Armenian gay rights organisation in LA - GALAS, blasts Glendale Armenian American homophobia

AGLA NY reports on a welcome move by Armenian gay rights organisation in LA - GALAS, which publicly stood up against homophobia within the local Armenian community effectively breaking the usual pattern of "what has until now been the overwhelming silence to homophobia and heterosexism in the Armenian American community":

Recent “Day of Silence” at Glendale’s Hoover High School was an act of unity with schools across the country to call attention to how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth are “silenced” by harassment and bullying in schools. The event took place on April 25 and many prominent members of Glendale, including Glendale News Press Armenian American columnist Patrick Azadian, supported the action.

Unfortunately some people, including many Armenian Americans, objected to the protest and one confused individual named Martik Abramian wrote a letter to the Glendale News Press newspaper saying:

Don’t be fooled by the Day of Silence, which is a cover-up and in reality is to promote homosexuality. We need to have a day of awareness instead of a Day of Silence and teach students about the dangers of homosexual life and its destructive consequences.

[...]

In today’s Glendale News Press, the president of the Gay & Lesbian Armenian Society (GALAS) in Los Angeles, California, Haig Boyajian, takes to task the usually unchallenged Armenian American homophobia of Martik Abramian and others (for instance Naira Khachatrian as quoted in an article by Dan Kimber). GALAS’ response was powerful and here’s an excerpt:

We want to state unequivocally that the handful of Armenian parents who were vitriolic in their opposition to the Day of Silence do not represent the entire Armenian community. The members of the Gay and Lesbian Armenian Society of Los Angeles and our many supportive family members and friends belong to the Glendale and Los Angeles Armenian communities, and we all believe that there can be no tolerance for bullying and harassment of any student, regardless of his or her sexual orientation.

We condemn the homophobic comments that were aired on a recent Armenian television program. They were irresponsible since such speech can cause disastrous consequences for children, who might go so far as to commit suicide or substance abuse as a result of rejection from their families.

The Gay and Lesbian Armenian Society of Los Angeles is saddened to see that some Armenians are unable to see the parallels between racial and sexual orientation discrimination. We come from a culture that is, sadly, too familiar with what can happen when one group is ostracized and discriminated against. However, we have hope for the future that springs from the students who courageously organized and participated in the Day of Silence event, especially given the sometimes hostile response it has received in the community. And, we are proud and encouraged that some of the participants in Day of Silence were Armenian.

We call upon our fellow Armenian brothers and sisters to support tolerance, the local school districts, and most importantly our children. We must all raise our voices against hate and misunderstanding and support valuable programs like Day of Silence that can make a positive difference.

*source - AGLA NY blog

Straight talking?

There’s an in-joke that goes: “Which is it better to be, black or gay?” with the answer “black, as you don’t have to tell your mother.”

For those who are gay, the invis­ibility of their sexuality and the need to

take a position on whether you’re in—or out—of the closet is a con­stant. Conversely, being heterosexual is also invisible. As Julie Fish eloquently writes [in her new book “Heterosexism in Health and Social Care”], heterosexuality “rarely has to attest to its existence . . . while homosexuality is silenced, heterosexuality is silent.” And it is this routine presumption of heterosexuality and its oppressive privi­leging over an “inferior” homosexuality that she terms heterosexism.

Fish, a research fellow at De Montfort University [a university in the city of Leicester, England], shows how heterosexism distorts the health and social care that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) users receive. Take, for instance, the account of one woman’s attendance for a cervical smear: “I was asked when I last had sex—I said my last experience of pen­etrative sex with a man was nine years ago—she said never mind, I’m sure you’ll find someone soon. With an instrument in place and my legs at 10 to 2 I didn’t feel comfortable telling her I was a lesbian!” Or then there’s the woman who “mentioned my girlfriend to the nurse and she bolted—and got a male nurse to come and do [the cervical smear].” Lesbians’ accounts of their experi­ences of cervical screening and breast cancer provide graphic illustrations of how they have to negotiate dis­closure and non-disclosure about their sexuality.

In each interaction with a health professional, the closet is in the room, and they [LGBT patients] have four choices to make — active non-disclosure (pretending to be heterosexual); passive non-disclosure (not actually claiming to be heterosexual); passive disclosure (dropping hints); and active disclosure (a verbal assertion of sexual identity).

Obliged to negotiate a range of barriers to good care, including ignorance of their needs and moral disap­proval, users from the LGBT community are more likely to report adverse rather than positive experi­ences of health care. Currently LGBT issues receive little attention in clinical training—and when they do, they are predictably confined to issues sexual and psy­chiatric. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the health sector is also uncomfortable for LGBT health professionals—in a recent survey, only 1% were “out” to their superiors.

[and here the reference is to a country (UK) which made significant progress in promoting equality and gay rights, a country in relation to which BBC recently raised the question: "Coming after a series of landmark reforms, is the job now done for gay rights campaigners?" (!)]

Given this diversity, how do we know who is a lesbian or a gay man? This question is fundamental to measur­ing and studying their needs, and whether these are being met equitably. Fish raises many of the inherent difficulties, such as what’s an accepted definition of this community, is it acceptable to the funders, or to those you’re studying—and if they haven’t disclosed to their mother, will they to you? In an infamous example, the US Center for Disease Control researching HIV/AIDS accepted as lesbian only those women who had had sex exclusively with women in the previous 13 years—and unsurprisingly found a low risk of transmission.

Fish quite rightly situates heterosexism within the broader diversity agenda, with its starting point the acknowledgement that inequity and discrimination exist in public services, and the imperative that we change policy and practice to ensure equity. This book chal­lenges us all to examine how our skin colour, nationality, religion, class, abilities, and sexuality may be a privilege, “an invisible package of unearned assets which can be cashed in daily.”

Source: Review of the week by Jeanelle de Gruchy (abridged version), British Medical Journal (BMJ), 2 June 2007

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