The “anti-pinkwashing” campaign continues in all its irony.
Israel is to be “featured” at the annual Equality Forum on May 3-6 in Philadelphia, based on Israel’s record on gay issues. Israel, of course, is the only nation in the Middle East where homosexuality is not punished, much less punished with prison or worse as in some countries.
That Israel gets positive press coverage based on its treatment of homosexuality is a thorn in the side of anti-Israel leftist activists, which has given rise to the charge of “pinkwashing.” See my prior posts:
- The demented Israeli “pinkwashing” charge
- Another low for academia: Anti-Israel “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing” Conference at CUNY
No surprisingly, a protest campaign is being mounted against the focus on Israel in the Equality Forum (emphasis in original):
The Equality Forum (http://equalityforum.com/), an annual LGBTQ conference held in Philadelphia, has announced that Israel is their featured nation for 2012, and they have invited the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, to deliver the keynote speech.
Ambassador Oren, who personally has an atrocious record of supporting Israel’s war crimes and was the object of a demonstration by students in 2010 at UC Irvine (the Irvine 11), has no business delivering the keynote speech at a conference dedicated to social justice and equality. This year’s Equality Forum conference, which is partnered with the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, is a flagrant form of Pinkwashing….
Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, or PQBDS, a coalition of Palestinian LGBTQ groups, has released a statement in which they call for a boycott of the Equality Forum 2012. (http://www.pinkwatchingisrael.com/blog/2012/03/13/inequality-forum-2012/)
Please write to the Executive Director of the Equality Forum, Malcolm Lazin ([email protected]), and the Chair of the Board, Professor Debra Blair ([email protected]), to tell them not to allow the Equality Forum to pinkwash Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
Feel free to use the letter below – or to write your own!
The “anti-pinkwashing” movement, however, is receiving push-back from those who recognize the absurdity of the gay rights movement siding with those who actively abuse gays:
Israel has some legal recognition of the LGBT community. It accepts marriage equality from other nations, it was one of the first nations to accept gays in the military, has a gay tourism campaign, gives government funds to LGBT organizations and, when a hate crime happened at the Tel Aviv LGBT Community Center, the prime minister, a conservative hawkish member of parliament (the Knesset), visited to assure the LGBT community that the government would not tolerate hate crimes against them. In the Middle East, and a nation with a strong religious right-wing itself, this is very progressive.
Compare that with the Palestinian state and culture. The culture is so hateful to LGBT people that any LGBT activism is limited due to the very possible chance of violence. There is little if any support within the Palestinian authority for any LGBT issues. Hate crimes against gay people happen regularly and, in fact, many LGBT Palestinians move to Israel for safety. Then there is the issue of honor killings. When a family believes it has been badly shamed, its members feel they have the right to kill. This has happened with families with gay children before. So by supporting the Palestinians, one is supporting an anti-equality cause, if not supporting hate crimes themselves.
Israel should indeed be applauded for being the one place in the Middle East that is a relative safe haven for LGBT people. Our communitys first priority is for the safety of our members. Can anyone state that being openly LGBT in the Palestinian territory is safe? No, you cannot.
I’ll follow up as the Equality Forum approaches.
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Comments
Your only problem, Prof., is that you position is completely rational.
That has no appeal to Collectivists, who daily embrace the irrational.
If you start with facts and reason to a conclusion which is inconsistent with reality, you are forced to revise the conclusion.
If you start with a conclusion and reason backwards to facts which are inconsistent with reality, you are forced to revise the facts. This becomes second nature once you accept, consciously or not, Marx’s view of history. You may not even realize you’re doing it.
“Queers for Palestine” has the ring of “Turkeys for Christmas” to it.
Since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban, which banned education for women and girls, females have returned to schools, especially in Kabul.
But periodic attacks still occur against girls, teachers and their school buildings, usually in the more conservative south and east of the country, from where the Taliban insurgency draws most support.
“We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk inside their classes was poisoned.”
How ’bout Feminists For The Taliban…???
Dear PQBDS,
I’m sorry to take a swipe at you, but I’m floored not only by your lame name, but also by your whitewashing of many muslim countries’ intolerance towards gays, and so, I have no choice but to hit you with a lifetime ban from West Hollywood’s hottest new after-hours alternative-orientation hangout, TKO JAB … (Tipsy’s Knock Out Jolly Acronym Bar).
LukeHandCool (who can be quite the tease when a gay guy tries to chat him up).
I will never understand how anyone legitimately thinks recognizing Israel’s record on LGBT rights is in any way a comment on it’s policy towards Palestine.
Do these people think China’s 50 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics are an approval of it’s policy towards Tibet? When I say Russian vodka is my favorite, am I really supporting Russia in their dispute with Georgia?
The “logic” of the “anti-pinkwashing movement” suggests that the protestors are in favor of Israeli violently repressing LGBTs within its borders. After all, such repression presumably would better reveal the evils of the Israeli “occupation,” blah, blah. Do they care to better articulate that position?
P.S., the term “pinkwashing” only encourages perverted, chauvanistic pigs like me to entertain mental pictures that the protestors would condemn as objectification of the wymyns.
ACTUALLY – It is Uncle Samuel’s Official Position that it is the Palestinian’s occupation of Israel and particularly of Israel’s most holy site and Israel’s patience and forebearance that are proofs of Israel’s superior character.
I offer as evidence the FACT that NONE of Islam’s core texts even mention Jerusalem. NOT ONCE.
Second, with all the land that Islamic countries now occupy, they still covet the small portion God gave the Jews two thousand years ago?
Why should Islam get all the land, or the right to aggression and conquest despite their book teaching conquest?
Why should Islam get a free pass on racism, religious and other forms of persecution, misogyny, forced conversion, bombings, terrorism, aggression and other human rights violations?
While I do not agree that homosexual acts are healthy(nor do the CDC, research, clinical medicine) or holy (nor does the Bible) or happy (many mental health problems are correlated with homosexuality).
I do not want homosexuals to be bullied, harmed or denied right to work, school, but I DO NOT agree with promoting sexual disorientations to children in public schools or demanding churches perform same-sex marriages. Homosexuals should confine their arrangements to civil partnership and not try to normalize these lifestyles or adopt children. The truth, based on science and facts, NOT POLITICS AND AGENDA GROUP PRESSURE, must determine policy, laws. The facts and dangers of behaviors should be recognized and taught.
The truth is that homosexual acts and promiscuity, multiple partners, early sexual experimentation, abuse are all harmful; abortion increases risk of breast cancer, infertility, mental health problems; and condoms and contraception are unreliable and do not prevent disease. That the LBGTQXYZ (and even H) free love lifestyles are quite risky and unhealthy on the whole. Those who promote it are irresponsible, culpable and legally liable.
Short form:
1. Islam is the occupier and has do right to Jerusalem or Israel. Islam should content itself with Mecca and Medina and vacate Israel. (and repent/reform of its greed and violations of human rights)
2. Same-sex attraction is a conditioned response and is correlated with health issues and deadly diseases. People with SSA should not be bullied but helped. It is not to be normalized. Churches should not be forced to participate in SS unions. Those who wish should engage in civil unions. Adoption should be confined to faithful, healthy heterosexual couples.
Islam is the occupier and has NO right to Jerusalem or Israel.
Wow, so many factual inaccuracies and outright false statements. I’ll start with the most obvious one, please show me a single CDC report that says the fact that an act is homosexual rather than heterosexual has any bearing on it’s riskiness.
First, it is not an increased risk associated with homosexuality per se, but male homosexual behavior, and similar heterosexual behavior, specifically, which is processed through rectal intercourse. It is exacerbated through promiscuous behavior.
Let’s start with the most obvious consequence: STDs, including AIDS, and the socialization of costs to treat these diseases.
HIV among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM)
As for normalization vs tolerance, if you maintain a faith in God, then your guidance has been provided a priori. If you believe in the natural order, then unproductive behavior, but especially homosexual behavior, male or female, is either a positive or neutral contributor to evolutionary dysfunction. Since the behavior is inherently unproductive, there is no legitimate reason to normalize it. However, since each individual possesses an axiomatic or endowed dignity, and is capable of being an otherwise productive member of society — if not of humanity — then it is reasonable to tolerate the behavior.
This is not a question of individual or couplet rights; but of assessing the value of a behavior, and whether it should be rejected, can be tolerated, or should be normalized.
Please show me the study then that says only homosexual anal sex has an increased risk, and heterosexual anal sex does not.
The problem with this argument about “homosexual behavior” I’m having is that there is no such thing. There is no behavior that is only engaged in by homosexuals, and the risk profile does not change based on sexuality of the individuals engaging in the behavior.
If your argument is that anal sex is engaged in more often in homosexual relationships than heterosexual relationships, and is more risky than penile-vaginal intercourse, you have to also take into consideration that sexual activities such as oral sex or mutual masturbation are also more likely to be engaged in in homosexual relationships than heterosexual relationships, and they are considerably less risky than penile-vaginal intercourse.
Finally, the evolutionary value of an act or behavior is hardly dispositive in my assessment of whether or not society should normalize it. Parades, video games, alcohol consumption and recreational sports are all fairly useless activities to our society in evolutionary terms as they are commonly engaged in, that doesn’t mean I think we should be against their normalization, because I consider personal enjoyment an end in itself that should play into any calculation of normalization.
Oh, good grief. Why don’t you just stick your fingers in your ears, and say lalalalla? That would be just as effective in cooling the grossly disproportionate STD rate among male homosexuals.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/Newsroom/msmpressrelease.html
The primary and secondary syphilis rate among MSM is over 46 times higher than the rate among other men, and over 71 times higher than among women.
Google is your friend, and willful ignorance is not.
Wilful ignorance, like ignoring the difference between correlation and causation? Is that what you mean?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
If you had half a brain, you would have realized that the discussion isn’t about whether rates are actually higher among the male homosexual population, but rather if the fact that the activity is homosexual is the reason why.
Read the CDC study, it explicitly states that the factors that drive disparate incidence of HIV among homosexual men are external aspects of lifestyle choice, fear of social stigma and its impact on access to preventative care, and isolation from primary support networks such as immediate family members.
The fact that the act is homosexual rather than heterosexual is irrelevant.
I get what you are saying, but others won’t. These issues are matters of religious belief, and not science. But there it is…
Who really cares?
And it was 3500 years ago, not 2000. Plus or minus a few years.
Ill-will. Hatred. Acrimony.
The city of brotherly love. The city of peace.
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!.”
The inherent problem with the Westernized version of the Left is that it is actually a fractious coalition of interest groups cobbled together to lobby for largesse. It held together pretty well in the era of government expansion under Roosevelt and ongoing through today, as every group could get some of what it wanted.
But even the federal pot had a maximum, and the interests had to begin some competition with each other. For instance, see the conflict between trade unions and environmentalist on Keystone and other issues.
Other conflicts brew, too, as between Jews who favor Israel’s right to exist, leftists who do not, and the “LGBT” groups who like Israel’s policies toward them, but nothing else.
If perchance it should ever be discovered that there is a “gay gene” as some LGBT activists insist, an interesting conflict will come with the abortion on demand crowd when parents begin terminating the babies who carry the “gay gene.”
There are many other conflicts which will come to the fore in time – they are built into the coalition.
Wilful ignorance, like ignoring the difference between correlation and causation? Is that what you mean?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
May I suggest that we set aside our own thoughts and (dis)approval of homosexuality?
That’s not the issue here.
Or, rather it is: you see, in the good old USA you can think what you like of homosexuality, and LGBT people can smile politely, think of YOU as they wish, and get on with their lives.
This is also true in Israel today. Think what you like. How Western. How decadent.
It would not be true in Hamastan, nor in Palestine. I know this because I know that, today, gays are persecuted throughout the Islamic world. They live in fear of being tortured and murdered. They are hanged on construction cranes in Iran.
We are able to predict future of human behavior sometimes simply by seeing how those same humans behave today.
That’s the point: we know what would happen to gays if Israel were destroyed and Hamas (or the laughingly named Palestinian ‘Authority’) were to come to rule the land.
Call it ‘pinkwashing’ if you like. It doesn’t change the facts and the most likely outcome.
Those who throw the ‘pinkwashing’ term around do so because for them, anti-Semitism trumps anti-gay. That’s the point here.
“Like” x 10
Second…
(raises hand)
just because some tiny group of wild-eyed lefties slap ‘queer’ in their name doesn’t make them representative of the gay community. the vast majority of gay organizations (and individuals) support israel and do appreciate that it is the only middle-east country that respects and protects their rights. this ‘pinkwashing’ nonsense is just an attempt by the far-left to subvert the gay rights movement for their own nefarious purposes. fortunately, it doesn’t resonate much further than their own insular group.
ANOTHER true…and oft ignored…observation.
We often get tiny pressure groups confused with a population they PRETEND to represent.
Best example: PETA
Uh, oh. I’m beginning to see an increase in “dislikes”. Are we being invaded? Will the Professor’s sponsors be threatened with a boycott?