There is near unanimity of opinion regarding LGBT rights in places where Islam holds power: that
it's sinful and, more often than not,
punishable by law. Even in countries where consensual homosexual activity is de facto legal,
there is scant evidence of an openly gay populace, let alone examples of influential voices speaking up or influencing government policy to advance LGBT equality. The lives of LGBT people in so many of these nations is characterized by silence, humiliation, shame and erasure.
These cultural norms are deeply engrained. In
most of these nations, upwards of 90 percent of people consider homosexual activity morally wrong. With these states acting as enforcers of a moral code roundly accepted by their people, even the discussion of LGBT rights is pretty much a non-starter. To paraphrase Harvey Milk, the key to increasing acceptance of gays anywhere is to increase LGBT visibility within communities. But this seems a near-impossible task in much of the Muslim world.
Aslan is right to chastise the critics of religion who, as he writes in the
Times, “scour holy texts for bits of savagery and point to extreme examples of religious bigotry...to generalize about the causes of oppression throughout the world." Surely criticizing any religion in the 21st century, based on a holy text written centuries ago, seems disingenuous. Still, it's not disingenuous to point out that outside of the Muslim world, holy texts do not hold that much sway over governing bodies. The Old Testament is full of extremism and violence—but no reasonable argument can be made that Israeli law adheres much to the Old Testament. Some argue that Islam's position on gays is similar to the Vatican's in many ways. But that is misleading, too. As influential as the Vatican is, it's power of governance is quite limited. Most countries where Catholicism is the majority religion do not govern based on Catholic doctrine (which is
moving left as I write this). Most Islamic countries, in one way or another, do rely on Islamic beliefs as a matter of law.
The key word here is “most.” For if we simply take away from this argument that Muslims are generally intolerant of LGBT people, or that Islam itself is to blame, we would be missing the point—and committing the same mistake that Maher did by overgeneralizing. Advances in LGBT rights in the West have only happened in the last 20 years—some might say just the last five—so it would be awfully hypocritical to fault the slow progress of LGBT rights in Muslim countries. But evidence suggests that in several countries,
LGBT rights are in fact regressing, possibly in response to the West's increasing tolerance.
the usa v womens final is usually cool, and I can't really make an opinion on the issue since the plaintiffs decided not to provide any evidence
