Until about a week ago, the last time anyone thought about Uganda was either (1) never or (2) to convey a generic far away place that you would never want to visit. It's sort of like saying Timbuktu but sounds way smarter. Now, in a fiery fit of gay rage, the relatively tiny nation (roughly the size of Michigan) has attempted to compensate for its small size by stirring up homophobic hubbub. It's already a world leader in illiteracy - desiring to become part of a not-so-secret society of nations that punishes gays with the death penalty is just one more feather in Uganda's unsightly African floral headwrap.

The bill, proposed by MP David Bahati, adds Uganda to that list of other places you would never want or are currently barred from going to like Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. Coincidentally, most of those countries are ones where Jews wouldn't feel terribly welcome either. Sure, it's all fun-and-games shopping for Dolce in Dubai until someone gets stoned to death for showing their sugar daddy a little gratitude.

Normally, when crazy countries (see: Iran) make generic threats, members of sane societies create useless Facebook pages with impossibly long, almost incoherent names like "Ahmadinejad is a terrorist tyrant. Bring peace to the Persian people now. Join to help us reach over 1,000,000 members." But despite the similar onslaught of fruitless Facebook pages rising up in virtual condemnation against this latest humanitarian crisis, it indeed appears that Uganda's rogue government isn't just interested in having an international dick-measuring contest. For the first time in its 47-year history, Uganda actually seems serious about instituting social change. Naturally, in a country where 75% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, it couldn't be for something truly good. Instead, Ugandan parliament members (with the staunch support of - who else? - Evangelical groups) have drafted legislation that would broaden the scope of what is considered illegal homosexual behavior. People with HIV/AIDS, who have prior convictions of queer conduct, and/or get caught in same-sex acts with those under 18 years old would be subject to the death sentence. As if that weren't enough of a human rights violation, Uganda will also go after gay expatriates and individuals or organizations that support LGBT rights there.

It may come as a shocker that gays even exist at all in a country where raggy shmattes rule the roads. There are, however, an estimated 500,000 sexual minorities who call Uganda home.

Continue reading...

Gregg Drinkwater  of Jewish Mosaic has taken photos of an August 2, 2009 rally in Jerusalem mourning the slaying of two young LGBTQ youth in Tel Aviv. On August 1, a masked murderer entered a Tel Aviv community center and shot randomly, killing Liz Trobishi (16) and Nir Katz (26), may their memories be for a blessing, and wounding ten others. The gunman has not yet been found. Rallies have been held to remember the dead and to protest Jewish homophobia in Tel Aviv and throughout the world. That this rally took place in Jerusalem, the scene of considerable tension over lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans sexuality, gives hope for the future.

-- Zeek Editors

Rally August 2, 2009 Jerusalem by Gregg Drinkwater: Protestors mourn the slaying of two LGBT youth in Tel Aviv

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lighting Candles for LGBT Youth: Mourners light candles in remembrance of two LGBT youth slain in Tel Aviv.

Gregg Drinkwater is the Executive Director of Jewish Mosaic. Jewish Mosaic has agreed to raise funds from our supporters which we will pass on IN FULL to Israel's LGBT youth organizations. CLICK HERE to make a donation via Jewish Mosaic that will be transferred to Israel in the form of a grant for LGBT youth services. Please indicate that your gift is in honor of LGBT youth in Israel.

It is a problem that will not speak its name. We all know that there is bigotry, prejudice, and intolerance in the American Jewish community; that much is inevitable, and that's not the problem I'm talking about. The problem I'm talking about is this: how do we react when we encounter those things among our Jewish "friends"?

I am thinking about this because I recently had a troubling conversation with a good friend; let's call him Bob. Bob has another friend who is an Orthodox Jew (of a certain kind), and they have a mutual acquaintance who is transgendered. Bob is struggling with the moral problem of determining his appropriate response. Does he allow his Jewish friend to spout homophobic garbage, or call him on his bigotry and stand up for the dignity their transgendered acquaintance at the risk of losing a relationship that he values deeply? This is not a new conundrum, of course; it is a basic problem that arises from living in a community marked by value pluralism. But as I listened to Bob's description of the situation, I couldn't help but think of the particular form that this conundrum takes within the community of American Jews.

We may pride ourselves on our cosmopolitanism and our open-mindedness. We cringe at the kind of question I was once asked by my grandfather on meeting two of my school friends: "are they Jewish?" We would never dream of insisting that our community of friends be limited to members of a certain religion or nationality or ethnicity. Except that when American Jews go to Israel they are often heard to say something like what a friend of mine once said: "Here, they're all Yidden. Good Yidden and bad Yidden, but all Yidden." He assumed that would mean something to me, and of course it did. Life is easier, more comfortable, when we have common bonds with the people around us. "Birds of a feather flock together,"lunchroom tables self-segregate. It's only natural.

Against that impulse there is a kind of politically correct lip-service to diversity. In America right now, it's politics. Many of us would be appalled if people thought we only had conservative or liberal friends, or that we only talk to members of a certain political party. I recently heard the chair of the College Republicans on my campus express dismay at the idea that anyone would ever vote a straight party ticket. Sure, out there in the blogosphere there are the Dailykos.com's and the Redstate.com's, but we are more sophisticated, more open. Some of my best friends voted for the wrong candidate.

The problem, of course, arises when the discussion of differences in political affiliation or religious background or historical identification are understood to be something more than the equivalent of rooting for different sports teams. What happens when these differences reflect fundamental differences in human values? A friend is someone whose feelings I care about, whose thoughts I value, whose well-being is important to me. A friend can rely on me to come to their aid in a time of need. Can I have a true "friend" who denies the humanity of other friends? Who is a homophobe or a racist, an uncaring laissez-faire capitalist or a theocrat? How -- no really how?, through what set of discursive maneuvers and exercises in rationalization? -- can I have a "friend" whose respect for me is diminished because of others who are also my friends?

It is always easy, of course, to turn this into a kind of moral relativist ju-jitsu. "You see?," cries the homophobic religious zealot, "you claim to be tolerant and open-minded but here you are rejecting my beliefs!" There can even be a point at which this move carries some substance: am I more comfortable with the raving atheist who derides all religious believers as naifs than with the religious believer who accuses atheists of (as another old friend puts it) "epistemic blindness? Maybe. Ultimately, to quote yet another old friend, we choose our hypocrites, starting with ourselves. But that answers nothing. We still have to choose among our hypocrisies, and those choices require justification, if only to ourselves.

These are universal challenges. But among Jews they take a particular set of forms. I have friends - I think they're "friends" - who say things that go far beyond ignorance or wrongheadedness, the kinds of things that if one of my children said them I would immediate sit that child down for a long talk. "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" is a good one. "Arabs have plenty of countries, it's only fair that we take this one,"there's another. This is not simply Jabotinskyite Revisionism (Jabotinsky understood very well that his Zionist project involved the displacement and defeat of a people). This is something later and uglier, a manifestation of an intellectual cancer that degrades historical memory in the service of recrudescent tribalism.

The Zionist version of the disease, like many others, goes beyond the basic symptoms of the disease by virtue of its selectivity. Curious that the same people never make the same argument about the Protestants of Northern Ireland, or propose that because there is no Gypsy nation residents of Romania should be forcibly displaced to create one. Fascinating - as writers on this blog, among other places, have noted - that genocidal violence fills us with existential horror when and only when it is directed against Jews. That same selectivity appears in the willful blindness, the resolute refusal to know what goes on in Israel and in the Territories. Is that in the same category of moral corruption?

I could go on, we could all go on. An American Jew who says he or she has not encountered this kind of ignorance and prejudice among their fellow Jews is either in denial or a liar. From my own experience I can quote examples of pure, outright racism: "Arabs only understand violence" and "Muslims don't have Western rationality" were popular for a time. Then there was the woman, my hostess for lunch, who simply described Palestinians as dirty. Followed, brightly, by "shall we bench, now?" I know what you're thinking. What did I do? Did I stand up self-righteously and howl in outrage? Make a scene? Refuse to join in prayers in the house where I had just been a guest for lunch? Actually, yes, and I have not spoken with that person since that date. But that's not very satisfying. And in other, less obvious cases I have remained silent.

When I think about these things, I always remember a little girl named Aisha whom I met in Bethlehem twenty years ago. I was staying with her parents - her father, J, was a journalist. He spoke Hebrew so we could communicate, but with Aisha I had only my 50 or so words of Arabic. She would not believe that I was Jewish for the longest time; everyone knows Jews are vile, horrible monsters who kill children and blow up houses and torture people, and as a guest in her house I didn't quite fit that mold. Eventually, though, we found a way to pass the time. You know the clap-slap-clap game American children play while reciting "Miss Mary Mack/All dressed in black," etc.? So I showed Aisha that game. After a while we starting making up more complicated versions; we got up to sequences of eleven and fifteen precise moves. When we demonstrated for the rest of the family she would shout out a number -"t'maanye"! "tish'a!" - and we would run through that particular routine to the cheers of the audience. I loved that household; full of love and warmth and commitment. Oh, and spotlessly clean, of course; on my best day I have never been able to keep a house as sparkling as that apartment.

It comes down to the children. To sacrifice a child on an altar was supposedly a Canaanite practice of Moloch worshippers; the story of Isaac is supposed to tell us not to follow those ways. So . . . can we have"friends" who would sacrifice children on the altar of their self-righteousness? Can I have a "conversation" with someone who would relegate Aisha to the ash heap of history for the sake of gratifying their own sense of tribal superiority? How about friends who would insist that the children of same-sex couples do not deserve families secured by the same legal protections as those afforded to the families of children born to mixed-sex couples? How about "friends" who relegate women to a second order of rationality and therefore deny education to girls? Are any of these things made more tolerable just because the people involved are Jewish? That question surely answers itself.

As a former culture blogger for Commentary, I used to think it was creepy but also amusing that there were certain ideological constraints on what you could say in the magazine's blog about non-ideological subjects. It was frowned upon, for instance, to suggest that W.H. Auden was a great poet even when he was going through a fitful and uneasy phase as a Communist. And did you know that the term "fossil record" is verboten in this once respected journal for New York intellectuals, even when used in defense of so worthy a figure as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and in defiance of so wretched a one as Osama bin Laden? I found that out the hard way, too. It's not that the editors are creationists, you see. They just don't like to upset the creationists.

So I don't know why I registered even the mildest shock upon spotting an advertisement on contentions for an organization calling itself NARTH, which sounds to me like the name M. Night Shyamalan would give the otherworldly creature who brought democracy to the Middle East. NARTH stands for the "National Association for the Research & Therapy of Homosexuality." It purports to cure gays, in other words, using methods that have been discredited by the psychiatric community for decades. This is its mission statement:

We respect the right of all individuals to choose their own destiny. NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality. As an organization, we disseminate educational information, conduct and collect scientific research, promote effective therapeutic treatment, and provide referrals to those who seek our assistance.

NARTH upholds the rights of individuals with unwanted homosexual attraction to receive effective psychological care and the right of professionals to offer that care. We welcome the participation of all individuals who will join us in the pursuit of these goals.

I'd pay real money for a group that promised to end unwanted heterosexual attractions. But is this really what neoconservatism needs right now as ever breaker of misfortune crashes down upon it--pseudo-scientific bigotry?

Readers with long, macabre memories may recall that Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor-in-chief of Commentary, wrote an essay for Harper's in 1977, laying a heaping portion of the blame for the squalor of that era's antiwar movement at the feet of queers. Actually, there wasn't an Anglo-American conflict in the 20th century in which the Pod failed to find sodomites losing or debilitating the entire struggle. In World War I, he wrote, "the best people looked to other men for sex and romance," a compliment of sorts, but one that neglects that fact that Wilfred Owen and Sigfried Sassoon also found time for writing poetry. As for World War II, Norman's ultra-masculine slights of the rank-and-file English soldiery led one angry correspondent to write in that he "had not previously realized that Winston Churchill fought the Battle of Britain almost singlehandedly while England's ubiquitous faggotry sneered and jeered from below."

I've lost track of what numerical world war are we're up to now in the Podhoretz encyclopedia. But when McCain loses in two weeks, can buggery be too far down on the list of reasons why?

UPDATE:  Since this post went up, the NARTH ad has been removed from the contentions homepage.

It’s no fun being a Conservative Jew because it’s no fun being a moderate. Conservative Judaism lacks the fire of orthodoxy and the no-jacket-required freedom of the Reform movement. It’s all about nuance, and even the biggest wonks sometimes get sick of nuance.

Speaking of no fun, you probably know about the recent announcement by the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism stating that homosexuality is halachically OK but sodomy isn’t. Slate rounds up the best of the blog opinions (including one posting that includes another blog round-up, in case you’re looking for a way to kill the afternoon.) As for me, I’m just stuck on this sentence from the Washington Post article about the ruling:

“Thirteen members voted in favor of allowing gay ordination and same-sex ceremonies, and 13 voted against -- meaning that at least one rabbi voted for both positions.”

Buh? Does somebody not understand how voting works? “I think you’re both special” does not count as nuance.

Also, the prurient details here are utterly fascinating. I’ve been told that when Queen Victoria created a law against sodomy, someone pointed out to her that she should ban lesbian sex, too. Her response? “Silly man! Women don’t do that.” The laws of halacha apparently feel the same way, which is why hot girl-on-girl action isn’t forbidden. But then what about adventurous straight male rabbis? If heterosexual sodomy is still OK, then this isn’t really about homosexuality – it’s about penetration. I don't mean to play six degrees of feminist outrage, but if that's the case, then you guys really have to get over that phobia already.