of a biological male into a restroom for teenage girls is inherently intimidating and harassing…”

Transadvocate has continued to document PJI’s changing talking points and positions and grilled the group’s spokesman, staff attorney Matthew McReynolds, in an interview. From these, we discover that PJI’s statements on the issue involve a lot of playing with language, such as using the fact that the student has recently started transition (and is therefore in that awkward phase in which her gender expression is interpreted differently by different people) to claim that she appears sometimes as female and sometimes as male — as though she’s switching back and forth at whim.

TA also interviewed the family of the teen at the centre of the controversy, to finally get her side of the story.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that she has been the target of threats since the controversy first began.  But it’s not all bad news, either.  Several schoolmates and their families have stood up for the student, as well:

A female student from Florence High School who wished to remain anonymous said “[PJI is] so pathetic. My mom asked me about this whole thing when she saw it on the news, and I told her. She even said they were being dramatic.”

In a printed letter to the editor in the town’s local paper, the Canon City Daily Record, a woman named Dara Hoffman-Fox wrote to say, “This is a local teenager whose life has been turned upside down by just a few people who fear what they do not know.” The letter went on to say that PJI’s story “has since been proven false and media outlets around the world are providing apologies for having printed [false accusations] without having the facts confirmed. Sadly, the damage is done.”

Additionally, the students of Florence High School have organized their own group to support [name withheld].

Debunked or not, the issue is likely only to intensify.  The battle over California’s AB 1266 is bringing out rhetoric like one campaigner’s assertion that trans student accommodation is “the most dangerous bit of legislation against the child and against family than any other in the history of the United States,” and petition gatherers are deliberately misleading members of the public, while collecting signatures.  One religious leader is even accusing the teen in Colorado of “raping, at least visually, these teenage girls” by being present in a locker room… no actual malfeasance required.

And transphobic groups are starting to follow that lead, and portray any instance in which trans women in womens’ spaces as being harassment or disturbing people, regardless of whether or not the person in question actually did anything.

Simply existing and traveling about in public is the new harassment.

And portraying a trans teen as a predator is somehow accepted as not.