LGBT+ Rights: Acceptance Is The Way Forward
Inoka Shankini
Malek was granted the award for the best male actor at the recently-held 2019 Oscar Awards. He was starring in the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” based on the biography of well-known singer Freddie Mercury.
Apart from his profile as a talented artist, Freddy was known in the public domain as being a bisexual person. Rami’s award, in this sense, could be considered as an example of the jury being conscious of recognising the portrayals of non-heterosexual people in mainstream cinema. If this is the case, this award can serve as an inspiration to many LGBT+ people across the world, especially to youth.
Let’s start with a basic question. Is there something ‘special about being a homosexual person? Is being gay a threat to society? Is ‘gayness’ an addiction? What can we say about heterosexual peoples’ attitudes towards gay people?
It has been discovered that a person’s sexual orientation is mostly defined by the section of one’s brain that contains hypothalamus. Some researchers show that the sexual orientation is determined by biological factors that even precede birth. People do not decide who they are attracted to. Therefore, therapy ,correctional/conversion treatment, or persuasion are totally useless. They do not sere to change someone’s sexual orientation. Parents and families in Sri Lanka take note, forced marriages have zero impact on ‘changing’ someone’s sexual orientation. It only leads to a life of sadness and despair, and in the case of most cis women, non-consensual sex which amounts to blatant abuse by a male husband. In fact you also cannot turn a person gay or straight. To give but one example, exposing a cis boy to toys traditionally made for cis girls such as dolls, simply do not lead a cis boy to become gay [it might help him become, later in life, an affectionate and considerate human being, especially if and when he decides to be a father]. Almost all of you probably started to develop an awareness of who you are attracted to, at a very young age. This does not necessarily mean that you had sexual feelings, just that you could identify the people you found to be attractive or likeable. Many people say that they knew they were lesbian, gay or bisexual at a young age, in some cases even before they hit puberty. Taking these living realities into consideration, why do people interpret sexual orientation as an abnormal behaviour or worse, a mental illness?
The majority of people, especially in countries like ours, live lives that are divided on many counts, on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious beliefs and so on. What many people forget or ignore is that in the large majority of cases, these are attitudes that were ‘imposed’ on people at birth, by their own parents and families. Very few people ever bother to critically evaluate these inherited beliefs and viewpoints that they take for granted. But be that as it may, why should people harbour futile phobias on other people and their private lives?
In most developed, multicultural and cosmopolitan countries around the world, homosexuality is perfectly legal. This includes, in most cases, full rights to marriage, civil partnerships, having children, an and laws that protect people from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. In the South Asian region, our own big neighbour India took such a forward step last year, when the Indian Supreme Court repeated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a British law that was violating the fundamental rights of Indian citizens. The decision of the wise judges of the Indian Supreme Court made headlines across the world.
Let’s be honest. It is a known fact that sex between persons of the same sex/gender has long existed in certain ‘religious’ structures and institutions [including in Sri Lanka]. There is a large number of celebrities who are known to be gay. Many politicians are known to be gay. In Sri Lanka, it is also a known that a ‘Brahmachari’ person who made invaluable contributions to raise awareness on Sinhala nationhood and Buddhism during British colonialism happened to be a gay man.
Just like in many countries across the world, Sri Lanka is also home to very negative views towards the LGBT+ community. The main harm was done in British Ceylon. Homosexuality is illegal under article 365A of our Penal Code. This means that same-sex/gender couples have no access to any form of legal recognition. Many sexual minorities have to face high levels of social harassment and violence. This does not come as a surprise, when the First Citizen and the Head of State of our ‘Democratic Socialist Republic’ personally takes on the role of a homophobe, and insults members of the LGBT+ community and elected gay male politicians with words such as “butterfly”. If the worldview of the Head of State is that much pathetic, how on earth can we expect more positive perceptions from the general public?
