[Excerpt from Stephen Lewis' speech at the IAS Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, July 19, 2009. Read the full speech.]When the Government of Senegal jails eight gay AIDS activists for no reason except homophobia, setting back the fight against AIDS, where are the scientific voices of condemnation?
Right now, in the Caribbean, every country save the Bahamas, has laws that criminalize homosexuality. We tiptoe round this twisted form of racism. We submit to ridiculous claims of cultural relativism.
The Prime Minister of Jamaica, in the safety of Parliament, makes the most contemptible statements about gay men, leaving every elemental component of human rights in tatters, and he’s never called to account ... not by the UN Human Rights Council, not by the G8, not by the G20, not by the Commonwealth … only by the gay activists themselves.
What is wrong with the international community? If this is how it behaves, it doesn’t deserve the name “community” at all.
And if the political leadership lacks the courage to confront such outrageous slander, you shouldn’t lack the courage. You’re scientists. You know that it’s a scientific reality that a certain percentage of the world’s people is gay. So tell the political philistines to get over it and stop wrecking such damage. More, you know that an ugly homophobic culture is a threat to public health that inevitably serves to spread the virus … I beg you to say so. The majesty of science is its influence.
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