On November 17 the Paris-based International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO)
will launch a global campaign for a United Nations resolution declaring that
homosexuality should no longer be considered a crime anywhere in the world.

The proposed U.N. resolution is the brainchild of IDAHO’s founder,
Louis-Georges Tin, 32, a professor and author of a number of books
(including the Dictionary of Homophobia) who is also a rising star of France’s
emerging black movement for equality.

Tin will simultaneously release a list of hundreds of VIP endorsers of the
proposed U.N. resolution, including a gaggle of Nobel Prize winners (among
them, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Dario Fo of Italy, Elfriede
Jelinek of Austria, and Amartya Sen of India); political leaders, including
two former French prime ministers (Laurent Fabius and Michel Rocard);
academics (such as Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman and
world-famous sociologist Richard Sennett); entertainment industry figures
(such as Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep, director Bernardo
Bertolucci, David Bowie, Edward Norton, Mike Nichols, Lily Tomlin,
actor-playwright Wallace Shawn, humorist Bruce Vilanch, and Spanish actress
Victoria Abril); and a host of renowned writers, including Salman Rushdie,
Gore Vidal, Sir Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Martin Amis, Ian
McEwan, Russell Banks, Bernard-Henri Levy, John Berendt, Lady Antonia
Fraser, Doug Wright, Jon Robin Baitz, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Chambon,
Peter Carey, Paula Vogel, and Edmund White.

Getting the U.N. to commit to universal decriminalization of homosexuality
is destined to become the central objective of the international LGBT
movement for the next decade. Tin spoke to The Advocate.

What chance do you think this resolution has of passing the U.N.?
Many people believe such a resolution is beyond reach. I personally don't.
Why? Because there is already U.N. jurisprudence in our favor. In 1994, Mr.
Toonen, a citizen of Tasmania, who had been condemned for same-sex
relationships, won his case in what was then the U.N. Commission on Human
Rights—it said his arrest was a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and of the right of privacy. So we just ask the U.N. to extend this
jurisprudence to other countries—75 in the world!—where same-sex
relationships are still forbidden. There’s recent evidence that this is not
as utopian a project as it might seem at first glance: In October this year,
the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared that the imprisonment
in Cameroon of 11 men who’d been caught in a raid on a gay bar on charges of
homosexuality was "an arbitrary deprivation of liberty" that violates the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That’s encouraging.

How will you and IDAHO work for its passage?
The campaign for the U.N. resolution will have two main components. An
external media campaign to raise awareness within public opinion and
governments will begin with the November 17 unveiling of a petition—for
which VIP signatures are now being gathered—on IDAHO’s Web site,
www.idahomophobia.org. Also, a host of international and country
organizations have already signed on as cosponsors of the campaign for the
resolution, like the International Lesbian and Gay Association and France‘s
Ligue des Droits de l‘Homme. The second battle has to be waged within the
new U.N. Council on Human Rights. We have to lobby the states that are
members and ask them to support the resolution or at least not to vote
against it. We are talking with the government of South Africa, which is a
member of the council to sponsor the resolution. South Africa was the first
country in the world to include the principle of nondiscrimination against
gays and lesbians in its constitution—and their sponsorship would show that
LGBT rights are not just a "Western issue."

What exactly does the resolution say?

The text I wrote asks for a universal decriminalization of homosexuality. It
is very clear, easy, and simple, and based solely on the articles of the
U.N.‘s Universal Declaration of Human Rights that were used to justify the
decision in the Toonen case. I did not want to write a philosophical text on
the issue, because an argument that may be relevant in one country will
certainly be irrelevant in another one. We need a common language to support
human rights. What could be more relevant and more international than the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself?

Why did you choose this moment to launch this campaign?
The Toonen case was ruled on 12 years ago, so I thought it was high time
that LGBT organizations decided to take advantage of it at the U.N. To be
honest, I fail to see any issue that could be more important than this one
for LGBT organizations. On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization
decided that homosexuality could no longer be regarded as a disease, which
is why I chose that date for the International Day Against Homophobia. The
first IDAHO was only celebrated in 2005, so we really couldn’t do anything
before that—but now our organization has spread to more than 50 countries
and been endorsed by the European Parliament, so I think we are ready to go
farther. Look, gays and lesbians around the world cannot wait any longer for
their love to cease being made a crime. Many are in jail, or at risk of
being jailed. Some are being killed. This has to stop now.



From The Advocate -- the national U.S. magazine for gays and lesbians
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid39427.asp