Rodney Croome . gay advocate

'Let's do it'

This article was published in MCV on 15.12.09.

Kevin Rudd’s keen interest in foreign affairs has earnt him the nickname “Kevin 747”.

But there is one grave foreign issue he hasn’t shown an interest in, yet.

Uganda is about to enact a law that will make the penalty for gay sex life imprisonment and for repeated offences, death. Positive discussion of LGBT issues, funding of LGBT groups, and even failure to dob in a homosexual, will incur a gaol term.

The proposed law has drawn condemnation from around the world and across the political and religious spectrum.

Not only has it been opposed by Amnesty International and Barack Obama. It has been strongly condemned by the conservative Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and those American evangelicals like Rev Rick Warren who traditionally oppose LGBT equality. Even the Vatican has issued an unprecedented statement against the criminalisation of homosexuality, widely thought to be aimed directly as Uganda.

Australia, and our overtly Christian Prime Minister, are conspicuously absent from the list – a particular tragedy given Australia’s influence within the Commonwealth of Nations, of which Uganda is a part.

In Rudd’s defence, conservative Christians like Tony Abbott and the Australian Christian Lobby’s, Jim Wallace, haven’t said anything either (Wallace is far more concerned with blocking gay partnership ceremonies in Canberra).

But their silence is not the standard by which Rudd must be judged. If Rudd’s hero and leader of the anti-Nazi resistance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were alive today, he would urge Christians to take on the Ugandan law as part of their Christian duty.

The problem of Rudd’s silence on Uganda highlights a bigger issue closer to home.

To its north and east, Australia is surrounded by an arc of countries that criminalise homosexuality.

These laws run from Malaysia through Singapore and parts of Indonesia to Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, Samoa and Tonga.

In each country anti-gay laws violate the fundamental human rights of LGBT people in a way Australians would find utterly unacceptable in their own country.

Yet, our Government has done virtually nothing to protest these laws.

Sure, we have signed on to UN resolutions against sexuality discrimination. But only direct and sustained bilateral engagement with the countries concerned will make a difference.

As a major aid donor to, and trading partner of, many of these nations, Australia has no problem protesting other human rights violations. There is no excuse for us to be silent on one of the most obvious.

If we are met with the response that we are neo-colonialists, let’s make it clear that it is actually anti-gay laws themselves which are the product of colonialism, and their repeal, a proper repudiation of the colonial past.

The one time I met Kevin Rudd, in a lift in Parliament House when he was opposition foreign affairs spokesperson, he said “I hear you want to talk to me about what Australia should be doing about gay rights overseas, well talk”.

I did, and his response was “that doesn’t sound too hard, let’s do it”.

I’m quoting those words now because it’s time act.

Uganda is setting a trend which is already striking a chord with governments in other parts of Africa and the broader developing world.

Australia and its Government has the authority to help reverse this trend.

Please Kevin, for the sake of an untold number of innocent LGBT people and their families across the world, “let’s do it”.