With gains in U.S., gay rights fight goes abroad
Interesting article well worth a full reading.
With gains in U.S., gay rights fight goes abroad
Carolyn Lochhead
Updated 10:04 pm, Saturday, May 17, 2014
Washington -- As same-sex marriage bans topple under court review in such conservative states as Texas, Arkansas and Utah, the front line of the gay rights movement has moved overseas, posing a quandary for the Obama administration and prompting social conservatives - including veterans of California's gay rights fights - to export culture-war tactics from the past two decades.
Recent government moves against sexual minorities in Uganda, which passed a law this year punishing homosexuality with life imprisonment, and Russia, which has criminalized advocacy of gay rights, have drawn worldwide attention.
Less well-known are crackdowns in such places as Brunei, whose sultan decreed last month that gays and lesbians could be stoned to death, South Africa, where lesbians have been victims of "corrective rape," and Ukraine, where sexual minorities have been used as pawns in the country's struggle against Russia.
"The world is in a much more explicitly polarized place around gay rights than ever before," said Julie Dorf, an international gay rights activist in San Francisco. "Homophobia and nationalism are deliberately conflated in many parts of the world like Russia, Ukraine, Uganda" because sexual minorities are "a very easy group to scapegoat."
MORE at http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/With-gains-in-U-S-gay-rights-fight-goes-abroad-5486716.php
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