Savour Milk

Credits: http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/festival/fp10/presimages/HarveyMilk.gif

If you missed the Pope’s latest message of love and peace a few days ago, I will try to capture one of the essences. The Pope rightly reminds us that it is not only humanity’s responsibility to safeguard the “earth, water, and air as gifts of creation”; we must also ensure that the “order of creation” and the “nature of the human being as man and woman” be respected. Any “devaluation” of that order will lead to the “self-destruction of man”.

The general media is right to quickly jump to the conclusion that this is the latest attack on homosexuality, something that the Pope had earlier labelled as a "tendency" towards an "intrinsic moral evil”. In the true spirit of Christmas, the message of brotherhood, love and peace continues with His Holiness’ call to “defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity”, and to defend “the nature of man against its manipulation”. According to Benedict XVI, modern conceptions of “gender”, so “often expressed and understood”, has led humanity astray, driving man to “act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him”, even if it means “living contrary to the truth”. So much for his Orbi et Urbi speech a few days later proclaiming that “hope – the heart of the Christmas message – is meant for all men and women” and that “the grace of God has appeared to all”. The words and emphases are His, not mine.

It is sad that such a message comes out of the mouth of one of the most influential religious figures, who is supposed to be God’s representative on Earth. And this coming three decades after the first openly-gay American politician Harvey Milk was cold-bloodedly assassinated.

Milk’s political career and rise is wonderfully captured in the movie with the same name. A somewhat soft-spoken man, he ran for office from his little camera shop on Castro Street of San Francisco. He mobilised the gay community and gay-friendly businesses and associations, galvonised workers’ unions and ethnic groups on a liberal platform. Milk’s campaigning would become a grassroots and integrated political process that championed not only equal rights for homosexuals, but also social welfare for the disadvantaged and marginalised. After a number of elections, he finally became a city supervisor. During his term in office, he spearheaded the passage of a gay rights ordinance in San Francisco, despite the fact that all throughout the US various counties and cities were rolling back equal protection of rights to work and privacy for gays.

America in the 1970s was marred by Christian fundamentalism. In the aftermath of various bans on same-sex marriage in various states of the US in November 2008, it is perhaps striking to draw parallels with America of then and today, which is similarly lead by a (neo-)conservative political force buoyed by a strong religious right wing. Then, with the likes of Anita Bryant, the ‘Save our Children’ campaign aimed to spread “Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation”. Today, through similar Bible thumpers and orthodox religious fundamentalists, such fabrications of truths and false propaganda are still being perpetuated and sanctioned with people’s blind faith in God. The spreading of fear about threats to core family values, myths about the “gay plague” and the “corruption” of children is used to startle and scare. It would be only a matter of years before people ‘came out’ to reveal the hypocrisy and “true nature” of priests who on the one hand preach against homosexuality and condemn child abuse, yet on the other hand commit such ‘sins’ behind the altar.

In messages and words similar to Obama today, Milk emphasised hope, and the need to give people hope. It is hope that can lead peoples previously sidelined and forgotten to unite and believe that change is possible. It is hope that can transcend the imaginary boundaries of sexuality, gender, class and race to forge an unstoppable force connected with shared longings for equality and social justice. It is therefore no wonder that Time proclaimed Milk one of the 100 most influential persons on the 20^th Century.

Shortly before Milk was assassinated, he uttered these bold words:

“If a bullet should go through my head let that bullet go through every closet door.”

Indeed, as the bullet pierced through his head that took his life, the bullet symbolically opened the doors of many previously closeted gays and lesbians. The assassin, a political rival of Milk, was left off lightly. An anti-gay jury agreed that junk food caused chemical imbalances in the perpetrator, and this defence was enough to lower the sentence to five years imprisonment for manslaughter.

Milk’s death, and his life of political activism, however, set an example for other gay-right activists to follow, and set a precedent for the gay-rights movement. Milk’s refusal to be silenced or to admit defeat when the country seemed to be against him, were based on that firm belief enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence: that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

I end where I began, and return to the enlightened message that not only the current Pope, but also many before him, have repeatedly brought across to millions and millions of believers, young and old.

Lest you have forgotten, salvation comes to those who does the Creator’s work, and lives by the Creator’s rules—despite the fact that this same Creator, His very grace and benevolence, are supposed to have appeared “to the whole of humanity”. Though the Creator has created all men equally, the Pope kindly reminds us that the perversion of sexuality and sex is a great threat to the human race—a s great a threat as global warming and the continued destruction of the Earth’s fragile eco-system. If we do not recognise and deal with these threats, we are on a path to self-destruction. We must live the Truth, and defend the message and one and only “nature of man and woman” that our Creator has willed and created. That is the work and responsibility of the devout and the true.

This kind of message is also the seed of discord, intolerance, and wilful ignorance that has led to countless crusades, inquisitions and the spreading of despicable acts and words of violence and hatred in the name of religion.

Nothing says it best, or better, than Milk’s own words—or perhaps warning too: “That, THAT my friends, is true perversion”.

Gay crimes on the rise

Interesting news on crimes against gays back in the Netherlands.

In the past two years I have reported on an increasing intolerance towards gays or those suspected of being gay. Some of these crimes take place even in the pink-districts of cities like the self-proclaimed Gay Capital of the World, Amsterdam. This is not helped by the Christian-right government, which at one point (wrongly!) said it was safe to deport gay Iranian asylum seekers back to their own country.

In the past two days, two reports have "come out" that try to pinipoint the cause of gay-related crimes, but arrive at contrary conlcusions.

The first is a research conducted by the University of Amsterdam (called "If only they will keep off of me, "Als ze maar van me afblijven"), focusing on the city of Amsterdam. Basically, the report concludes that the overwhelming majority of crimes against gays are committed by 'allochtones', or people from an ethnic minority background, and of this minority, the Morrocans are a majority. This more or less confirms what's generally the perception of the average Dutchperson, especailly since its often regurgitated by (rightwing)politicians and the media: that crimes against gays are committed by minorities (in the Netherlands, Moroccans tend to be the scapegoats, for this and everything else that's wrong with the country).

The report concluded that perpetrators are 36% whites, and 64% people of colour (36% Morrocans). Contrary to popular belief that ethnic minorities go gay-bashing because of cultural or religious motivations, the report concluded that more often than not gaybashers feel a conflict/threat to their “masculinity”, and a “good” way to express “manhood” is to beat up a gay. Part of the reason for the increase in crimes towards gays, according to the researchers, is poor education in school about issues such as homosexuality and coming out. Most surprising of all, gays are forced to “adapt” their behaviour and lifestyles in violence against homosexuals because they are afraid of being subject to violence.

Part of this report is worth quoting at length (translation mine):

"

“2001 was the highpoint for homo(sexual)-emancipation: with the opening of marriage for couples of the same sex, [with] an imam who, due to his anti-gay pronouncements, will be referred to the police by almost all politicians, and an openly homosexual politician (Pim Fortuyn) who gained many votes, also among groups with anti-homosexual perspectives. No wonder the generally shared opinion was that homo(sexual) emancipation was complete. Unfortunately, it appeared that legal [equalisation] did not imply social equalisation, and the hetero-normativity did not disappear with the introduction of homosexual marriage.

Many gays and lesbians say that they have the feeling that it is becoming unsafe for them […] All sorts of institutions play a role in the marginalisaiton of homosexuality. To be clear, from politics and the media there are many calls of support for homo(sexual)-emancipation. The condemnation of discrimination of and violence towards gays and lesbians is loud and clear. Those pronouncements sometimes have a highly rhetorical calibre as well. Instiuteions do not always do what they promise. […]

It is clear that there has in recent times much attention for tolerance of homosexuals. […] these are important gestures, but they appear not to reach the perpetrators of anti-homo(sexual) violence. Hetero-norms and gender-dogmas are so deeply ingrained that such initiatives are inadequate to effectively tackle the source of anti-homo(sexual) violence."

The second report was releashed by the Dutch Ministry of Internal and Royal Affairs, and was compiled based on police records of gay-related crimes throughout the country. The government report on violence towards gays in the first half of 2008 (released on 17 November), attributes a shocking 86% of perpetrators are “autochtone” (or native white people), compared to 14% non-whites. A third of violence towards gays is verbal/written (internet), while 28% is physical, and around a quarter is in the form of threats or intimidation. An overwhelming 89% of victims are males, 3% females and 1% transsexuals (the remaining just people who happen to be at the wrong place). Interestingly, most of the perpetrators commit violence acts against gays in groups (46%) and 39% are men working alone. Only in big cities, like Amsterdam, are the gay-related crimes committeed by a higher proportion of ethnic minority groups.

State of (in)security

All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this [...]—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler [...]
1984, George Orwell

I was born into a world of 1984.
A special year.
And a special read.

It was, and is to some exten world where "Big Brother" constantly watches, where fun and sexuality is suppressed, where suspicion is the new religion, and where the Party controls all thoughts and all movements. There is one truth, and that is a manufactured truth packaged and sold through the media. There is one lie, and that lies in the power of resistance, of individuality, which cannot be tolerated in the utopian society of sham freedoms and suppression.

But people are told, and reminded again and again, through propoganda, through torture, through confinement, or worse, that "Slavery is Freedom", that "War is Peace", that "Ignorance is Strength". In the name of security and unity, we are subject to fear, to distrust one another, and the 'Other', and to place our utmost faith and commitment to the State. Only then can we are one. Only then there is peace. Only then there is freedom. Only then there is strength.

You would think what I just described is a distant world, far away from the comforts of our consumerism and civil liberties we take for granted. Perhaps, you would think the state of 1984 exists in certain 'undesirable' country belonging in the Axis of Evil. But the United States, and many Western countries are getting close to such a State of (in)security. In an age of terror, and the all-out 'War on Terror', nothing seems unjustified. Nothing seems illegal. Basic rights, held so high for so long, defended and affirmed repeatedly in triumphs for individual freedoms, are slowly being eroded. Encroaching our liberties, a goliath of a State, with as its overreaching and overarching security measures, agents and bureaus as its limbs.

And the situation is no more different in Canada. Draconian measures are slowly being put in place, and a secret service that few within and with-out Canada know of is at work. The victims? Foreign-born minorities generally, and Arabs or Muslims more specifically.

The story of Adil Charkaoui is telling, and disturbing. An ordinary Permanent Resident originally from Morrocco, who has been living in Canada with his family since 1995. One day in 2003, he was surrounded by police, and handed a "Security Certificate" signed by the Ministry of Public Safety and Minister of Immigration. On the basis of an investigation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS-- the Canadian secret service), Charkaoui is said to be "a member of the terrorist organization of Osama Bin Laden and that he has engaged, is engaging or will engage in terrorist activities."

Charkaoui was thrown in jail, without charge or trial for almost two years. When the case came to trial the "evidence" against him is so secretive that it cannot be revealed for him to defend against. Charkaoui was later released on bail, but under strict conditions. He is forced to wear a GPS device, cannot leave area of Ile de Montreal, cannot use the internet, cannot leave his home without being accompanied by a family member (who must submit a 'monthly report' on Charkaoui). And the police can search his house without a warrant at any time. In effect, despite being out of prison, Charkaoui is a prisoner at home, at home, his every move and word in everyday life constantly surveilled and watched.

Below is an exchange between Charkaoui and his four year old son:

- Daddy, daddy …
- Yes, little one.
- What are you wearing around your neck?
- Around my neck! Nothing.
- No - there!
- Ah! You mean around my ankle.
- That's the neck of the foot, the ank... ?
- Ankle.
- But you haven't said what it is.

- Well, that, it's a bracelet.
- How long have you worn it?
- Three years.
- Why do you always wear it?
- Because i've got to, it's a present.
- Who gave it to you?
- It was tonton.
- Which tonton?
- Okay…it was uncle Sam…
- Who is uncle Sam?-
- Really, you ask too many questions. It was somebody who gave it to me ...uncle
Sam, uncle Stephen, uncle Security. It doesn't really matter, you don't know him.
- Ok, but why is your bracelet black?
- Because those who gave it to me have white faces but black hearts.
- Why isn't it gold like Mommy's?
- Because the people who gave it to me don't have golden hearts, little one.
- But why are you the only one to wear it in Quebec, Daddy?
- Not for long, you should get used to it. Pretty soon it will become a fashion, like tatoos: everyone will have one. Already in cell phones, in cars, for workers, for daddys, for babies, for dogs ... Uncle Sam doesn't have a heart of gold, but he forgets no one.

For a number of years since his arrest, Charkaoui and his family has been threatened with 'deportation' to Morocco, even despite very high risk of torture or being killed if deported--a fact that the Canadian authorities admit is the case.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has cautioned the Canadian government about the potential breaches of Canada's international obligations to protect fundamental human rights and the arrest, detention and expulsion of non-citizens and refugees on (so-called) "national security grounds". When Charkaoui challenged the legality of the Security Certificate, the Supreme Court of Canada held that such a document and the entire process of trial and detention without charge or justification was "unconstitutional". Indeed, the highest court in Canada even held the Security Certificate violated key provisions of Canada's much championed Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These include the "right to life, liberty and security of the person" (S. 7), and rights not to be arbitrarily detained or arrested (S.9), and the rights to be informed of the reason of arrest (S. 10).

Despite this court victory, the Conservative government of Canada is seeking to bypass the judgement, and spearheading legislation that is basically a carbon copy of the old law, albeit with even more draconian measures. This so-called new legislation, Bill C-3 in effect:

"...re-introduces this perverse security certificate process virtually untouched beyond the inclusion into the hearings of a "special advocate" who would have access to the so-called evidence but who would still not be allowed to share it with the suspect.

Although the "special advocates" would be able to challenge the intelligence report, they would not be able to cross-examine the source of this intelligence, for instance a detainee in a foreign jail or an agent from another government.

In other words, Bill C-3 sustains a two-tier justice system in Canada – with one set of rights for citizens and another, reduced set of rights for non-citizens. It also, strangely enough, sets up two different standards of proof with the weaker standard applied to what many people believe to be the more serious suspicion of terrorism.

Security certificate cases rely on a much lower standard of proof than do criminal prosecutions. A judge ruling on the case of a non-citizen subject of a security certificate only needs "reasonable grounds to believe" that they represent a risk as opposed to "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" in a criminal case.

Bill C-3 would maintain a process whereby, on intelligence conclusions from CSIS, individuals who are considered a risk to national security are deported to their countries of origin."

In fact, the Canadian bill would simply be introducing a system which has been condemned even in the UK House of Comons and House of Lords' Joint Committee on Human Rights, which wrote that the introduction of a so-called 'special advocate' system to a person detained without charge:

"has absolutely nothing to do with the traditions of adversarial justice as we have come to understand them in the British legal system." Indeed, we were left with the very strong feeling that this is a process which is not just offensive to the basic principles of adversarial justice in which lawyers are steeped, but it is very much against basic notions of fair play as the lay public would understand them."

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also identified this as an area of grave concern.

What has been just outlined above is not the case of Mr. Charkaoui. Other Muslims, all accepted refugees living in Canada, are facing similar ordeals and threats of deportation based on shoddy evidence and travesties of justice. Hassan Almrei, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohammad Mahjoub, Mohamed Harkat, and the famous Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Ahmed Khadr face similar fates of being singled out, detained, harrased, and accused of crimes the evidence of which are so secret it cannot even be produced in court, let alone defended against.

"The worse enemy of secrcy is publicity", a determined Charkaoui said in today's public lecture.
What I have outlined are prime examples of what the worse excesses of racial profiling reveals the institutioalised two-tiered justice a prime Western democracy is underpinned by. Why else would a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada blurt out that "Al Qaeda members are not from Sweden" and that they are "not Buddhists, but Muslims".

But there are other victims too. The democratic society, with our freedoms guaranteed under the rule of law, the very freedoms of thought, movement, and privacy can one day be threatened too. Simply by the arbitrary evidence of hearsay or some obscene evidence extracted from torture, anyone of us could be the target of a smear campaign against your good name and character, whereby the burden is reversed on you to prove yourself innocent, and until then, you are guilty before the State, before the media, and before an increasingly unfair and biased judicial system.

Today it is the Muslims.... but can it not just as easily be labour unions, or students with 'subversive' thoughts and actions? And could it not just as easily be you, or me, or you and me?

[...] Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face … for ever.
1984, George Orwell

I see a future, a future with a human face. It need not necessarily be beneath a boot. But for the sake of our liberties, it must speak and shout. Back at the boot, back at power, and show that the human face is anything but an enemy. Most of all, it must speak and shout back, and show that a human face is anything but helpless.