The danger of complacency on homophobia

It’s easy to be complacent about human rights. We commend ourselves for passing laws that are designed to ensure that, for example, gay people are not discriminated against, or subject to abuse and derision as a consequence of their sexual orientation. We pat ourselves on the back, cheered by our own civility. And yet is it not likely that gay people are still discriminated against, and abused? So, we must forever guard against complacency, against hidden or covert or subconscious homophobia. Because it is all to easy to match ourselves against the sort of behaviour that persists in less developed countries, and feel good about ourselves as a consequence, to feel smug and self righteous. The sort of feeling we might get when reading the headline in Uganda’s main morning newspaper recently about a gay man who had absconded from court and which said: ‘BEWARE – Notorious Bum-Driller On The Loose.’