LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord on his speech, and in particular on his choice of subject. It is very rarely debated in this House, certainly in the time that he has given to us. I agree with a great deal of what he said.

I have followed the issue, obviously, for some time, but I confess that until two or three years ago I did not fully understand the extent of the utterly unfair treatment meted out to so many LGBT people around the world. It was when I started to research a book on AIDS around the world that it became clear that below the surface of what should have been a medical problem and a question of public health there lurked a vast iceberg of prejudice, persecution and disdain.

Fighting this prejudice is one of the most crucial human rights issues of our time. Around the world hundreds of thousands of people live in the shade. They are shunned and ostracised by their communities, abused and attacked, prosecuted as criminals and imprisoned or worse—and all for no reason other than their sexual orientation. The comparison is made, fairly, with the treatment of the Jews in so many countries before the war. I will give just three examples from my travels.

First, I went to Uganda. One noble Lord mentioned that. I was told by one practising Christian, expressing a view widely held there, that homosexuality was an illness, and that if gay people were locked up, it would prevent it spreading. Just before I came there had been a paper called Rolling Stone, which specialised in publishing photographs of homosexuals plus their addresses. Eventually the paper was closed down, only to be replaced by another paper which carried the front-page headline, “Exposed: Uganda’s 200 Top Homos”. In Uganda, gay men are persecuted, imprisoned and, in the case of David Kato, murdered.

Nor should it be thought—this is an important point—that such outrages are condemned by the public generally. In 2012 the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament went to Ottawa for a conference, where she was roundly attacked for her country’s polities. She robustly defended the discrimination, and when she returned home she was met by crowds on the streets who gave her a hero’s welcome. The public overwhelmingly support the repression, and the politicians compete to see who can be more extreme.

This morning the interviewer on the “Today” programme was corrected by one of the people being interviewed for saying that gay men could face the death penalty. The truth is that at one stage a proposed Bill did in fact threaten the death penalty for what was termed “aggravated homosexuality”, but then the author of the Bill relented, and very generously reduced the penalty to life imprisonment.

One law that did pass last year among other things put a duty on the citizen to report anyone they suspected of being homosexual. Failure to do so: a term of imprisonment of up to three years. In the event, that law was overturned by the Constitutional Court. However, no one can seriously doubt that a gay man in Uganda lives a precarious life, undefended by the vast majority of the public and the vast majority of politicians.

What of the churches? Tragically, there is all too little support from them as well. Here I do not just mean the American evangelicals, who have played a dismal part, but also the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. I am very glad to know that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury is calling a conference next year—but to date, with the exception of a few brave individuals, the churches have done very little to challenge the repression. In some instances, disgracefully, they have supported it.

My second trip was to Russia. My first interview in Moscow, with a gay rights campaigner, summarised so much of that country’s intolerance. The interpreter wanted to start with an apology. He was standing in at the last moment because the planned interpreter had been taken into hospital. She had been taking part in a small, 20-strong demonstration the day before outside the state Duma against the new laws making it a criminal offence to “promote homosexuality”. They had been set upon by a crowd of several hundred supporters of the new laws: Orthodox Christians and pro-Kremlin youth groups. Riot police had moved in and made arrests, mostly of the gay rights protesters.

Again, the official attitude is clear to see. The cover story is that repression is to protect children, which is both utterly unfair and utterly untrue. At the heart of Russia’s legislation is prejudice. It is illegal to suggest that gay relationships are equal to heterosexual ones or to distribute information on gay rights.

Again, the new laws of Mr Putin are not a series of measures forced down the throats of an unwilling public. The new laws were passed by a majority of 436 to nil. Opinion surveys showed that three-quarters of the Russian public believed that homosexuality should not be accepted. The measures and intolerance more generally were supported by the churches—in particular, the Russian Orthodox Church. Two weeks after I left St Petersburg there was a gay pride march, which was attacked by opponents. Seven marchers were taken to hospital with injuries and another 60 were arrested.

My third port of call was India, the biggest democracy in the world but one where the criminal law against homosexuality remains in force. Defenders say that it is not much enforced; but the point is that whether it is enforced or not, it sets the standard. It gives a cover of respectability to people who discriminate. The law has a persuasive effect but, in this case, in entirely the wrong way.

I should mention another minority who also face discrimination and persecution but are rarely mentioned—transgender people, who are one of the most marginalised groups in India. They are effectively barred from most jobs, not because they fail the interview but because they are turned away at the gates. Often they are rejected by their own families and are subject to violence. Yet, when one talks to them, one cannot fail to be moved by their accounts of realising that they have been born in the wrong body, of their long struggles to come to terms with it, and of little acceptance by the public generally. It is often a story of loneliness and rejection, which takes them on to doing the only job available to them: sex work. They remain an often tragic minority from whom, all too often, the public and officials cross to the other side of the road.

I have mentioned just three countries, which gives some idea of the size of the issue we face. They are not remotely the only countries. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, 75 countries around the world have criminal laws against homosexuality. Forty out of the 53 members of the Commonwealth criminalise same-sex relationships; 90% of Commonwealth citizens live under such a law. Nor do I wish to assert that our country is in some way free of prejudice. We know that that is not the case, as the noble Lord stated. We also know that it was only in 1967 that the law was reformed here—which was not before it claimed some notable victims such as Alan Turing and our old colleague who has just died, Edward Montagu, who was so unjustly imprisoned in the 1950s.

However, what we can say is that the position here has been improved, not least by the equal marriage legislation. It gives us an opportunity to try to change the climate of opinion, here and overseas. It gives us that opportunity because we are often blamed for introducing the anti-gay laws in the first place, apparently without anyone understanding that the position here has radically changed. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, mentioned, I note that Elton John has suggested a meeting with Mr Putin. I pay tribute to the work of both Elton John and David Furnish but am not sure how far a meeting of that kind is going to take us in follow-up action. I would much prefer and advocate a meeting with David Cameron, not because the Prime Minister shares Mr Putin’s views but because he simply does not share those views, and it could start a process whereby the discrimination can be fought and defeated. Perhaps there could be a London conference, with the serious aim of beginning that process. The agenda for such a conference is set out extremely well by the Amnesty report that noble Lords will have received.

The basic point is this. We can all condemn the outrages; that is the easy part. The difficult part is doing something practical about it. Necessarily, much depends on the bravery and commitment of people living in those countries where discrimination reigns. However, we should not just ask what they can do; we should also ask what we can do to help and fight what, I repeat, is one of the greatest human rights issues of our time.