QUEER VIEW MIRROR

#RepealThe8th #TurkeyLGBT #GayDumbledore

TRUST ME, I’M A POLITICIAN

As the referendum campaigns heat up (or seep to the surface, in the case of whichever anti-choice types recently put large photographs of miscarried foetuses on the railings opposite a central Dublin primary school), who will we be asked to trust?

The referendum is going to ask us to approve repeal of the 8th amendment and a large majority of TDs and senators agree that it should go. On the second part of the ballot – that the 8th should be replaced with a provision to allow TDs and senators to legislate on abortion, believed by most to mean a law allowing unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks, polls and expressed views of the members of the Oireachtas suggest a much narrower majority in favour.

In the long months after the referendum in May or June (when TDs will be offon their holliers and have lots of time to consider the views of their most vocal constituents), might there be a risk of a watering down of the abortion legislation presented for their approval, if that happens?

Constitutional lawyers are paid big bucks to work out if and how laws might be unconstitutional and their opinions have many times resulted in tortured debates and enfeebled or dead Bills. Remember the comedy in 2009, when a blasphemy law was passed? That was entirely to maintain the logic and integrity of the 1937 Constitution, as laws derived from that document’s prohibition of blasphemy applied only to Christianity. This didn’t fit with another part of the Constitution, which guarantees equality of religion. So we got a new and improved blasphemy law, even though the last blasphemy prosecution was in 1855.

Many considerations will come into play when the details of abortion law need to be worked out. How much freedom of religion will doctors, hospitals and the people who run them have when it comes to refusing to perform abortions? How much protection from anti-abortion campaigners will women having abortions get? Will the enactment of abortion law be delayed by challenges based on protection of life provisions in the Constitution?

“Many considerations will come into play when the details of abortion law need to be worked out.

SOMETIMES, IT GETS WORSE

I was in Istanbul about ten years ago, staying in a faded splendour-type place in the central Pera neighbourhood. It had everything you could want from an old Istanbul hotel – caged parrots in the lobby, a travelling theatre troupe excitedly discussing their upcoming show in Odessa and around the corner, a huge gay club with an oiled-up wrestling ring in the middle of the dancefloor. The Istanbul gay scene then was big and varied, an outward sign that in the city at least, the gay community had made a space in this Muslim country, which did not make homosexuality illegal when it adopted its first modern constitution in 1923.

Things have apparently changed. As Turkish nationalism resurges in the face of the chaos of the Syrian Civil War and as the government’s desire to join the EU fades, hard-line attitudes to gay men and more particularly transgendered people have prompted the banning of LGBT+ film festivals and Pride marches. Gay men and trans people are often beaten by both police and violent homophobes, and so-called “gay honour killings”, when family members murder siblings or sons to avoid the shame of having a gay in the family, have become a real fear for many.

Leader and cheerleader of the new Turkey, President Erdogan, gave voice to the national feeling in November, when he said giving gay people more rights was “against the values of our nation.” Many Turkish gays now feel the only way to avoid living a curtailed existence is to leave for Europe or the US.

EXPELLIAMUS!

A bit of a storm in a goblet of fire recently, when it was revealed that the director of the next Harry Potter spin-off, the catchily titled Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald would not be letting a young Dumbledore (played by Jude Law) get his gay on. This was despite the JK Rowling story being about the dramatic fall-out after the end of the intense relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald (Johnny Depp). The director, David Yates, who made the last four Potter movies, as well as the first Fantastic Beasts, said the relationship would be “implied” and that the young Dumbledore had fallen in love with Grindelwald’s “ideas.”

You have to wonder what they’re afraid of. After all, Rowling herself revealed, like Will Young after he won Pop Idol, that Dumbledore is gay in 2007, the year she was declared a billionaire. It’s a fair bet that Potter fans (and their kids), who are the audience the Fantastic Beasts are looking for, couldn’t care less.