Title: Istanbul pride parade hit with tear gas by police, at least 19 arrested
Category: World
Posted By: ShepherdsDog
Date: 2016-06-26 13:26:36

   

But...isn't Turkey supposed to be one of those nations full of moderates?

   

The only moderate thing in Turkey is the moderate amount of intelligence their leader possesses.

   

Turkey is not a country I would call Gay Friendly. The religion of the day there has rather fixed ideas on gays and to go on a Gay Pride parade there will not go well.

   

It is full of moderates.

I mean, they don't kill their gays, so it must be alright then.

   

Not too long ago the conservatives here were advocating for similar tactics.

Ah, Islam...now turning western conservatives into feminists and gay rights advocates. It's a sight to behold!

   

Every cloud has a silver lining.

   

Even clouds of tear gas, it would seem.

   

Muslims attacking gay people who have spent years telling me that I'm a bigot for proposing that Muslims will attack gay people.

I'm shocked.

Now excuse me while I sit back and watch.

   

Like I said before:

The GLBT community is more than aware of just how dangerous the world is for us. We get shot in the USA, stabbed in Israel, firebombed in the Balkans, stoned in Eastern Europe, arrested across Asia and murdered across South America and Africa. We're also active in trying to change that, or protesting that; we protest ISIS, still go to events and parades in countries full of fundamentalists who attack them year after year, and still go to clubs like this one, even after arsons, shootings like this one, or being tortured for being seen at them in the last handful of years in the USA alone.

Guess it's time to finally care, because Muslims are involved. Gee, talk about blinders.

The gay community is more than aware of exactly who hate us, and the idea that we are unaware or silent on the issues facing us is fucking hilarious.

People (and I'll remind you right now I am not one of them) haven't be calling you a bigot because some Muslims attack members of the community and you call them on it. They believe you are wrong because you transpose those attacks on all members of the entirety of Islam world-wide, including those Muslims who are gay, the majority of those who work as politicians in the West, and our friends and neighbours who have never caused us any issues. Those you argue with consider it a problem of fundamentalism and not one of Islam itself. Considering the hordes of Churches, Temples and Mosques that walked and are going to walk in the Parades this year, the relationship between the gay community and the religious communities haven't been better.

The gay community is more than aware of how dangerous religious fundamentalism and extreme social conservatism is to us; we're a favourite target of people across the spectrum (at least the Abrahamic religions, anyway). The only benefit to this particular instance of oppression of the gay community is that a significant proportion of those who have been pushing anti-gay legislation in the States and Europe have had to stop their advance, because now they are (probably temporarily) pro-gay.

Gay pride only recently returned to Serbia following the 2010 attacks. Russia routinely has attacks on gay pride. Last year the gay pride parade in Ukraine was smoked out. Albanian elected officials encourage the beating of gays. Hungary has an unfortunate tradition of those beatings actually happening. Of course, the mass stabbing in Israel by a fundamentalist. Even supposedly gay friendly places like Brazil have massive streaks of anti-gay violence, from the bombing of Pride a few years back, a streak that, as I've pointed out to you before, continues to this day.

As I said in my linked post, there is a litany of attacks against members of the community around the world, from just about every sect and form of government there is; when someone tells us it's Islam that is the problem, especially those who months before were referring to us as the problem, we don't buy it.

Between Russia banning pride, Ukraine attacking it, and violence periodically erupting across Eastern Europe, the gay community sees Turkey pretty much as it sees a lot of its Orthodox, Christian and Jewish neighbours who are pulling the same thing (albeit an unfortunate falling back from it's stance of prior years); social conservatives and fundamentalists at the extreme edge of the spectrum ensuring that either the state ends the pride parades or, failing that, that they themselves do. Erdogan has served as a willing participant of that kind of governance this year. Strict adherents of Islam are a problem, sure, but as we've seen in Brazil, Uganda, Belize, Singapore, Jamaica, and so forth, the strictest adherents of the predominant religions tend to be a problem for gay rights regardless. The answer has always been the same, to continue to go to Pride even if it could be bombed or attacked, engage with those who would engage with us (religious, whichever one that is, or not religious), represent the community as best we can, and stand against whoever is oppressing us regardless of ideology or creed.

Because all we'd get otherwise is people who restrict our rights less claiming our issues are from those who try to restrict our rights more, while claiming to be our saviours.