Waiting to exhale

Today, May 17, is the International Day Against Homophobia, or IDAHO. This is observed in at least 30 countries worldwide, including the Philippines. Unlike the LGBT Pride Day, which focuses on proudness of one’s sexuality, IDAHO seeks to raise the visibility and awareness of struggles around the world to combat and eradicate the pernicious consequences of homophobia. Homophobia itself is shameful and it has to be fought openly.

This year’s observance of IDAHO is significant because 2008 is also the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was the first international document to define and outline a universal and inalienable set of human rights that every person–regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression–is entitled to.

Many governments have reformed their own laws to stop discrimination against LGBT: South Africa, many European governments, and South American countries like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, among others. A document called the Yogyakarta Principles was issued by international human rights experts and this outlined the range of rights LGBT people are entitled to under international laws.

Unfortunately, homosexuality is still criminalized in more than 80 countries. LGBT people are vulnerable to violent acts that are often uninvestigated and its perpetrators remain unpunished. Discrimination in many sectors is rampant, affecting access of LGBT to health care services, education, and employment.

Homophobia is an insiduous force that rears its ugly head in all aspects of our lives. It can come in the form of a direct confrontational, often violent, encounter or in the guise of friendship and concern for somebody else. I have previously written about the homophobia of G and L, two Filipina ladies I used to know here in Phnom Penh. After writing that particular post I struggled with my decision to remain friends with these 2 homophobes because I believed that they were basically good people. However, events have proven that they were conniving and manipulative and deceptive and, well… suffice it to say that they were not the good people I believed them to be, so I am just utterly relieved to have rid of their treacherous company. 

Which makes me wonder: can a homophobe ever be a good person? Or does homophobia connote a lack of character that makes a person ‘good’? As of this writing, I have no answer to this question.

Like I said, homophobia manifests itself in many situations. When I visited Singapore a while back, there wasn’t any shortage of gay-oriented bars and massage parlors to visit for hook-ups and what-not. But Singapore’s Health Minister openly directs his vitriol to the gay community for allegedly driving the HIV epidemic in the city state. In Cambodia, there is no Khmer word for homosexual. MSM is used as an umbrella term to include gays and transgenders. Lesbians are virtually invisible. This impedes their access to education, employment, and healthcare, and increases their vulnerability to discrimination–within the family and the community at large.

In the Phillipines, the medical staff of a government-run hospital recorded a video of a surgery involving a perfume canister inserted into the anus of a gay man without the patient’s consent and then posted the video on YouTube (my respect for the victim prevents me from placing a link to the video). The video showed the medical staff cheering and jeering as the canister was being removed, one even shouting, ‘Baby out!’ The other people present in the operating room shot photos and videos using their camera phones. Two doctors and a nurse have been placed under preventive suspension by the provincial Department of Health.

Admittedly, in the last 60 years, there has been some progress in promoting, protecting, and upholding the human rights of LGBT people.  But we still have a long way to go before we can stop holding our breaths and being able to savor that air of freedom and equality with the rest of the world.