28/06/2011 | Writer: Yıldırım Türker

Without sheltering under anyone’s tolerance, for example, right here, when we are ourselves, when we can be ourselves and not only make our voices heard but also make them a part of the bigger picture and share them, then that will be the moment we have started protecting ourselves.

Thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday, just like last year’s gay pride march for solidarity for the freedom of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, individuals.
 
Meanwhile, Amnesty International issued last week a comprehensive report titled, “Not an illness or a crime: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Turkey demand equality.”
 
In contrast to advances of the government in other fundamental human rights, the report emphasizes the government’s hostile stance against the LGBT freedom movement, which has made recent advances in Turkey, and also the government’s hostile stance toward LGBT individuals in general.
 
The report also mentions Aliye Kavaf, the state minister responsible for women and family’s glorious “an illness that should be treated” description and her shunning of all those protests that arose after her remarks; and that she has never apologized. Meanwhile there is a perfect quotation from Burhan Kuzu, the government’s much egg-thrown component: “Gays have made requests during the negotiations on constitutional changes. They keep coming. Are we going to respond to their requests just because they want it? It is not possible in the current conditions. The public is not ready for this.”
 
The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government sees the gay demand for equal rights as a batch of rights to be awarded to them.
 
Gay rights is the one area where hate crimes are the easiest to commit, and where perpetrators have little trouble getting away with their deeds. It only shows that we have a terribly long way to go when some of those self-interested would-be democrats issued their own personal fatwas that it is “a sin, not an illness,” in response to the minister’s remarks. And that this should be regarded within the context of “freedom of thought and belief,” in a country where dozens of LGBT individuals are victims of hate murders every year.
 
Nonetheless, LGBT individuals’ organized struggle for freedom has come a long way. Despite the fact that the attacks, hatred and hostility they face have not changed in nature, one can observe the progress they have made in terms of their social visibility by taking a look at city squares.
 
I also want to share, after all those years, the text of the speech I made back in 1995 at “the 2nd Congress on the Fight against AIDS,” with the thought that it might give an idea on the distance that has been covered. That speech was published in Expres magazine on the GL page we had launched that year. The name of the speech was this:
 
Love and protection
 
“The moment I take the floor on this subject, what interests me the most is where I would be speaking from as who and to whom. Because, it is where I stand and where my face looks from where I stand will in fact determine what I will say. I can start as, ‘I am gay.’ This is a first step. But is it enough positioning to start a speech? First, I cannot talk on behalf of gays. It is only the first step toward building gay rights organizations. There are no jointly produced, mutually tested words behind me. I can talk only on my own behalf.
 
My state, with its “One solution, One partner” campaign, commends a lifestyle for me instead of protecting me. My state’s Religious Affairs Directorate tells me that unless I give up homosexuality, my country will be destroyed just like Lut’s tribe. My political life has to exist on the legitimate terrain set by the National Security Council. My sexual life has to stay on the legitimate terrain as Allah has commanded.
 
The most the state, the media and the medical practice can offer me is the police’s idea of affection. Because I am the one who has to exist or will be made to exist within at the boundaries of a legitimate terrain. Who do I have to trust? In a country of 60 million, I can only talk to other gays, with whom I stand together under a wide umbrella of invisibility. My face is turned toward them. Can I have a word toward the heterosexual world that does not accept our life, our existence and disregards us? If we press hard enough, yes. A quiet and voiceless death. Whereas I have a world to offer to gay people. Get organized and struggle politically. Right at this point I can mention protection to them.
 
AIDS is a disease that has been, for years, attributed to us, the gay community. There have been millions of mythological stories made up about gay people throughout history. This too was the last myth. This myth may be the fastest to be rebutted by history.
 
Come to think of it, there are millions who still believe that gayness is a degeneration brought by the system. We all know more or less how to be protected from AIDS. The question to be asked is why we should be protected from “AIDS.” The “elegance” behind the naming of gay love as “the love that dares not speak its name” in the English language until a very recent date may shed light on what I want to explain. We cannot talk about protection before we name our love.
 
For centuries, gay love has been a challenge, a show of daring. We first need to prove our own legitimacy to ourselves if we are to redefine gay love, which has been swept under the bed, inside the closet and pushed underground. We need to redefine it as an attainable lifestyle where happiness is possible. We should decide how we can talk about what kind of safe-sex protection as long as our love dares to challenge society. How are we going to be able to explain to each other the need for protection from death while we live on the edge of a knife? While very young boys are dragged to suicide because they are gay, while lies are the ferment of our lives, how are we going to raise awareness to first protect ourselves then the ones we make love to?
 
Love and protection, aren’t they the most difficult words that come side by side in our lives? When we venture our love, when we dare our love, don’t we get rid of social power and status quo? Above all, when we express our love, when we refuse to hide, don’t we see that, most of the time, we have no life left to protect? We all know that loneliness is colder than death.
 
Right at this point, we can work for the awareness of protection from AIDS. We have so much to measure before it comes to condoms, safe sex. As long as we live our love as a crime that locks us out of the world, taking measures to protect ourselves from a death that will arrive at an unknown time may not be compatible with the underground heroism that we have developed as a defense mechanism. When we are dizzy with our loves, we will throw out the condoms. Whereas protection, as we assume, is not something against love. It is not something that tames or belittles our love. We don’t need to dare death to demonstrate our love or our passion for each other. We should define here at this point, heroism correctly. This segment of history, unfortunately, does not give us much of a choice. It declares that you either will become heroes or die and diminish quietly. At this point, heroism is not suicide. Heroism is to get together, to name our own name and write our own history. The moment we notice that we are not alone we will recognize that we have a life that is worth protecting. Without sheltering under anyone’s tolerance, for example, right here, when we are ourselves, when we can be ourselves and not only make our voices heard but also make them a part of the bigger picture and share them, then that will be the moment we have started protecting ourselves. 

Tags: human rights
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