#PINKSOILING: HOW PALESTINIAN ACTIVISTS BETRAY GAY PEOPLE
Happy Pride Month. Take some time in the next 30 days to consider who our real friends and allies are.
Today is June 1. It’s Pride Month! (Well, not where I live, in Vancouver. For historical reasons, Pride takes place here in August — the historical reasons being that August is the one month in which we are likeliest to find a weekend that doesn’t rain on our parade.)
Anyway, to mark the beginning of Pride Month, I’ve invented a new hashtag and I hope you’ll help it go viral: #Pinksoiling.
You have probably heard of “pinkwashing.” This is the warped (and for reasons I will explain below, colossally antisemitic) conspiracy theory purporting that equality for LGBTQ+ people in Israel is all a big ruse to distract the world’s attention from Israel’s presumed panorama of outrages.
Unable to confront the facts on their merits — Israel is basically a queer mecca in a regional ocean of homophobic brutality — hate groups invented a bizarre, pretzel-logic that acknowledges the fact that Israel is a gay rights oasis but condemns it as a devious plot to dupe the gullible goyim.
Those who are not beholden to a derangement syndrome that sees Jewish evildoing behind every human event understand that legal equality for LGBTQ+ people in Israel evolved as it has in other democracies, slowly, through activism and the inevitable arc of justice.
To suggest that Israel effected gay rights to convince the world that it is something it’s not, or to distract outside observers from the oppression of Palestinians, is like suggesting that Canada legalized marriage equality to distract the world from the fact that many of our First Nations peoples living on reserves are without clean water or that the United States legalized equal marriage to distract from Black people being shot by police.
It’s utterly ridiculous.
According to the pinkwashing conspiracy theory, the Israeli body politic made a decision to grant equality not out of any concern for LGBTQ+ people, but in a craven effort to get away with some master plan to oppress Palestinians.
Pinkwashing is an allegation that is sustainable only in an environment festering with the most extreme preexisting ideas of Jewish guile. Only through this bigoted lens could gay people possibly look at the situation in the region and declare Israel our enemy and Palestinians (their governments and, yes, their people, who according to opinion polls are among the most homophobic on earth) our ideological allies. On this, as on so much else, activists betray not only the people with whom we claim solidarity, but our very values themselves.
Put mildly, that is crime enough.
But consider what it says to queer people around the world, many or most of whom live under the most oppressive conditions imaginable. We almost completely ignore the plight of these involuntarily closeted and threatened millions only to denounce one of the rare beacons of queer hope in the world. (And if my raising this gobsmacking hypocrisy leads you to accuse me of “whataboutery,” you can go straight to hell without passing go — if our gay brothers and lesbian sisters are hanging from scaffolds and being flogged in city squares while you prattle on about pinkwashing, “whataboutery” is the least of the moral atrocities happening here.)
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 67 countries criminalize same-sex relations between consenting adults — never mind “luxuries” like marriage equality or human rights protections for queers, we’re talking about making your very identity illegal — and at least nine countries have gone out of their way to criminalize gender nonconforming people.
We are not just talking about theocracies half a world away, either. The Caribbean is a hotbed of homophobia. In island countries like Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, and St. Lucia, LGBTQ+ people can be sentenced to up to 10 years. In Guyana, sentences can range from 10 years to life. In Jamaica, being queer can net you 10 years in prison with hard labor. In other words, you might want to rethink your winter getaway destinations.
As is so often the case, those who claim to be upholding traditional sexual morality are weirdly obsessed with the specifics of how “it” works. Laws around the world can be very explicit or very vague, some outlawing specific acts while others give police and the judiciary a truly obscene carte blanche by criminalizing things like “debauchery,” “unnatural acts,” “indecent acts” or “acts against nature.”
What an average person (or a cop, or a judge) might consider debauched, unnatural or indecent obviously varies enormously by perspective (and, in my experience, whether it’s the weekend or a work night) but giving a judge the power of imprisonment or even death based on outlandishly general prohibitions seems like something LGBTQ+ activists might want to take on as a cause. But no.
In Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran, you can be executed for consensual same-sex affection.
In the Palestinian territories, British colonial laws remain in effect — You want to talk about colonialism and imperialism? Let’s start there! — in which “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” can get you up to 10 years in prison.
I could go on (and on and on). Records on LGBTQ+ rights around the world are shocking. Go to the Human Rights Watch website with a strong stomach and see just how far we have to go in fighting for queer equality in the world.
Are gay activists mobilizing on any of these outragous fronts? Nope.
It’s always Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!
Actually, it’s not even “Palestine.” Groups like “Queers for Palestine” don’t even advocate for equal rights in Palestine — they only condemn Israel.
It gets tiresome to constantly remind these people that, in Palestine, they would face violence or death for being who they are, while a few kilometers away, in Tel Aviv, they would be barraged with fabulousness. This information is useless to them, of course. Rational arguments will not get you out of a hole you dug yourself into with a shovel of irrationality.
Interestingly — and I say this with some degree of self-criticism — LGBTQ+ people in Canada and other places with liberal laws and social norms around queer rights act as though the fight has been won. There are a couple of organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ rights around the world, as well as others that address the problem by helping queer people migrate to places where they can live freely, like Canada. But it is probably safe to say that the gay rights movement doesn’t really have much of a foreign policy. By and large, those of us who live in the countries that are most welcoming to us seem pretty self-satisfied that, as long as we are okay, it’s all okay. We might tsk-tsk when we hear about countries like Zimbabwe where gay people are basically hunted down for fun, but we don’t really do much about it.
The only thing that seems to mobilize any significant number of LGBTQ+ activists is railing against one of the countries — and the only one in the Middle East — where we are legally free.
Not only do we ignore the worst violations against our brothers and sisters worldwide, the only effort we bother expending is against a rare ally in the world and the only one in its region.
Ignoring all the countries where gays are criminalized, terrorized, lashed, imprisoned and murdered, activists have made it their foreign policy priority to target one of the countries with the best record on these issues — and vilify them based on a freaky conspiracy theory that they are doing it for the wrong reasons.
Gays hanging from scaffolds in Iran? 1,000 lashes for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia? Police standing by watching gaybashings in Jamaica and then arresting and beating the victim? Never mind all that — Look! Israel has created a Potemkin Greenwich Village in a devious attempt to convince the world that they are not the embodiment of evil activists are certain they are.
And let me put a damn fine point on this. This hypocrisy is exacerbated by the glaring disparity between approaches to homosexuality in Israel (which activists vilify) and Palestine (which activists beatify). Public opinion polls in Palestine say that 8% of the population believes that “honor killings” are morally acceptable — that is, killing your sister, nephew, cousin or son because they are gay (or because they committed adultery or were raped or whatever fit of pique you deem to have dishonored you, your family and your pride). By contrast, 5% of Palestinians report that they believe homosexuality to be “morally acceptable.” Put plainly, according to the survey, more Palestinians believe it is morally acceptable to kill a homosexual than to be a homosexual.
These are the people whose cause we have made our own. These are the “allies” for whom we march by the millions, camp out on the quad and firebomb synagogues to free?
See how I, as a gay man, might feel just a tad betrayed by the braying multitudes chanting “Free Palestine” when that cause does not even respect my right to exist?
How about freeing Palestine from homophobia? How about freeing the minds of the 95% of Palestinians who tell pollsters they think homosexuality is morally unacceptable?
I’m not going to kid myself that, if these “Queers for Palestine” were not wasting their time attacking the (comparatively superb) queer rights record of Israel, that they would devote themselves to the anti-gay atrocities taking place elsewhere in the world. Because gay rights is not their real agenda. Like the “pro-Palestinian” movement more generally, it’s not so much about bettering the lives of the people for whom they ostensibly are advocating. It’s about bullying, attacking and maligning Israel.
“Queers for Palestine” have nothing to do with gay rights. Ironically, their conspiracy theory of “pinkwashing,” which imagines a devious plot to distract the gullible from the plight of Palestinians in actual fact distracts the world from the plight of LGBTQ+ people around the planet by eclipsing their experiences and refocusing attention against one of the few places in the world where we are legally equal and most free.
For centuries, antisemitic discourse has accused Jews of pulling the wool over gullible gentile eyes, of devious plots to distract attention from some (Jewish) shell game. How surprising that a conspiracy theory as blatantly antisemitic as “pinkwashing” should show up here, when discussing Israel, the world’s only Jewish state!
So the proponents of “pinkwashing” are antisemites — big surprise. Our top story tonight! Film at 11!
Here’s something else they are: homophobes. If not in deed, then by omission, these activists enable and
empower the most homophobic forces on earth to get away with murder — literally — by deflecting attention from these atrocities so they can condemn Israel.
“Queers for Palestine” are not gay rights activists.
They shit on gay rights.
That’s why I call what they do #Pinksoiling.
Happy Pride Month.
Take some time in the next 30 days to consider who our real friends and allies are.
Truth
Bravo.