Today's Boston Globe runs a story from the International Herald Tribune at the top of p. A13, featuring this photo. ("Elite in India campaigning against antigay legislation," Sept. 24, 2006) These are apparently "transgender" males dressed as females, part of a Calcutta demonstration last June celebrating the Stonewall riot of 1969.Note the Globe headline says the "elite" in India are campaigning. Did it mean to say "Some members of the elite"? And while the caption of the photo reads, "Gay and transgender people marched in Calcutta...," the story says nothing about transgenders. It just refers to homosexuals, gays, and bisexuals.
This new "campaign" in India (which consists of a "protest letter" signed by 150 people) purportedly wants to make the government's fight against HIV/AIDS more effective. It also aims to overturn the "anachronistic" law banning "gay" sex. (Do they mean to say "sodomy"?)
Again we ask, if there's a serious effort to get control of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India, doesn't it make sense for public officials to discourage anal intercourse (five times as risky for contracting HIV as vaginal intercourse, according to the CDC), rather than encourage it? And that is what laws banning sodomy do.
Further, the use of this photo is part of the new MSM (mainstream media -- or "men who have sex with men" -- take your pick!) push to normalize transgenderism and transsexuality. Where will it stop?
From the story:
...Hostility to the law has intensified recently for two reasons: because it is seen as an anachronism, redolent of an earlier, less tolerant era, and because health care officials, struggling to contain India's AIDS epidemic, warn that it hampers their efforts to contact vulnerable groups.
The letter, which was also signed by Soli Sorabjee, a former attorney general, and Nitin Desai, a former UN undersecretary general, as well as prominent figures ranging from newspaper editors to admirals, stresses that the law has been ``used by homophobic officials to suppress the work of legitimate HIV-prevention groups, leaving gay and bisexual men in India even more defenseless against HIV infection."
The letter's release has been timed to trigger renewed debate in advance of a critical ruling from Delhi's High Court, expected early next month, on the validity of the legislation.
This is the latest stage of a long-running attempt by an HIV-AIDS prevention organization, the Naz Foundation, to have the law overturned....
UNAIDS said in May that India had the highest number of people in the world living with HIV -- about 5.7 million. A few weeks later, the government's AIDS-prevention body called for the law to be overturned.
