Tunisia and Gays
Great crowd in Philly Friday night for WHERE TO INVADE NEXT! We were the closing night film of the city's annual Film Festival. Had a great time, a wonderful dinner at Cuba Libre, and I got to be interviewed by a blogger from Geekadelphia! I mentioned to the audience during the q and a afterward that I would research a question an audience member raised and post my findings here on one of my social media sites. (Possible spoiler alerts coming for people who haven't seen the movie). The great Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Friday Night Lights," wondered what I thought about a recent arrest in Tunisia where a gay man was jailed because of his sexual orientation (I hadn't heard of this incident). He was arrested in early September and sentenced to one year in prison on September 22nd (this all occurred some weeks after we finished the movie and after we premiered it at the Toronto Film Fest). In WHERE TO INVADE NEXT, we "invade" other countries to take things we as Americans need back home in the U.S. Tunisia had three things we wanted: 1) a women's "Equal Rights Amendment" that's in their new Constitution (we in the U.S. failed to pass an ERA back in the 1970s); 2) free government-funded women's health clinics throughout the country; and 3) government-funded reproductive health services, including abortion (abortion is an elective, legal, safe medical procedure women may choose to have for free and without stigma in Tunisia). What was really special in Tunisia was that when the ruling Islamist Party (Tunisia became a democracy after the 2011 "Arab Spring") opposed an Equal Rights Amendment for women, the Tunisian women (and many men) took to the streets to fight for their ERA. The Islamist Party saw that the vast majority of the people wanted this amendment -- so it went along with it and Parliament approved it. And then the Islamist Party voluntarily stepped down from power. It was this and other acts of national reconciliation toward democracy that just won Tunisian political groups this year's Nobel Peace Prize. In the movie we interviewed one of the founders of the Islamist Party and he explained that it is not right for any religion to impose its beliefs on its citizens -- including things like how women should dress or what gays choose to do in the privacy of their homes. He is no longer in power, his party is now the in the minority and he was expressing his personal opinions. He had also previously come out publicly and said that homosexuality should not be criminalized in Tunisia (as it is in much of the Muslim world). According to Tunisia Live: "Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, president of the Homosexuel Musulmans 2 France (HM2F), an association for Muslim gays and lesbians in France, welcomed the Tunisian Islamist Party leader's statement, praising the fact that such an influential thinker in the Arab-Muslim world is in favor of the creation of laws protecting the rights of gays and lesbians. Zahed further announced <http://blog.kelmty.org/jameyet-almethlyn-elmuslimin-fi-tunis/> the opening of a branch of his association in Tunisia, to let the world know that Tunisia is one of the few Muslim-Arab countries that ‘praises human rights.’ In a report <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/countries-where-being-gay-is-a-crime> conducted by British newspaper The Guardian, more than 2.7 billion people live in 76 countries where homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment, lashes or death." The problem, as I've learned this weekend from our friends in Tunisia, is that the Tunisian penal code, which was imposed by the French during colonial rule in 1913, still says homosexuality is a crime (like it used to be until recently in many states in the U.S.). So police and prosecutors are still harassing gay men and many are sitting in Tunisian jails for committing acts of sodomy. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/28/tunisia-one-year-sentence-homosexuality. And while the new, free and democratic Tunisia is a better place to live, like with much of the rest of the world, it isn't an easy society in which to be gay. There is still much work to be done. (There was another country whose founding fathers wrote "All men are created equal" -- and 250 years later that country is still struggling and trying to make it come true.) The collective of Tunisian groups which won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize have condemned the arrest of the man in September and protests are already being mounted. One Tunisian activist told us on the phone today that, under the dictatorship 4 years ago, homosexuals were being arrested all the time, but it wasn’t reported because there was no freedom of the press. Now, they can learn about it when it happens, and they can now have LGBT human right organizations who advocate for gay rights, which is impossible in other Muslim countries. But the old French colonial penal code must be thrown out and she said they. need to write new laws guaranteeing everyone's protection. "Four years ago, I wouldn't have even been able to talk freely to you on the phone and say this. Now I can." We should all support Tunisia in its efforts to achieve equal rights for the LGBTQ community. After all, here in more than 2/3 of the U.S., employers can still legally fire someone for being gay, landlords can still deny housing to gays and lesbians, and the LGBTQ community can still be discriminated against - legally - in about six dozen other ways. So far our Supreme Court has said just two things: consenting adults can have "gay sex," and gays and lesbians can get married. Will the Muslim nation of Tunisia beat us to full equality on this issue, just as they already did with their women's Equal Rights Amendment and their free women's health clinics? How 'bout we get those last three states to ratify the ERA. Next year, anyone? Thank you Mr. Bissinger for your support of gay rights in Tunisia and for informing people about it. And thank you Philly for the big standing O you gave our film. It will open in your town and everywhere around the holidays!