Some of the things people are coming up with are a little… I don’t know. Worrying? It’s all talk of ‘putting pressure’ on foreign governments and ‘making money do the talking’.
For starters, I don’t think some of these people realise that the western world is just as bad for LGBT oppression as anywhere else on the globe at times; courts are still to this day ruling in favour of heteronormativity and I don’t see marriage equality becoming widespread any time soon.
Then there’s the fact that using pressure to incite change rarely works out well. It’s treading on dodgy territory; just think of PETA’s modus operandi and what a bad reputation they have, or how ‘feminism’ has become a dirty word because of the aggressive actions of the vocal minority.
My vote was to to team up with legal experts and work on changing laws internally. Maybe it’s not the fastest or the prettiest way to do it, but it’s one of the few ways we can guarantee that legislation gets changed for the better if at all.
All too often new laws are brought in to supposedly accommodate the LGBT community only for it to turn out upon closer inspection that they’ve got us jumping through hoops. The transgender community, for example, in the struggle to gain recognition in Ireland, is now looking at an even steeper slope to attaining medical transition in the name of improving legislation regarding trans folk’s legal rights. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice one in the name of the other, but this is what happens when governments are left to themselves to roll out the changes that we’re all screaming for.
