Opposition to LGBTQ rights
Opposition to legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people exists worldwide. Opponents of LGBTQ rights may object to the decriminalization of homosexuality, laws permitting civil unions or partnerships, same-sex parenting and adoption, the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the military, access to assisted reproductive technology, and gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for transgender individuals.
Organizations that oppose LGBTQ rights often resist the enactment of laws legalizing same-sex marriage, the passage of anti-discrimination legislation aimed at curbing discrimination against LGBTQ people, the adoption of anti-bullying laws to protect LGBTQ minors, the decriminalization of same-gender relationships, and other related laws. These groups are often religious or socially conservative in nature. Such opposition can be motivated by homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, animosity, religion, moral beliefs, political ideologies, or other factors.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "natural law theory offers the most common intellectual defense for differential treatment of gays and lesbians". Dag Øistein Endsjø, a Norwegian scholar and professor of religious studies, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, have stated that religious belief underpins most forms of opposition to LGBTQ rights.
History
The first organized gay rights movement arose in the late nineteenth century in Germany.In the 1920s and into the early 1930s, there were LGBTQ communities in cities like Berlin; German-Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld was one of the most notable spokespeople for LGBTQ rights at this time. When the Nazi party came to power in 1933, one of the party's first acts was to burn down Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, where many prominent Nazis had been treated for perceived sexual problems. Initially tolerant to the homosexuality of Ernst Röhm and his followers, many gay men were purged from the Nazi Party following the Night of the Long Knives and the Section 175 Laws began to be enforced again, with gay men interned in concentration camps by 1938.
Under the Nazi rule in Germany, the dismantling of rights for LGBTQ individuals was approached in two ways. By strengthening and re-enforcing existing laws that had fallen into disuse, male homosexuality was effectively re-criminalised; homosexuality was treated as a medical disorder, but at a social level rather than individual level intended to reduce the incidence of homosexuality. The treatment was a program of eugenics, starting with sterilisation, then a system of working people to death in forced labour camps, and eventually refined by medical scientists to include euthanasia. The driving force was the elimination of perceived degeneracy at various levels – genetic, social, identity and practice, and the elimination of such genetic material in society. Lifton wrote about this in his book The Nazi Doctors:
File:§175 chart of convictions.png|thumb|upright=1.6|Graph of convictions under Germany's Paragraph 175. Spike occurs during Nazi era, and dropoff after partial repeal in 1969.
sexology and defense of homosexuality were aspects of "sexual degeneration, a breakdown of the family and loss of all that is decent," and ultimately the destruction of the German Folk. medicine was to join in the great national healing mission, and the advance image of what Nazi doctors were actually to become: the healer turned killer. Sterilization policies were always associated with the therapeutic and regenerative principles of the biomedical vision: with the "purification of the national body" and the "eradication of morbid hereditary dispositions." Sterilization was considered part of "negative eugenics"
It is argued that the number of gay people who perished in the Holocaust was quite low in comparison to other Holocaust victims, and confined to Germany itself, based on estimates that of 50,000 gay people who came before the courts, between 5,000 and 15,000 ended up in concentration camps. However, many of those who came before the courts were directed to undergo sterilisation/castration; they would be included with others who, in line with the historic shift in German society, were treated for homosexuality as a medical rather than criminal matter.
After the Second World War, the United States became more intolerant of homosexuality, but many gay men and lesbians decided to reveal their gay identities after meeting others in the military. Many gay bars and villages were created, and a whole gay subculture formed. Campaigns for gay rights began to develop, initially in the UK. Towards the end of the 1960s homosexuality began to be decriminalised and de-medicalised in areas such as the UK, New Zealand, Australia, North America and Europe, in the context of the sexual revolution and anti-psychiatry movements. Organized opposition to gay and lesbian rights began in the 1970s.
Public opinion
Societal attitudes towards homosexuality vary greatly in different cultures and different historical periods, as do attitudes toward sexual desire, activity and relationships in general. All cultures have their own norms regarding appropriate and inappropriate sexuality; some sanction same-sex love and sexuality, while others disapprove of such activities.According to The 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project, "Throughout Western Europe and much of the Americas, there is widespread tolerance towards homosexuality. However, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Israel stand apart from other wealthy nations on this issue; in each of these countries, fewer than half of those surveyed say homosexuality should be accepted by society. Meanwhile, in most of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, there is less tolerance toward homosexuality."
However, a 2012 CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans favor gay rights such as same-sex marriage. In late 2015, a poll of Japanese people also found that a majority supported same-sex marriage.
According to one study, opposition to transgender rights was correlated with a preference for obedience and conformity regardless of partisan affiliation.
Religious reasons for opposition
Many religions, including ones within the Eastern faiths and Abrahamic faiths, do not support homosexual sex. Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, Mormonism, Orthodox Judaism, and Islam view homosexual sex as a sin and hold that its practice and acceptance in society weakens moral standards.Christian opposition
Passages in the Old Testament that prohibit man to "lie with mankind as with womankind" and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah have historically been interpreted as condemning sodomy. Several Pauline passages have also been cited against male and female homosexuality. Christians who take a conservative position on homosexuality endorse this reading of these passages in the belief that God is against same-sex sexual activity, while Christians who take a liberal position believe that these same passages refer to more specific situations, such as pedophilia, rape or abuse, and not homosexuality. The largest Christian body, the Catholic Church, condemns homosexual acts as "gravely sinful" and "intrinsically disordered". The second-largest Christian body, the Eastern Orthodox Church, also condemns homosexual behaviour, as do many denominations of Protestantism.Within the Catholic Church, the theory of natural law has been employed by philosophers and theologians to justify its condemnation of homosexual behaviour. The theologian Thomas Aquinas maintained that homosexual practice was contrary to natural law, arguing that the primary natural end of the sexual act was procreation, and since said procreation is carried out from a process of sexual fertilization between a man and a woman, homosexual sex is contrary to the very end of said act.
Islamic opposition
is regarded as criminal and forbidden in most Islamic countries, according to Sharia law, and officially carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Brunei, Mauritania, Nigeria, and Yemen.It carries the death penalty in Afghanistan under the Taliban. In Egypt, openly gay men have been prosecuted under general public morality laws. On the other hand, homosexuality has been legal in Turkey since 1858.
In Saudi Arabia, the maximum punishment for homosexuality is public execution, but the government will use other punishments – e.g., fines, jail time, and flagellation – as alternatives, unless it feels that LGBTQ individuals are challenging state authority by engaging in LGBTQ social movements. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iranian government has executed more than 4,000 people charged with homosexual acts. Even though homosexuality is widespread amongst the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban, homosexuality went from a capital crime to one that is punished with fines, prison sentences, and vigilante violence.
Most international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime. Muslim nations insist that such laws are necessary to preserve Islamic morality and virtue. Of the nations with a majority of Muslim inhabitants where homosexuality is criminalized, only Lebanon and Tunisia have organizations which are trying to get homosexuality legalized.