Foreword

Michael Bronski

The second decade of the twenty-first century—just 150 years after Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Karl-Maria Kurtbeny, early LGBT rights theorists, ignited the idea of same-sex freedom in 1868—we find ourselves in a heady, global maelstrom of unimaginable liberation and continued stark oppression. The contrasts are great, and highlighted by advances in technologies, globalization, shifts in market economies, and recent flare-ups of extreme religiosity. Making sense of this, or even fully grasping the situation, is extraordinarily difficult.

Frédéric Martel’s Global Gay: How Gay Culture Is Changing the World, in this brisk, engaging translation by Patsy Baudoin, confronts the challenge of describing this new, global LGBT world with political sophistication and a considerable amount of energy. Frédéric Martel, a leading French sociologist and journalist, having traveled to nearly sixty countries across the world and interviewing activists, politicians, artists, and everyday citizens, has collected an overwhelming amount of evidence that acceptance—or at least tolerance—is on the rise across the globe. This, despite the harsh reality that severe repression exists in many areas and at least ten countries still have the death penalty for same-sex activity.

This new, unprecedented, era of acceptance and, in some cases, increasing freedom is due to a number of factors: Western influence on non-Western cultures, broadening understanding of human rights, technological advances in communication, and most notably persistent (and effective) LGBT activism across a wide range of countries and national identities. The good news is that the world is getting better and safer for LGBT people. The real power of Global Gay, and of Martel’s reporting, resides within the sweep and breadth of the details—of the amazing diversity and exuberance of queer lives around the world.

Global Gay raises a plethora of questions, some of them old: What is the impact of colonialism on same-sex identity and homophobic laws? What is the role of religion in shaping responses to homosexuality? How does entrenched nationalism shape same-sex relationships? These are the standard questions that political theorists, anthropologists, and sociologists have long asked. Martel considers them, and has thoughtful, complex answers to many. What is fresh here—and this is where the book is the strongest—is that he considers these older questions within the context of new questions that radically challenge our fundamental assumptions of why we are asking any of these questions. Global Gay ushers in a new understanding of how we might think about same-sex experience transnationally.

The history of question-asking about same-sex relationships, activities, identities—in modern shorthand, queerness—has changed radically over the years. From the mid-nineteenth century to the 1980s most inquiries were predicated on finding a universalism in homosexual experience and culture. After the advent of the postmodern “différance” and “otherness,” this search for universality became outdated, politically suspect. In Global Gay, Martel—through the objective eye of reporting and easily accessible analysis—considers both of these perspectives. Without beginning with the presumption of universalization, he manages, by continually broadening his base of informants and building his argument, to find similarities in the shape and scope of identity and behavior. His arguments here are nuanced, and never naive, as he carefully maps lives, social arrangements, and the blending of indigenous and outside cultures that have increasingly been forming new identities and political consciousness.

The volume of information here is impressive. Martel documents same-sex cultures—LGBT, queer, homosexual in the older sense—in numerous countries including Algeria, Argentina, Cameroon, Cuba, Hong Kong, Jordan, Singapore, Syria, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam. It is impossible to sum up all of Martel’s findings and observations; there are too many, and his comparisons and evaluations of them are complex, provocative, and often startling.

The contradictions in Global Gay are manifest and illuminating. In Tehran (Iran has a death penalty for same-sex behavior) Martel finds that:

The separation between gay and straight is not as clear as one might think. What is striking, however, is the glaring chasm between North and South Tehran. In South Tehran, gay men flirt in parks and are at the mercy of the police; in North Tehran, they go to posh parties, and to some degree are more accepting of their identity. As if homosexuality were limited to “practices” in South Tehran but can be an “identity” in North Tehran.

The situation, however, is more complicated: “The problem is not so much homosexuality in and of itself, but everything that is considered ‘Western.’” In addition, although some gay Iranians believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of Iran, is gay, he famously stated on September 24, 2007, at a lecture at Columbia University, that: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. This does not exist in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who told you that we have.” This deft dissection of social, cultural, and political tensions defines Martel’s approach to his material, and we are often left not only with more information but also with more questions than when we began.

Global Gay is replete with surprising events, as well as brave personal and political actions. Take the case of Stuart Koe, an activist and entrepreneur who works in Singapore, a country with no protections of LGBT people, no access to marriage equality, and whose (mostly unenforced) laws criminalize male-male sexual activity. Martel states that in 2005, Koe

helped organize a Singaporean Gay Pride—something that was unthinkable in a country that bans demonstrations, denies freedom of association, and punishes all forms of political mobilization. A mixed success: Gay Pride would not be allowed to take place the following year and was turned into a gay week named “Indignation” by way of resistance. In 2007, fridae.com [Koe’s activist group], along with a dozen organizations, demanded the repeal of Section 377, the antigay section of the Singaporean Penal Code.

Again and again Martel charts how unexpected change can occur through political actions that have unintended collateral consequences. He understands that the progress of LGBT rights is often directly tied to—sometimes through indirect routes—multiple fights for human dignity and freedom.

The tensions in Global Gay are, in a sense, more universal than the similarities that exist among same-sex communities around the world. Martel highlights, explores, and, at times, clarifies (as much as they can be clarified) these tensions. They are, in a very real way, the backbone of the book.

These tensions are most often conflicts between the religious and the secular, between national and local ethnic identity, between a nation’s internal political power structures, between new and old forms of cultural representation. These struggles are present in most nation states, but what Martel elucidates is that they frequently manifest themselves around issues of sexuality, and particularly homosexuality. Although his focus is on same-sex activity and identity, Martel beautifully explicates these root tensions and charts their varying effects on LGBT cultures.

If there is a major theme running through the labyrinth of stories, situations, and political sermonizing of Global Gay: How Gay Culture Is Changing the World, it is the slow, complicated evolution of how we as humans decide to define and act on an agreed definition of human rights that would be functional and useful for all national cultures. So far this has been an impossibility.

Over the past century humanity has been moving closer to a comprehensive definition of human rights. Martel argues that this, in part, is due to technology. In its epilogue, Global Gay embraces a vision, and analysis, that moves us into the future: “Four revolutions underway—satellite TV, mobile screens, internet, and social networks—have been profoundly transforming the lives of gays across the world. A new chapter of LGBT history is beginning.” Others, of course, have written about the revolutions in technology; however, as Martel’s narrative makes clear, technology is only part of the picture. These technologies are tools and useful only when they are used by brave, thoughtful humans who have good intentions and a clear vision of justice.

Almost all of the stories here involve new technologies—even the blaring soundtracks at the gay dance bars across the world are emblematic of these technological advances—but this is not the heart of the book. In many ways Global Gay is about the experience of peoples who have been cultural and social outsiders. In the language of human rights: displaced people, refugees, who have been excluded from social acceptance, safety, and often basic decency. The move toward liberation is the process of discovering ways to break out of that refugee status. Time and again Martel documents the political, intellectual, emotional, and social bravery that is the prerequisite for gaining full freedom. These acts may be arguing for rights at the United Nations, holding a Gay Pride march in Singapore, or just standing up to the police in any number of countries, including in the United States and Europe. As Martel points out “the West has no monopoly on gay rights, nor does the East or the South own the privilege of homophobia.”

This personal and collective bravery animates Global Gay as well as the LGBT movement. But this is courage that often comes with a price: “Anything that liberates is not without risk” is a message that comes through again and again in Global Gay. What might be a simple message of “be brave” or “fight for your rights” is more complex here. In chapter after chapter, through Frédéric Martel’s insightful reporting, we are witness to just how many ways there are to be brave and to face that risk again and again until full human dignity and freedom is a little closer, a little more real.