The following appeared in today's edition of The Globe & Mail newspaper, in an article titled "Let's Be Clear–the World's Not Split Over Gay Rights," written by Doug Saunders.
I hadn't thought about this, but it's worth consideration.
The condemnation of homosexuals is not part of the cultural traditions of Russia, Uganda or most of the countries that have taken an anti-gay turn in recent years. Russia has had fairly robust gay-rights laws on its books in recent decades. The new anti-gay cultural movements haven't emerged from widespread public belief–rather, they've largely been imported by mainly U.S.-based Western conservative and Christian groups that have made it a mission to prevent same-sex equality in the developing world now that their efforts to do so in their own countries have failed. [p. F2]
I wasn't going to share this quote from the same article, but I will, because it leaves this post on a more uplifting note.
...[In the West, specifically North America and Europe] there's been a startlingly swift and uncontroversial shift of mainstream public opinion recognizing gays as being simply another legitimate category of being human (rather than an illness, an abomination or a "lifestyle choice?). [p. F2]
And so we are–simply another category of being human. Nothing more and nothing less.
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