BUS 449 Post 6

Dear Reader,

This post will be about a documentary “Out There” that I have watched, made by Stephen Fry, a well-known British celebrity. In the film he travels from country to country and evaluates how people treat people, in particular, the level of homophobia in the society.

One of the countries he traveled to was Brazil. It is one of the few countries where gay people have full legal equality with straight people; marriage is one of the rights as well. Such decision was made by Brazilian governmental officials unanimously, with no abstentions. Also, according to Guinness World Records, Brazil holds the world’s biggest Gay Pride Parade in a city of Sao Paulo.

Recently, new political debate has arisen where children were at the center of the discussion. New law was formulated but not yet implemented – the law prohibiting homophobia. It would introduce obligatory anti-homophobia classes in middle school where teenagers would learn about what damage homophobia causes.

Of course, there is a conservative party that wishes to prevent the law from being implemented and the leader of this party is interviewed by Stephen Fry. The main argument raised was that “no father would ever take pride in having a gay son” to which Fry replied that “the only reason parents might be unhappy is when they know that there is homophobia in society, therefore, this child may be bullied. However, if there is no homophobia, there is no pressure or abuse of children which makes both parents and children happy.”

The most common story that we can here is that evil gay people persuade and recruit children to become one of them and then abuse them. In fact, such lies create nothing but hysteria among uneducated from which violence can grow because you only hate when you are ignorant and afraid.  Perhaps anti-homophobia law is something all countries should think about and I hope this law eventually will pass.

Fun fact from zoology: there are 480 animal species that exhibit homosexual behavior but only one species of animal on the Earth that exhibits homophobic behavior. (So think twice before using “being normal” in your argument.)