“LGBT organizations need to get over themselves!”
In a panel ‘conversation’ on ‘What do local organizations really need?’, speaker Ian Southey-Swartz somewhat controversially said: “LGBT organizations need to get over themselves!”
Despite that sounding hostile on paper, his advice that followed was sound: strengthen your cause by allying yourself with other causes than can, in turn, advance your own.
As had already been highlighted in the example of repealing India’s sodomy laws, which had been achieved through a broad-base coalition of interests including women’s, children’s and LGBT rights groups, Southey-Schwartz urged the LGBT activists in the room that if they not only wanted to advance their cause but also receive greater funding from grant-makers, they should broaden their focus.
“Your agenda can’t always be LGBT because in some situations it will take you nowhere,” he said.
Instead, he advised, LGBT rights groups should be pushing also for greater women’s rights, as that should also advance the rights of lesbians and tran-women, as well as all men; “Women are not the only ones to benefit from greater women’s rights!”
He also advised LGBT groups to make sure their voices are heard on other pertinent issues such as food security.
But, as one Fellow pointed out, “If we don’t speak up for us, who will?”
Another suggestion to come out of the conversation, which also featured Georges Azzi, from Lebanon and Samira Montiel, from Nicaragua, was: If LGBT groups are to continue and be successful in advancing the human rights of LGBT people, then perhaps instead of focusing on human rights, groups should instead present the economic argument for their greater freedoms.
“The language of economics is more universal,” suggested one Fellow, especially as human rights rhetoric from Western nations can be seen as an ‘imperial’, non-indiginous imposition to some Global South governments.
In his explanation of how LGBT groups in Lebanon had successfully overturned the violating “anal tests” that were being carried out to “check” for homosexuality, Azzi said their target had been the medical legitimacy of the tests, rather than campaigning on a human rights violation platform.
“Find the weak spots,” he advised.