Countries Where Gays Are the Happiest- America is Well Down the List

Green = most happy; red + least happy

One hears about American exceptionalism for the Christofascists/Tea Party and their political whores in the Republican Party ad nausea.  Having just returned from a stay in France, the falsity of such claims was underscored for me yet again.   Yes, America is exceptional in some ways if you count soaring obesity, crumbling infrastructure, decreased upward social mobility, and the most expensive and least cost effective health care system as matters to brag about (more about these issues in a future post).  In America, we also hear much blather about America being the land where its citizen are endowed by their creator with the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  As the Washington Post reports, on the happiness ranking, gay Americans rank a pitiful 26th in levels of happiness (a chart with the full rankings is below).  True, this beats the Hell out of somewhere like Uganda, but it certainly is not anything exceptional.  Here are article highlights:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are still officially considered criminals in roughly one-third of countries worldwide, and homosexuality is punishable by death in seven countries. But other places, such as northern Europe, are very accepting of homosexuality.

Unsurprisingly, a new survey shows that gay men are happiest in those welcoming locations. Planet Romeo, an Amsterdam-based dating and community site, collaborated with the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany to carry out an online survey of 115,000 gay men around the world. They combined rankings on public opinion, public behavior and life satisfaction – how gay men feel about society’s view on homosexuality, how gay men feel they are treated by other people, and how satisfied gay men are with their own lives, respectively – into one worldwide ranking on gay happiness.

Iceland tops their list as the country where gay men are the happiest, followed by Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Uruguay, Canada, Israel, Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The United States ranks 26th in the list. The 10 worst countries by this ranking are Kazakhstan, Ghana, Cameroon, Iran, Nigeria, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda. The map above shows that ranking, with the highest ranked countries appearing in green and the lowest ranked countries in red.

In the top 20 countries, 37 percent of respondents were currently in a committed relationship with another man, while 3 percent were in a relationship with a woman. In the 20 worst countries, only 22 percent were in a committed relationship with a man, and 5 percent were in a relationship with a woman.

Though many societies are growing more accepting of homosexuality, gay men in some countries report that things have gotten worse in the past few years. Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, Nigeria and Ethiopia top this list, though Russia, Turkey and Hungary have also seen a negative trend in the index.

click image to enlarge

Cheney - Bush Knew About CIA Torture

Apparently wanting to make sure that, like himself, Chimperator George Bush can never again leave American territory, Emperor Palpatine Cheney is working hard to dispel the storyline of those who are trying to depict Bush as too clueless to have known about the CIA torture program and other war crime abuses being committed in the name of the American people.  MSN News reports on Cheney's effort to fully implicate George W. Bush.  Here are excerpts:

President George W Bush was fully aware and an "integral part" of the CIA's torture of terror suspects, his vice-president Dick Cheney said Wednesday. 

The long-awaited US Senate report released Tuesday on the program of harsh treatment and torture of detainees said Bush only learned details of it in 2006, four years after it started in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Speaking to Fox News, Cheney denied Bush was kept out of the loop. He said the then-president "was in fact an integral part of the program and he had to approve it."


Asked if Bush knew specific details of how specific interrogations were being conducted, Cheney was more vague, saying: "We did discuss the techniques. There was no effort on our part to keep him from that."

Bush has yet to speak out publicly on the Senate report, which has drawn scathing criticism worldwide of what the CIA has called "enhanced interrogation techniques", amid calls for those involved to face trial.


"Such a gross violation of our liberal, democratic values must not happen again," German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, reflecting the embarrassment of Washington's European allies.
America's great power rival China -- often on the end of US censure for its rights record -- was equally unimpressed.

"We believe the US side should reflect upon itself, correct its ways and earnestly respect and abide by the rules of international conventions," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

The United Nations said the program violated international law and basic human rights, and British-based advocacy group CAGE demanded criminal proceedings.

Around the world, human rights bodies demanded that current US President Barack Obama -- who halted the torture but has not gone after the perpetrators -- take legal action.

Bush and Cheney et al have done immense damage to America's ability to chide others on human rights abuses.  True, America has a very ugly history, if one knows accurate history, but the use of torture and war crimes makes it clear that nothing has really changed and America is plagued with hypocrisy.  People around the world are tired of being told by America to "do as we say and not as we do."

American Hypocrisy Over Russia’s Anti-Gay Laws

These states have anti-gay laws that aren't that different from Russia's http://thkpr.gs/1etn5ms

UPDATED:  I added the map above via Think Progress.  It goes without saying that most of these states are in the South.

I for one am a severe critic of Russia's anti-gay laws - as should anyone of believes in equality under the law not to mention freedom of religion and freedom of speech.  But there are many in America who do not believe in those principles and before America condemns Russia without reservation, America needs to put its own house in order and eliminate anti-gay laws on the books here are home.  A piece in the Washington Post written by two Yale law professors looks at anti-gay propaganda laws on the books here in America - and that doesn't even get into the issue of the lack of LGBT protections in states like Virginia.  State sanctioned homophobia remains alive and well in the United States.  Here are some column excerpts that underscore anti-gay extremism still on the books:

Controversy over a Russian law that prohibits advocacy of homosexuality threatens to overshadow athletic competition at the upcoming Sochi Olympics. Thoughtful world leaders, including President Obama, have criticized Russia for stigmatizing gay identity.

Many of these critics find it hard to believe that in 2014 a modern industrial government would have this kind of medieval language in its statutory code: 

●“Materials adopted by a local school board . . . shall . . . comply with state law and state board rules . . . prohibiting instruction . . . in the advocacy of homosexuality.”

●“Propaganda of homosexualism among minors is punishable by an administrative fine.”

●“No district shall include in its course of study instruction which: 1. Promotes a homosexual life-style. 2. Portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative life-style. 3. Suggests that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex.”

●“[I]nstruction relating to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include . . . emphasis, provided in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense.”

Amid the rush to condemn Russia’s legislation, however, it is useful to recognize that only the second quoted provision comes from the Russian statute.  The other three come from statutes in the United States.

It is Utah that prohibits “the advocacy of homosexuality.” 

Arizona prohibits portrayals of homosexuality as a “positive alternative life-style” and has legislatively determined that it is inappropriate to even suggest to children that there are “safe methods of homosexual sex.”

 Alabama and Texas mandate that sex-education classes emphasize that homosexuality is “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” Moreover, the Alabama and Texas statutes mandate that children be taught that “homosexual conduct is a criminal offense” even though criminalizing private, consensual homosexual conduct has been unconstitutional since 2003. 

Eight U.S. states, and several cities and counties, have some version of what we call “no promo homo” provisions. Before the United States condemns the Russian statute’s infringement of free speech and academic freedom, it should recognize that our own republican forms of government have repeatedly given rise to analogous restrictions.

The underlying ideology of these statutes is the same: Everybody should be heterosexual, and homosexuality is per se bad. This ideology has never rested on any kind of evidence that homosexuality is a bad “choice” that the state ought to discourage. 

Maybe Obama ought to send Olympic delegates Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano to Alabama and Texas. 

We offer that suggestion somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is an important lesson here. Sometimes the moral failings of others can help us see moral failings in ourselves. It was revulsion toward Nazi Germany’s eugenics policy that, in part, caused U.S. legislatures and courts to renounce state sterilization programs. Opposition to South African apartheid and the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime generated greater national pressure for the Eisenhower administration and the Warren court to renounce apartheid in the American South. 

Putin’s inability to justify this law puts a spotlight on the inability of Utah, Texas, Arizona and other states to justify their gay-stigmatizing statutes. They should be repealed or challenged in court. Just as judges led the way against compulsory sterilization and racial-segregation laws, so they should subject anti-gay laws to critical scrutiny. 

As things stand, one could imagine Putin responding to U.S. criticism by saying: “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye.”

America doesn't have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but it surely suffers from it on staggering levels.

America's Hypocrisy In Decrying Assad's Use of Chemical Weapons

I'm by no means anti-America, but at times the hypocrisy that this country displays is shocking given some of the past actions of the national government and the U.S. Military.  Yes, the use of chemical weapons against civilians and children in Syria by most likely the Assad regime is horrible and against international laws that date back to the 1920's.  But how quickly America forgets the horrors or its own past conduct.  The image above that shows screaming children who were hit by American Napalm in Vietnam (other children were killed) is an iconic reminder that America has less than clean hands when it piously condemns the actions of others.  And when it comes to the use of poison gas, how quickly some have forgotten the USA's aid during the Iran/Iraq war during the Reagan years when America supplied chemical weapons used in the conflict.  George Will has a column that helps remind us that when one knows accurate history, America frequently doesn't live up to the standards it likes to apply to others.  Here are column excerpts:

U.S. power and security are somewhat dependent on a president’s stature, which should not be diminished unnecessarily. Neither, however, should America’s well-being be equated with a president’s policy preferences or political health. The real but limited importance of presidential prestige and the real but limited diminution of it that would result from blocking Obama’s attack both matter. But so do the manifest and manifold weaknesses of his argument. 

Skepticism is warranted, given the prodigies of confusion in administration statements, including historical amnesia. 

Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons is only his most recent, and he is not the first to have used such weapons in war since the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing them. But because attacking Syria is said to be necessary as reinforcement of the 1925 “norm,” it matters that the norm has been violated before. In the 1960s, Egypt used chemical weapons against Yemen. Saddam Hussein used them not only against disobedient Iraqis but in the 1980-88 war with Iran. A March 23, 1984, CIA report said: “Iraq has begun using nerve agents . . . [which] could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” A new article by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy says that in 1988:

“The United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.” 

U.S. officials denied acquiescing in such attacks because Iraq never announced them. But Harris and Aid quote retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, a military attache in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, saying, “The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.” 

I disagree with much of the rest of the column, but the point quoted need to not be forgotten.   Americans - especially politicians - like to forget America's many sins.  The rest of the world is less prone to such amnesia and, if Obama and America as a whole want to be believed and want to hold the moral high ground, it is important that complete and accurate history be remembered.  Too often it is not.

How Did Latin America Become More Gay Friendly Than the USA?

This blog has noted a number of times that it is somewhat mind boggling that a number of nations in South America have become more accepting of gay rights and gay marriage than the United States of America, the alleged "land of liberty" and home of "religious freedom" for all, which in fact puts the religious views of conservative Christians ahead of the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  A piece in the New York Times pointed out to me by a blog reader in The Netherlands looks at this surprising twist of circumstance which one can only hope will change with the rulings of the Supreme Court this week. Here are some article excepts:

How can we reconcile these developments with the stereotype of Latin culture as a bastion of religiosity and machismo? How is it that the continent the Catholic Church looks to as its future (along with Africa) is home to what is said to be the largest gay-pride celebration in the world, in São Paulo, Brazil? 

The church’s presence in Latin America is undeniable, but its influence on social policy is nothing like that of conservative Christian evangelicals in the United States, nor have the rising numbers of Pentecostals been obsessed with homosexuality like their conservative counterparts up north. Mexico, for instance, has long emphasized separation between church and state and recognizes only civil marriage — that is, clerics can officiate at weddings, but are not empowered to legally marry couples.

Political history is another factor. Since the 1970s, protest movements helped end military dictatorships or long periods of one-party rule; this democratic opening empowered left or center-left governments that have strongly emphasized human rights and individual freedom.

The recent expansion of same-sex marriage rights has come about in part through alliances of left-of-center legislative majorities with progressive executives, like Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico City, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and President José Mujica of Uruguay. In addition, as in the United States, judges have played an important role in advancing the cause of gay equality, as evidenced this week in Brazil, where the National Council of Justice, which oversees the judiciary, ruled that notary publics may not refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. 

So to understand why the politics changed, we must also look to society. .  .  .  .  In the 1990s, I interviewed dozens of Mexicans, straight and gay, in Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city. They spoke about how they wanted their lives to differ from their parents’.  .  .   .  .  This desire for individual autonomy — which in some ways lagged behind the sexual revolution in the United States — extended to gay and lesbian people.

Mexican media, which reaches even remote rural hamlets, features telenovelas that portray homosexuality in frank (if melodramatic) terms and talk shows where tolerance is a sign of cosmopolitan modernity. 

These developments not only undermine stereotypes about machismo, but also the assumption that the prominence of Catholicism makes progressive change impossible. Same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, Portugal and Spain, and Ireland recognizes civil unions. As the United States Supreme Court debates same-sex marriage, perhaps it should consider the precedent set by other nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Should the Supreme Court fail to rule broadly for gay marriage, to me it will be yet further proof that the image that America seeks to project to the rest of the world is a lie and a farce.  As long as ignorance and bigotry based religious beliefs are allowed to trump the Constitution's guaranty of equality for all Americans, hypocrisy will be the main attribute of the USA.  It does not practice what it preaches.  Why should African nations and Islamic nations listen to America on gays rights issues when America itself still allows widespread discrimination and legal inequality?  Virginia is a prime example of this hypocrisy.

Organization for American States Backs Anti-Discrimination Resolution

The United States finds itself increasingly out of step on gay rights compared to other nations in the western hemisphere.  While the State Department speaks nice words against anti-gay discrimination in Africa and elsewhere overseas, the fact that gays face open, stat endorsed discrimination in states like Virginia is conveniently overlooked.  Now, the Organization for American States has adopted an anti-discrimination resolution that ostensibly the USA doesn't comply with.  The Washington Blade looks at the development and how the Obama administration continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to gay rights.  Pretty words are not what is needed.  We want and need to see real action.  Here are highlights from the Blade article:

The Organization of American States on June 5 adopted an anti-discrimination resolution that includes sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

“Every human being is equal under the law and has the right to equal protection against all forms of discrimination and intolerance in whatever aspect of public or private life,” it reads.

The resolution the OAS adopted during its annual meeting that took place in Antigua, Guatemala, also said member countries have an obligation to prevent “all acts and demonstrations of discrimination and intolerance.” These include hate and bias-motivated violence and using the Internet and other media to incite “hate, discrimination and intolerance” against marginalized groups.

Anti-LGBT discrimination and especially violence remain serious problems in the hemisphere in spite of recent advances on same-sex marriage and other issues in countries that include Brazil and Uruguay.

The U.S. State Department has spoken out against anti-LGBT violence in Jamaica and other countries that include Honduras and Perú.

Wilson Castañeda Castro, director of Caribe Afirmativo, a Colombian LGBT advocacy group that works in cities along the country’s Caribbean coast, attended the OAS meeting in Guatemala.  He told the Washington Blade earlier this week his group welcomes the anti-discrimination resolutions.

“This has been a triumph for the region’s LGBT and Afro-descendent movement,” Castañeda said.

Note the language of the resolution :  "member countries have an obligation to prevent “all acts and demonstrations of discrimination and intolerance."   Here in Virginia, one can be fired for being gay - even by state agencies and departments - and we can be refused housing and accommodations.  And, of course, our relationships receive no legal recognition and we are deprived of over 1000 legal rights.  Let's be real.  America's behavior- and laws like DOMA - makes a mockery of the new resolution.