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Comments on other issues: Abolishing laws targeting minorities

March 18, OnlineA rights activist is demanding President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s government declare its intention to abolish any laws that target minorities and to prosecute those who commit violence against them

The Jakarta Post
Fri, March 27, 2015

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Comments on other issues: Abolishing laws targeting minorities

M

strong>March 18, Online

A rights activist is demanding President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s government declare its intention to abolish any laws that target minorities and to prosecute those who commit violence against them.

'€œA loud statement of support for the rights of Indonesia'€™s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender [LGBT] population would be an important place to start,'€ Human Rights Watch'€™s (HRW) deputy director for Asia division, Phelim Kine, said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He made the statement in response to the Indonesian Ulema Council'€™s (MUI) statement, which stigmatized the LGBT population by declaring them '€œdeviant'€ and an affront to the '€œdignity of Indonesia.'€

Your comments:

Legally speaking, same sex marriage and relations have been recognized fairly recently. To say it isn'€™t natural? Wow.

You only have to look at the animal kingdom (yes we are animals as well) and the fact that homosexuality has been taking place as long as heterosexuality.

Nate

The first thing to realize is that homosexuality is not a mental illness.

There have been many brilliant contributors to human society who preferred sex with their own gender.

America'€™s greatest poet Walt Whitman was gay as were many of the nation'€™s other greatest poets: Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich and James Merill were also lesbians or gay.

In Europe we find that some of the greatest artists of all time were homosexual- Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci are among the first who spring to mind.

We also find that some of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the Western tradition preferred sex with their own gender- Aristotle and Socrates are prominent examples.

Does it make sense that these people who produced transcendent works of poetry, art and philosophy were somehow diseased, ill or inferior? If they really were somehow '€˜'€™sick'€™'€™ why did they see the world with such beauty, originality and clarity?

Obviously, however, not all gays and lesbians are geniuses. Many of them are just perfectly ordinary people who pay their taxes, do their jobs and go about their everyday lives.

There is absolutely no evidence that they are in any way abnormal as a group apart from their sexual orientation.

Yes, gays may be slightly more prone to depression than normal men, but then they are less likely to commit physical aggression or violence too.

There is simply no evidence that they are any more pathological than heterosexual people overall.

Benny

Scientific research has concluded that men who are overtly homophobic very often have repressed homosexual urges, and that their homophobic behavior is an attempt repress and camouflage these
gay urges.

Pray Topesc

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