Opinion

Wimal Weerawansa wrong Homophobia not a Lankan value

21 Jun 2015 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Govt should follow through and repeal discriminatory law

couple of weeks ago, when Sri Lanka voted in a bloc of 80 countries at the UN General Assembly budget committee to defeat a Russian backed resolution against the U.N. Secretary-General’s decision to extend marriage benefits to same sex couples, it caused quite a controversy back home.
Sri Lanka was the only South Asian country to vote against the Russian resolution, while our neighbours India and Pakistan voted in favour and others abstained.
As expected, critics back home were usual culprits. Most articulated among them included, predictable enough, Wimal Weerawansa, his acolyte named Muzammil and Udaya Gammanpila.
True to proverbial drowning men, who would cling even to the straw, the trio tried to stoke homophobia to prop up their sinking political fortunes. Good news is that they failed miserably.

In fact, the Sri Lankan vote could well be viewed as a reflection of the recent dawn of enlightenment in the country’s foreign affairs.
That is a pleasant contrast from the past when our foreign affairs were dictated by the same regressive impulses of the regime leaders, who drove the country away from the rest of the civilized world towards isolation, and to find company among a flock of other least salubrious states.
Since our independence or even before that, the top echelons of the Sri Lankan political leadership have always been held by individuals who have been enlightened pluralists.

" Homophobia is not a Sri Lankan value. Wimal Weerawansa tried to project it so. To do that, he played the Sinhala Buddhist card. By doing so, he was trying to make the Sri Lankan society or the Sinhala Buddhist culture as he described it, look like a mirror image of the repressive Middle East ..."

Others who were not so in the beginning, were conditioned to become part of this political culture during their political journey. In fact, ex-president Mahinda

Rajapaksa had those qualities in abundance up until winning the presidential election.
However, liberal dispensation of the political leadership did not, most of the time, transpire into legislation making. That is exactly why we still have antiquated colonial era law that discriminates on sexual orientation.
That is particularly disappointing because since the independence, we have had a number of gay politicians (Some of them being quite open about their sexuality) at the high political offices, who could have easily used political clout to repel of the Penal Code Article 365 A.
The rest of the world (At least the civilized part of it, which does not condone stoning to death and capital punishment for blasphemy) has moved a long way from those Victorian era ethos, past Stonewall riots to a whole new tolerant outlook on the sexual identity.
We missed that evolution for a variety of reasons, ranging from slow urbanisation, low income, societal constraints and familial pressures.
Also that penal code provisions had not been enforced during the past several decades, made it easier to live a lie, than, campaigning to repel it. (Article 365 A prohibits anyone, irrespective of gender, from engaging in “gross indecency”, which is not explicitly defined.)
The standard argument of the government is that Article 365 A does not target sexual orientation, and that no one has been tried in our courts over sexual orientation.

In October, last year at the UN Human Rights Committee, Sri Lankan government insisted that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) persons in Sri Lanka are constitutionally protected from discrimination.
In a written response to a Human Rights Committee query on Sri Lanka’s failure to protect LGBT people from widely prevalent discrimination, the government stated:
“Article 12 of the Sri Lanka Constitution recognises non-discrimination based on the grounds of race, religion, language, caste, sex, political opinion, place of birth or any one of such grounds as a Fundamental Right. This measure protects persons from stigmatization and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identities.”
However, the stubborn fact is that those provisions have unintended negative consequence, even at their dormant stage.
Not only do they provide grounds for abuse and discrimination against based on sexual orientation, but has also been used, and often misinterpreted by the bigots to stalk up homophobia.
Those provisions give impetus to a wide range of Police abuses of the most vulnerable members of our society.
It has now become universal that Police treat people differently, depending on their wealth, influence, and ethnicity and as the West, even the colour of the skin.

Ours is not an exception. If you are rich and gay, your sexual identity is never a concern. However, if you are poor and live in the fringe of society or a garment girl who is coming to terms with her sexual identity, you will be at the receiving end of manifold abuses and harassment by the law enforcement agencies.
Then, stigmatization, partly a by-product of those laws, prevent victims of harassment and discrimination from seeking legal redress.
Second, those provisions have an unintended negative consequence of the socialization of gay and lesbian people and their upward mobility.
Third, to make matters worse, stigma caused by those laws inhibit, to a certain degree, even the most enlightened members of the business community from reaching out to those disadvantaged members and pro-actively hiring them.
And, last but not least, those provisions, even in their dormant stage, are exploited by manipulative bigots (like Weerawansa) to stoke homophobia in a country which has no tradition of it.
That is a recurrent danger and not confined to homophobia alone. When these groups have their way or tolerated by the wider society, they end up creating veritable hellholes, not only for the minorities, but also for majority of moderates.

"When these groups have their way or tolerated by the wider society, they end up creating veritable hellholes, not only for the minorities, but also for majority of moderates"

Homophobia is not a Sri Lankan value. Nor has it ever been part of the Sri Lankan culture, though Wimal Weerawansa tried to project it so. To do that, he played the Sinhala Buddhist card. By doing so, he was trying to make the Sri Lankan society or the Sinhala Buddhist culture as he described it, look like a mirror image of the repressive Middle East or some corners of Africa, where homophobia is on the rise, partly, propped up by evangelical missionaries.
However, now that the government has assured at the UN Human Rights Committee that the Sri Lankan Constitution provides for the non-discrimination, among other things, on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identities, there is hardly any reason to keep an unenforced colonial era vestige in the country’s Penal Code, especially when it provides grounds for abuse and harassment against all those Constitutional guarantees.
The new government should have guts to follow through and repeal it.

Opinion

Wimal Weerawansa wrong Homophobia not a Lankan value

The Govt should follow through and repeal discriminatory law

" Homophobia is not a Sri Lankan value. Wimal Weerawansa tried to project it so. To do that, he played the Sinhala Buddhist card. By doing so, he was trying to make the Sri Lankan society or the Sinhala Buddhist culture as he described it, look like a mirror image of the repressive Middle East ..."

"When these groups have their way or tolerated by the wider society, they end up creating veritable hellholes, not only for the minorities, but also for majority of moderates"

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