Frédéric Martel is a researcher at Sciences-Po Paris and ZHdK Zurich and the author of nine books. In his latest book, "Global Gay" (MIT Press), Martel visits more than 50 countries to document a revolution underway around the world: the globalisation of LGBT rights. He finds that America has created a global template for gay activism and culture, but each country offers distinctly local variations. Martel argues that around the world, the status of gay rights has become a measure of a country's democracy and modernity. Here, he discusses some of his findings.
What drew you into this subject matter?
I wrote a book when I was younger about the history of the gay movement in France, The Pink and the Black. Then I wrote several books about globalisation – how it related to culture, the internet, social movements. It felt natural and necessary to do a book bringing together the gay story and globalisation – so this is how we ended up with Global Gay. I am not an activist, I’m a writer, but I think we need to care not just about ourselves and what is happening in France or the UK, but also what is happening in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. The title of the book is Global Gay – but the conclusion is, perhaps counter-intuitively, that there is no such thing as a global gay. But I don’t want to say it is a misleading title, because there are a few elements of globalisation in the gay issue.
Are there trends around the world?
There is a global gay momentum, but alongside that are extraordinary differences in how this plays out around the world. In the western movement, we used to be in a world of penalisation, where homosexuality was criminalised, and now we are seeing a trend where homophobia instead is criminalised. That’s a trend at least in western countries, as well as in parts of Latin America, in South Africa and in a few countries in Asia – South Korea, Japan, and Israel. But this shift doesn’t exist in other parts of the world, where on the contrary you have a new criminalisation of homosexuality, typically in Africa or the Middle East.
Quite often we think of globalisation and gay rights as also being a fight between the western world and developing countries. I profoundly believe that’s not true. Everywhere in the world, you have both a more liberal and oppositional way of thinking of homosexuality. Some of the places where you have worst homophobia are in the western world: the Vatican, and the extremely conservative movement in the US. At the same time you have progressive gay activists in Lebanon, China, South Africa and other places. Argentina got gay marriage before France, Germany, or Italy. So we shouldn’t simplistically elide westernisation and the fight for gay rights.
How does activism differ around the world?
Sometimes change comes through national law, sometimes it comes city by city, or in incremental steps. There is no single worldwide model for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. We have some international symbols and key figures – Harvey Milk, Lady Gaga, gay pride, Stonewall, Ricky Martin. Wherever you go in the world, you have this element of popular culture. But that’s just a very small part of the fight for LGBT rights.
The main conclusion of the book is that it’s not about having a single model of traditional gay activists going in the street with a rainbow flag and celebrating gay pride. It works in some places but in others, change might come through television or culture, or through a major political figure like Nelson Mandela in South Africa. There are many ways to fight, many ways to succeed or fail. Alongside activists, there is almost always a complex societal debate involving politicians and cultural figures, movie actors, TV series, the internet and other forces. All those things might play a key role in this liberalisation.
How does religion come into play?
Gay marriage is a good indicator of this. In many countries, religion has been mobilised against legislation on the issue of gay marriage – the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe, the Catholic or evangelical church in the US, Spain. All religions – Islam, Judaism, and Christianity – are against gay marriage.
You write about LGBT rights being an indicator of democracy or modernity. Could you expand?
If you look at the map of functional democracy, human rights, the map of freedom of press, of the internet, you’ll see that is correlates with the map of places with good LGBT rights. Some countries are not open to liberalism and freedom. Accepting gay people means being open to freedom of personal choice, so it’s to be expected that there is a link with freedom of press, expression, women's rights, freedom of the internet and so on.
At the same time you can see counter-examples. In China today, homosexuality is decriminalised, and of course you are not in a democracy. China is a country where you don’t have gay marriage, but overall the situation became better in the time after communism, when China became more market economy oriented. I don’t want to say there’s a link with market economy and homosexuality as I don’t think it works, but it’s true that in the China of Mao, gay rights didn’t exist.
What is the legacy of colonialism on LGBT rights?
What is very surprising is wherever you go in in East Africa or India, Singapore, Hong Kong, others, you’ll find the same article of the penal code against homosexuality: article 377. Homosexuality in all these places is penalised by more or less the same words. Why is that? Because all this homophobia, all these articles were imposed by UK during the colonial era. The French aren’t any better – we did the same with Algeria. The interesting point with the UK is that today in Africa and many countries, you find the same article – Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia, Swaziland, Sudan, Tanzania – as was introduced in India by the British. In some African countries, some people say that homosexuality is something brought to us by western people. On the contrary – westerners, colonialism, the UK brought homophobia to local people. If you want to go back to “real” Africa, Malaysia, or Singapore, you should destroy this article. It is a symbol of colonialism and of Victorian Britain imposing its values by forbidding local people from being homosexual.
Does that colonial history figure in the debate around homosexuality and homophobia in Africa?
I visited South Africa, Kenya, and North African countries like Egypt for this book. Across the continent you have a lot of examples and counterexample of how this plays out. In South Africa, Mandela suppressed homophobia and created equality for gay people for the first time by stating in the South African constitution that discrimination based on sexual orientation was forbidden. This was the first constitution in the world to protect gay people in this way, and South Africa was the first country in Africa to permit gay marriage. So you have this kind of extremely pro-gay law from someone who can hardly be labelled a westerner. Even some of the bishops, such as Desmond Tutu, are very much pro-gay.
In Africa you also have prominent figures – ranging from US evangelists to local Catholics linked to the Vatican to Islamists in Nigeria – that are homophobic. As I said, the fight is not a western fight against local people. There was a French opposition to gay marriage that was French, for instance. Versions of the same fight happen everywhere, in South Africa, in France or in the UK – even though it’s true that for now the balance is not in favour of gay people in many African countries.
What are the next steps in the global push for LGBT rights?
There will be different speeds everywhere, and you’ll have also some backwards steps. You have negative movement as we have seen in some places. South Africa is also experiencing a resurgence of homophobia – not from everybody, but a few figures in the African National Congress [Mandela’s party] are very homophobic. Also we have seen a deterioration in parts of the Middle East. The situation is much worse in some parts of Egypt right now, not to even speak about Iraq, Syria and some provinces of Lebanon. The fight is always changing. Sometimes, depending on the local situation, tools other than the internet can more useful. Huge change can come through television and pop culture.
But at the same time I am optimistic, as I think the movement globally is heading in a good direction. We have to avoid the fight for gay rights being overly associated with western influence. We must care about people on the ground in countries such as Iran or Egypt where gay activists are struggling – give them help, money and training without interfering too much.
How does activism work somewhere like Saudi where the laws are so oppressive?
There are several ways to do it. For Saudi Arabia or Iran, the real activists are, in general, outside the country – they live in Toronto, Canada, or LA, Turkey or Lebanon. You are not going to have an active LGBT organisation in Riyadh. You have people that go there and train people and have discussions, sometimes secretly funded by a foundation. You also have all these people who are perhaps restaurant owners who can create an unofficial gay-friendly space. In Saudi Arabia, I’ve met many gay people who feel they are just working for their own freedom to live and have friends. But there are also activists trying to organise things on the internet.
Which places stood out to you during your reporting?
When you meet gay activists in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the fight is terrible, and they sometimes face the threat of being arrested or killed. Many are also mocked and criticised by the press. The people I met are not famous. They fight all day long to defend their ideas. Sometimes what they can do is very little, but they try in their small way to tackle prejudices and homophobia. That’s why this book was important to me – it is a never-ending book in a sense. We are in the middle of the fight. It’s an ongoing battle and every month, there is a new story, a new fight, a new revolution.
