Seoul's pride fiasco
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By Dave Hazzan
Last week’s insane decision by the police to ban Seoul’s annual LGBT Pride parade has become an international embarrassment for South Korea. International media has been shaking its collective head, marveling at how such an economic and cultural superpower could do something so stupid and small-minded.
The Diplomat covered it. The Washington Post wrote that Korea “didn’t get the memo” about the rolling tide of equality around the world. UPI noted that the parade had never caused trouble before, but was inexplicably now a traffic hazard. Agence France Press reported that the Pride demonstrators were going to push ahead anyway, resulting in, no doubt, more bad press for Korea.
LGBT magazines, newspapers, and websites around the world have turned their focus away from the traditional hatemongers in Russia, Africa, and the Middle East, to focus on South Korea. Expect more press to come, as Pride activists refuse to have their views censored and their right to demonstrate trampled.
The embassies of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, the U.K., and the EU Delegation all said they looked forward to the Korean Queer Festival. (The U.S. is not on the list, but they were there last year, and can reasonably be expected to return.) Too bad they won’t have a parade to enjoy too.
The Korean media, meanwhile, have either ignored it or made a hash of it. KBS reported that last year, LGBT protesters blocked the street so Christians couldn’t march. This was the exact opposite of what actually happened ― Christian extremists lay down in front of the Pride parade to stop it from moving forward.
Meanwhile, Christian extremists have started their protests early, demanding that “embassadors” (SIC) who disagree with them “Get Out!” and spreading insane rumors about how the Pride parade will cause AIDS and MERS to combine into a lethal super-virus.
Of course, everyone has a right to their opinion, even those with no basis in science, reason or humanity. But banning the parade effectively endorses these opinions, and puts the government on the same side as people who think all LGBT people are hell-bound AIDS carriers.
In a country so concerned about its international image and its place in the world, what were the police thinking by not allowing the march to go forward, as it does in virtually every other First World nation on Earth? And why has the mayor not overturned this hateful ban?
The world’s nations are dividing, in a new cultural Cold War, about where they stand on LGBT freedom and equality. On one hand, there are those countries that are embracing equality for all: Canada, Western Europe, Argentina and South Africa. Arch-Catholic Ireland just voted to legalize gay marriage in a national referendum. Even Oklahoma, the most conservative state in America, now has gay marriage.
On the other hand, there are the retrogrades. Led by a resurgently hateful Russia, who blame their sexual minorities for their many current woes, they are countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Uganda, Jamaica and Afghanistan. In all these countries, homosexuality is either illegal or deeply suspect, LGBT people are beaten up in the streets with police acquiescence, and religion or “traditional values” is the script used to explain it away.
South Korea has a choice to make about what kind of country it wants to be. It can become a Christian theocracy, like Russia is fast becoming, that bans speech it disagrees with, and condemns young gay men and women to loneliness and suicide. Or it can move the other way, towards an open-minded acceptance of all peoples the way they were born.
The writer lives in Ilsan, and has published articles in various newspapers and magazines, here or abroad. His email address is www.davehazzan.com.