News Op-Ed: Religious Right Watch: Making It Illegal To Be Gay
From The Minnesota Independent.
I read this article, about recent events in Nigeria, and I feel so awful for those poor Nigerian gay people who will suffer under these hateful laws. I feel thankful that I live in the U.S., and I think to myself, ‘That could never happen here…. Could it?’ After Proposition 8, and the outpouring of hate that supported it, I’m no longer so sure. It’s obvious there are many Americans who are perfectly happen to legislate religion and morality. And not just Mormons. It’s chilling to think about the kind of country we might be living in if they had their way. I find myself thinking about “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood; that story posits a military coup that reduces the United States to an autocracy, but the truth is, a tyranny of the majority is entirely possible if only enough people, with enough money, decide to pursue a course that excludes or oppresses a given group of people.
Religious right rhetoric on traditional marriage is often framed as concern about preserving the institution as a bond between one man and one woman, but an international flap over an anti-gay marriage law in Nigeria has revealed the true intent of “traditional marriage” groups: the imprisonment of gays and lesbians for their sexual orientation.
Last week the Nigerian House of Representatives voted to approve a measure that would impose a jail sentence on gays and lesbians who live together and on those who assist them. The bill says it’s illegal for “the coming together of persons of the same sex with the purpose of living together as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship.” Violators could be imprisoned for up to three years. People who “witness, abet and aid the solemnization of a same gender marriage” face up to five years in prison.
International human rights groups and members of the European Union are calling for a suspension of international aid to Nigeria because the law violates international human rights agreements. That has America’s religious right leaders and media outlets upset.
“The European Union has certainly been infiltrated by homo-fascists. There’s just no doubt about it,” said Matt Barber of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law and Liberty Counsel. “They are using that body to essentially try to push the international homosexual agenda down the throats of countries that respect traditional values relative to sexual morality.
“We have the Defense of Marriage Act on the books [in the United States]; why aren’t they coming after the U.S.? Well, because what bullies do is they pick on someone that is weaker than they are,” he continued. “So the European Union is trying to make an example out of Nigeria because they are in a position of influence and power, yet they will not pick the same fight with the United States because they know it would be to no avail.”
Imagine that Alabama passed a law that arrested people of the same sex who lived together on suspicion of “sodomy” and the state began imprisoning the friends and family of gays and lesbians for buying them housewarming gifts. That’s exactly what Barber is defending.
