The Global Sociology Blog

“President Lech Kaczynski of Poland: for denying people respect for their family. Kaczynski and his allies – including his brother, the former prime minister – have campaigned for years to deny basic rights to Poland’s LGBT people. In March 2008, in a nationally televised speech, Kaczynski railed against ratifying the European Union Reform Treaty, which would adopt the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. He claimed that provisions in the charter prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation would force legal recognition of same-sex relationships. He used film clips of the Canadian marriage ceremony of the US couple Brendan Fay and Thomas Moulton to warn of the “dangers” of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Fay and Moulton spoke out against how the president exploited their relationship. Eventually, they visited Poland to send a message that their marriage was a promise and affirmation, not a threat to others. Kaczynski is only one among many public figures worldwide who attack LGBT people’s families for political ends. In Guatemala in 2007, Congress debated a bill to eliminate single-parent or other non-nuclear families from the definition of “family,” and bar same-sex couples from any form of legal recognition. A proposed measure in Romania would define heterosexual marriage as the basis of the family, depriving many Romanian families of basic civil rights. In the name of protecting a particular model of the family, such measures deny innumerable families desperately needed protections.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda: for denying people privacy and security. In August 2007, after a coalition of LGBT organizations in Uganda launched a campaign called “Let Us Live in Peace,” the government showed it had no intention of doing so. Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo publicly called homosexuality “unnatural”; while dismissing claims that police harassed LGBT people, he warned, “We know them, we have details of who they are.” The deputy attorney general called for the arrest of gays and lesbians, “because homosexuality is an offense under the laws of Uganda.”

LGBT Ugandans have faced official harassment for years. In 2005, authorities raided the home of human rights defender Juliet Victor Mukasa and forced her into hiding. Government officials have censored media discussions of homosexuality and threatened to respond to any advocacy for LGBT rights with prison terms.

A colonial-era sodomy law in Uganda punishes homosexual conduct with life imprisonment. Worldwide, over 85 countries criminalize consensual homosexual conduct. Such laws give governments like Uganda’s a pretext to invade people’s private lives and deny them an essential right: to live in peace.

Home Office, United Kingdom: for denying people protection. People fleeing countries where they face abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity often face asylum systems that fail to recognize the reality of their persecution, despite clear legal obligations not to deport individuals to countries where they are at risk of torture and abuse. The recent ordeal of the Iranian asylum-seeker Mehdi Kazemi, who in 2007 faced deportation from the United Kingdom to Iran – despite laws imposing torture and the death penalty for homosexual conduct in Iran – points to how the UK Home Office is failing to implement its human rights responsibilities. In 2008, Lord West of Spithead, Home Office minister in the UK House of Lords, said: “We are not aware of any individual who has been executed in Iran in recent years solely on the grounds of homosexuality, and we do not consider that there is systematic persecution of gay men in Iran.”

“An asylum system where only the dead are found deserving is an asylum system that does not work,” said Long. “Human rights law demands that those who face persecution be given protection, but persecution does not require corpses to prove it.”

Human rights law forbids deporting people – including LGBT people – to places where they risk torture and serious abuse. “