The following link is an article demonstrating just how much more there is to be accomplished concerning gay rights worldwide.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thor-halvorssen/united-nations-its-okay-t_b_787024.html

"NEW YORK, NY -- Last week, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted on a special resolution addressing extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions. The resolution affirms the duties of member countries to protect the right to life of all people with a special emphasis on a call to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. The resolution highlights particular groups historically subject to executions including street children, human rights defenders, members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority communities, and, for the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation as a basis on which some individuals are targeted for death."

"he tiny West African nation of Benin (on behalf of the UN's African Group) proposed an amendment to strike sexual minorities from the resolution. The amendment was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

"A collection of notorious human rights violators voted for the amendment including Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Congo, Cuba, Eritrea, North Korea, Iran (didn't Ahmadinejad tell the world there were no gays in Iran?), Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Uganda, Vietnam, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

"Add to this Bahamas, Belize (where you get 10 years for being gay), Jamaica (10 years of hard labor), Grenada (10 years), Guyana (life sentence), Saint Kitts and Nevis (10 years), Saint Lucia (10 years), Saint Vincent (10 years), South Africa (Apartheid? What apartheid?), and Morocco (ruled by a gay monarch!). They are all on the list of nations that do not think execution of gays and lesbians is worthy of condemnation or investigation. (The full vote tally is published beneath this column.)"

"Those against the amendment include every European nation present, all Scandinavian countries, India, Korea, most of Latin America, all of North America, and only one Middle Eastern nation: Israel. In most countries in the Middle East, it is a crime to be gay--in some, like Saudi Arabia, it is punishable by beheading and in others, like Iran, by hanging."

"Not a single African nation voted against the amendment. This is not surprising. Homosexuality is illegal in most of Africa. So acceptable is the notion of extra-judicial killings of gay men and women for their consensual private conduct that one of these countries, Uganda, is considering legislation making homosexuality (not the behavior, just being gay) punishable with death. The proposer of the bill, David Bahati, and the Ugandan "Minister for Ethics and Integrity," Nsaba Buturo, have vowed the bill will pass before parliament dissolves on May 12, 2011.

"Uganda is not a Muslim nation. It is a Christian country. And it was American evangelical preachers in Uganda who fanned the flames of what could turn into mass executions in a continent that has seen genocidal murder occur numerous times in the last two decades on the basis of religious belief, ethnicity, and membership in a linguistic minority (Burundi, Darfur, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, Zimbabwe...)."

I'm going to go form my own country where people are free to be themselves and equal to everyone else. The line forms to the left. No politicians, please.

I sometimes wonder if that would be such a bad thing!

When all is said and done, people, gay or straight, should have the right to live their lives anywhere in the world without threat brought about because of their sexuality.

Yeah but what would happen is groups of like thinking people would form wanting to control people doing things they don't like. Then out of that goo, politics emerges and in a short amount of time, your utopia is a screwed up as what you were trying to escape.

I would just love to live by myself with a few pets but the problem to that, is you are going to crave sex. It's that damn sex thing that screws up my plans and complicates things.

It can be easy to forget that as bad as it is, compared to some places, we here in the USA do not have it so bad.

It is frustrating, so many of us have fought so hard to get the USA where it is today and think we are on the verge of some great victories, then something like this happens. It simply reminds me how much work there is still to do and that I will not see the day when all gays are free to be who they are where ever they are.

I always have wanted to go to Egypt and China. It does not look like I will be going to either of those places in the foreseeable future. About the only good thing to come from this is I now have a clear list of places I will not be spending my tourist dollars.

What suprised me about this was the harsh penalties in the Caribbean, especially in places like St. Kitts and St. Lucia.

Puli, could you clarify if these penalties in the Caribbean are indeed for being gay per se or for sodomy?

There is of course a big difference between punishing someone for an internal disposition and an external act. The former ought never to be punished and are near impossible to prove sans admission. Perhaps some of these countries aren't against gayness per se but are against sodomy (on grounds of public health perhaps). Sodomy cannot be conflated too easily with homosexuality because some homosexuals do not practice it and some heterosexuals do.

Anyway

The article implies that they are referring to gays, but isn't quite clear on the point.

Here are a couple other links with additional information. These link make it clear that they are referring to gay bahavior.

http://www.globalgayz.com/country/Saint%20Kitts%20and%20Nevis/view/KNA/gay-st-kitts-and-nevis-news-and-reports
"... passengers on a gay cruise from Miami were barred from disembarking on Nevis, part of St. Kitts-Nevis, where a port official, according to the ship's captain, told them gays were a threat to "national security.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory
This link offers a table by country. What is interesting about Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia is that males can be fined and sentenced to 10 years in prison for gay activities, while females can participate in all the gay activities they want. It's legal for females to be gay in these Caribbean countries.

Thanks for the links, and for the suprise.

I did a brief search myself on the Carribean + gay rights and was suprised. I admit that I don't follow gay politcs very much or at all really but I was suprised by a 'homo-phobic Carribean'. Now that's not actually true, there are plenty of Carribean countries that do not outlaw homosexuality, but I am suprised by how many do. And in Barbadoes it carries a life sentence!

And the idea that female homosexuality is legal but male homosexuality is not (Jamaica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia) just seems bizarre, it seems like frat-house, hetero fantasy law making at its best (or worst...)

Thanks Puli.

Anti-sodomy laws in some US states were obviously directed towards gays. In some states, sodomy was illegal only between members of the same sex - sodomy between heterosexuals was legal. Other states were not specific and outlawed sodomy in all cases. I don't recall if any of the states outlawed sodomy only between men, although I would not be at all surprised to discover that this was the case.

I'm sure you, Puli, were not trying to excuse those that voted for this atrocity. But that whole thing about trying say it is about "behavior" is such BS and really pisses me off.

Read my response to Dave the Atheist below if you think I am not appalled by this UN vote.

"Gays are the target here! Any other abuses [or interpretations] of the vote should not be allowed to cloud this fact."

Don't like someone ? Merely accuse him or her of being gay.

Sort of like early american witchcraft trials and murders.

How convenient.

However, we should not dismiss the fact that gays have been targeted in many countries around the world. I feel certain that gays are specifically at risk because of this vote and that it is not merely a ruse to attack political opponents.

Gays are the target here! Any other abuses of the vote should not be allowed to cloud this fact.

Read this and fume (or weep) some more:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/ecosoc6452.doc.htm

There's a substantial amount of Muslims in Uganda. Idi Amin was a Muslim. I have seen claims of 30%.

Between the Muslims and the "Christians" there, Gays of no chance.

According to Wikipedia, Uganda's Muslim population was 12.1% in 2002 compared to 86.7% Christian of various denominations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Uganda

The Lord's Resistence Army operating in northern Uganda is "based in apocalyptic Christianity" and is also influenced by "Mysticism and traditional religion". "The LRA is accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of women and children, and forcing children to participate in hostilities." These are the child soldiers abducted from their homes and forced to kill or be killed, as well as to serve as sex slaves for LRA commanders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Resistance_Army

By the same token, commies and fascists accused each other of spreading it.

Another example of how religion just plain sucks. People want to defend it, but when it comes down to it, religion makes people feel all warm and cozy about their prejudices. Someone can say "God thinks homosexuals are an abomination, so I can too!"

Obviously there are homophobic people outside of religion, but history has continued to show that religion is mostly to blame. What is dangerous about religion is that people throw out their ability to think rationally.

with anyone who is outside their own belief system. It becomes as if the commandments about how to treat others ONLY apply to those of the same religious beliefs - everyone else is fair game for ill treatment unless they come around. Muslims are about the same - perhaps even more extreme than many Christians.

Actually, I see this as an aspect of human nature and it is akin to a good deal of what we see among social animals in nature. I feel certain that ethnocentrism - in this case applied to religious belief - is a evolutionary survival mechanism. What's needed is to convince these people to expand the boundries of their human tribe to include a much more diverse group of human beings. it won't be easy to do especially when God which holds the groups cohesiveness needs someone outside the group to hate.

It had abolished apartheid before I even learnt to read! And did it vote in favor or just not against it? Were they even present or one of the countries not present at the vote?

But thanks for mentioning Morocco's gay king Mohammed. He was a student in Europe in the late eighties and nineties, between the ages of 16 and 21, and frequented the gay bars and saunas of Paris, Amsterdam and Antwerp continually.

I realize the sensitivities of these issues, but WTF makes you think these backward-assed, 3rd world countries are going to think like you do? It ain't gonna happen. Let's get into the way-back machine and travel back in US history. When did Americans even BEGIN to accept the gay community?

I rest my case. You're beating your heads against the proverbial wall.