LGBT Rights: The Rights of a Minority Culture

by Tiramisu

Should schools be independent of government interference?

Should we stop hate-speech, and the brainwashing of children that don’t know any better?

Should religious parents be allowed to teach their children the fundamentals of their culture?

Should we encourage social integration at all stages of life, including at the stage of education?

I don’t know about you, but to me, that would read ‘Yes, yes, yes’ and – ‘yes’, to every question. But it doesn’t at the moment, and it hasn’t, in light of the recent Panorama episode that showed some Islamic faith schools, which drew on Saudi Arabian curriculum textbooks, (a) teaching children that Jews were like monkeys, and (b) teaching children that there would effectively be a choice between hell-fire, falling off a cliff and stoning as appropriate punishments if one had just happened to perform a homosexual act.

Admittedly, Michael Gove’s finest impression of rectal constraint as he expresses his horror at the notion of anti-Semitic material being taught in school (he is remarkably quiet on the issue of homosexuality) – does not help. It papers over the key issues at play here – when is freedom of speech just a little too much? Perhaps when it attacks the very thing that gave you that freedom of speech to begin with – the cornerstones of British democracy, the principles of enabling choice and freedom, and the core human rights that come with all of that. After all, objection to such material being taught in some Islamic schools does not sit easily with our liberal values that include the idea that parents should be free to bring up their children within a culture and with the religious values they see fit to instill in them, or the notion that education more generally should be independent of political intervention. The only way political intervention can be justified is for us to argue that it is required because of the wider social harm such teachings have on British society.

Strangely, I don’t think you can be political about homosexuality without it affecting your position on other matters (or vice versa). I think being gay, identifying as a gay person – is as legitimately identifying as part of a culture as being a Muslim is, or being a Hindu is, or being Indian is, or being British is. And sometimes when you’re trying to be all of these things or a multiple of these things it can be a bit like squaring a circle (but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the space to have a go at it).

So when we talk about what rights a gay person has, or what rights the LGBT community has – are we not also talking about being LGBT (or queer) as a culture, entitled to the rights of multiculturalism equally afforded to Muslims, Hindus or Jews? Now, I don’t argue that there is a single ‘LGBT’ culture. But I’d certainly say that being LGBT at some point shifts away from a focus on the individual, over to a focus on the rights of an LGBT community. Is there one LGBT community or several? A debate for a different day, I reckon.

However, there’s one thing I do maintain . Gay rights are important not just as rights for the individual, but also as a recognition of the gay/queer community. And as such the community needs to be political about homosexuality – to demand rights and recognition as members of the queer community. LGBT rights are human rights (as Amnesty International kindly pointed out to the happily drunk gays on that sunny day a few months ago via pink-yellow-green fluorescent stickers at London Pride), because they remind us that no one – irrespective of their standing in society, certainly not as a result of possessing arbitrary characteristics or as a result of their membership of a particular community, deserves to be a second-class citizen. You’re not a second class citizen because you are gay, nor are you a second class citizen because you’re Pakistani, you’re certainly not second class as a Jew. Neither are you second class because you happen to be all of/a mix of those things.

If we are going to be a multicultural society, then we need to have far more of a debate about what multiculturalism is for us – in particular, what culture is when a person can belong to so many which sometimes clash head to head (Being part of the Hindu community often does not sit easily with being part of the LGBT community. But I’d never disaggregate myself from either). We also need to accept where there is a clash between the rights of a minority culture and the principles of a democratic state that respects others’ privacy, autonomy, and right to live their life as they see fit – and act to intervene in these cases. Because we see ourselves not just as people abstracted away from the external world but also as members of communities – and shaped by those communities, this includes accepting that for some people, being LGBT requires as much respect and consideration as being a member of the Jewish (or any other religious/ethnic minority) community requires.

Of course it is wrong to say anyone innocent should be condemned to hellfire, whatever their race, ethnic origin, sexuality etc. However, the wider  question I am beginning to feel this  saga raises (akin to the debate over whether gays should have access to service provision from Christian B&Bs  – would we ever accept a Hindu being discriminated against on this basis?) is not whether such a statement is morally acceptable (it isn’t), but rather – what a British democracy should vaunt as the rights of minority cultures, and where a British democracy should draw the line and say ‘enough is really enough’. In practice, we look to draw the line where other racial or religious cultures lose out – which is what Gove did for the Jewish community. It was a shame he didn’t recognise the need to do the same on behalf of the LGBT community.