Sunday Times 2
The cool reality of gay marriage – and what that means for Asia
Point of View
Great things are happening in world social dynamics – West of Suez. These developments can be described as progressive for the Western hemisphere; how they are viewed by the rest of the world depends on how tradition-bound other world communities are, or insist on being.
COLOMBOSCOPE Curator Tracy Holsinger. Pic by Nilan Maligaspe
Gay Marriage has to be the most revolutionary social phenomenon ever. Who would have dreamed in past millennia that one day men could legally marry men and women wed women? How this truly extraordinary turn of affairs would have been viewed by the great gay personages of the past can only be imagined. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would have looked on with amazement and perhaps registered cautious, secret satisfaction. The brightest and wittiest comments would have come from Oscar Wilde, the one-and-only.
Gay marriage is a fact in many European nations, and now across North America. The US Supreme Court decision on June 26 to permit gay marriage in all 50 American States was a globally clarioned event. Whatever America does is of great interest and significance to all, and the gay marriage bit will be something for anti-gay communities – most of them based East, South and directly North of Suez – to chew on for years.
Here in Sri Lanka, the gay community – or more correctly the broader community of Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) persons – knows that this country is still roughly in the Stone Age on gender matters. Homosexual acts are criminal under a creaky Victorian law that persists in many Commonwealth countries, including Sri Lanka and India. Britain, which set the law in 1885 for the UK and its far-flung territories, decriminalised same-sex relationships in 1967.
Gay, or LGBT, rights was the main theme for discussion last Sunday evening, at a refreshingly open, open-air event organised under COLOMBOSCOPE 2015, the annual Art-Literature-Community Affairs event that grows in strength and range and force with each passing year. This year COLOMBOSCOPE has surpassed itself.
Gamely titled “Metro/Sexual”, the two-hour programme, which rounded off all the weekend’s events but the in situ contemporary art show inside the Rio Hotel (the exhibition ends today, the 30th), was a mix of theatre and panel discussions, all revolving around Sri Lankan and Sri Lankan urban perceptions about sex and human relationships, gay and straight, “right” or “wrong”.
The platform was the abandoned swimming pool of the Rio Hotel, which was looted, gutted, burnt in Black July 1983. The audience sat on the empty pool’s sloping floor and raised sides, and the performers performed at the deep end. It was a surreal setting for a surely vital expression and exchange of ideas on Sex and Sexuality, subjects most Sri Lankans avoid if they can. Shyness and prudery had no place poolside on that occasion.
Sri Lanka, along with Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, participates in an LGBT health and rights programme coordinated by RFSU (Swedish Association for Sexuality Education) and supported by SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation). Photo: rfsu
Frankly and fearlessly, programme curator Tracy Holsinger introduced the theme of the event, taking the first plunge, as it were, into the deep end of sexual politics in Sri Lanka. The big question was the law in Sri Lanka. Legally, men who have sex with men have committed a criminal act. Do we act to have the law struck off, or do we sit back and do nothing? Play passive, so to speak?
Those who thought LGBT activism here is mostly about Rainbow-tinted beach carnivals and parties were surprised to learn that a lot has been done by lobbyists, who keep coming up against a blank wall when they approach the authorities about LGBT rights and the law. \
A panel member speaking on behalf of LGBT action group Equal Ground said many attempts have been made in the past two decades to approach liberal-minded politicians and community leaders to talk about gay rights reform, to no avail. Custom, tradition and religion are obvious obstacles, just as they are in India. Heterosexual boning is the “norm”, and any deviation is wrong, so they keep saying. Gay bonding belongs to the decadent West, so the enlightened argument goes. Politicians and social leaders sympathetic to the LGBT cause are reluctant to stick their necks out for fear of image-damage.
A lawyer in the audience said the closest LGBT lobbyists got to talking to the authorities and resolving to work on the issue was in 1995. That was 20 years ago. Nothing has come of it since. LGBT activists say they refuse to see Sri Lankan coyness about LGBT issues as an insurmountable hurdle.
Sri Lanka is picking up with lightning speed after the War, and working 24/7 to catch up with the rest of the progressive world. Law reform and the securing of LGBT rights are well in sight. METRO was the first key word of Sunday’s event. It asked us to think Metropolis, Metropolitan, City Folk. It’s the City Folk, Metro/Sexual implied, who are expected to take note and make things happen. It’s the City Folk who should be saying it’s time for change. They are the educated and privileged. They travel, send their children to the best city schools and for study overseas; they sit before their TV and computer screens, link up to the rest of the world, and absorb global trends and developments. City Folk like to think of themselves as game-changers – forward-thinking, progressive.
On June 26, when Sri Lanka’s City Folk switched on and saw Barack Obama at a press conference sharing the euphoria of America’s LGBT community, describing the same-sex marriage ruling as “COOL”, and saying how pleased he was to see the White House bathed in the signature rainbow colours of the international LGBT Rights Movement, what did our City Folk here think? At another media meeting, the US President said it was gratifying to know the law now recognised that “love is love”, whether it be between man and woman, man and man, woman and woman.
Our City Folk who know a lot of things know that LGBT in Sri Lanka is perceived largely as an exoticism, a rare imported hothouse orchid, fine for other climes but not ours. The truth is that LGBT has been flourishing on our soil for as long as anyone can recall, in secret, in the past, and now somewhat in the foreground.
The truth, our thinking City Folk know, is that LGBT is a 21st-century reality, a fixed quantity in any social milieu, anywhere in the world. Like it or not, accept it or not, it is a 10 Percent Reality – some pitch the percentage much higher – that will in time have to be understood and accepted. Waving a wand won’t transform that 10 Percent Reality into thin air. Guys and Gals, LGBT is here to stay. LGBT was here all along; it is only in recent years that LGBT has been making itself visible and audible.
Why cannot Sri Lanka take the lead among Asian and Southeast Asian countries in LGBT rights affirmative action? Such a move would present this country in a positive, progressive light.
Of Commonwealth countries that could be following Britain’s lead in LGBT action but aren’t are Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam. The former British colony Hong Kong may well be the example we need to study and follow. As a British territory for a century until 1997, Hong Kong was subject to British law, including that against male homosexuality, which had a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for convicted persons. Since the ’70s, there had been public debate on the subject, and in 1991, overnight is seemed, the law was struck off. There was nothing further to debate on whether or not to align homosexual orientation with human rights principles. Done. We remember Hong Kong radio and TV covering the reformed legislation. It caught the public rather by surprise, but no objections were heard.
Perhaps that would be the way to go in Sri Lanka. Putting the matter up for public consultation or debate would be to put LGBT in perpetual limbo. LGBT activists need to get back into action, appeal to liberal minds, and push for change.
COLOMBOSCOPE 2015 organisers, programmers and curators should be congratulated and thanked for bringing LGBT back into focus, and with energy and creativity. The atmosphere on Sunday evening was tremendous – receptive, empathetic, participatory, involved. After the show an excited and enthusiastic audience member was heard to say, “Boy, that was one progressive event.”
The LGBT community in Sri Lanka needs outspoken folk like Tracy Holsinger and the participants of Metro/Sexual to show and lead the way.