Global Gaze: Moving Towards Equality in Nepal and Sweden

TNG Events Editor Jolly submitted this piece, the second installment of the Global Gaze series.

In the United States, despite what politicians say, politics are generally designed in such a way as to make effecting real change a slow and long-term process. As many LGBT activists can tell you, the slow pace and long wait can be excruciating, demoralizing and just plain frustrating.

But in some cases, like in Nepal, change can come practically overnight. This isn’t meant to minimize the struggle of activists and everyday citizens in that country or to oversimplify the process of bringing about reform, but in November, in one fell swoop, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to both repeal existing laws which discriminated against individuals based on their sexual orientation and grant sexual minorities full and equal rights, including the right to marry, paving the way for Nepal to become one of only seven countries in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Even though the ruling was meant to pressure the government into complying with a similar ruling made months before, it all happened in a relatively small time frame given that the country had only earlier that year replaced the monarchy with a secular democracy.

And if you’re looking for an individual to join Edwin Cameron and Johanna Sigurdardottir in the international LGBT Hall of Fame, look no further than Sunil Pant, the founder of the Blue Diamond Society, a Nepalese LGBT activism group, the only openly gay member of Nepal’s parliament and a recent winner of the Monette-Horwitz Trust Award. “The court has instructed the government against making any discrimination on the basis of sex. This is a landmark decision for the sexual minorities and we welcome it,” Pant said after the ruling.

While this story is incredibly historic on its own and uniquely Nepalese in nature, it also highlights some of the universal issues which the whole international gay and lesbian community needs to address. Chief amongst these, I would argue, is that we, as LGBT individuals around the world, need to be more vocal in highlighting and celebrating our victories and, perhaps more fundamentally, acknowledging that successes like those in Nepal are in fact our triumphs as well.

I, for one, just found out about this historic ruling a few weeks ago, months after the fact. I’m not totally naïve, so I know that “small Asian country” plus “LGBT issues” does not generally equal evening news fare, but as someone who writes about obscure issues often, I’m used to going beyond the front page of headlines. And yet I heard no mention of it until recently. Now, this may just be me, and if it is totally common knowledge, then ignore this whole mini-rant, but the unscientific poll I conducted of all the queer folks I know who happened to be on g-chat at the time I was writing this revealed that none of them had heard about it either.

And I know the mainstream media can’t always be trusted to get the word out about queer stories like this, but I think there lots of room for improvement in the media targeted specifically at the LGBT community as well. Stories like this are incredibly important to bring to light because this leap towards equality is a win for sexual minorities across the globe – and that’s not just idealistic rhetoric, it’s political fact.

It’s becoming increasingly acknowledged that domestic law helps to form and develop international law, which in turn has a bearing on individual countries seeking to formulate new national policies. Pant went on to say that “the court ordered the government to form a seven member committee to formulate laws that recognize same-sex marriages in European countries, ending all types of discrimination against gays and lesbians,” which only highlights how important and interconnected we are as a global community.

Anyway, that’s enough caterwauling for now; it’s time to move on to the country that’s likely to be the eighth member of the same-sex marriage club: Sweden. The Scandinavian country presents an interesting counter-point to the way gay marriage came about in Nepal, namely that it was the result of a gradual, planned out process.

The first step was to overturn a 1987 law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman and providing for civil unions instead. This process began in 2006 when a parliamentary committee decided the law was outdated, followed by the same committee’s recommendation in 2007 that same-sex marriages should be allowed, except in churches which did not approve. Following some court challenges in 2008 and many disagreements amongst the political parties making up the majority government, the road has been paved to make same-sex marriage a reality as of May 1, 2009. I like to imagine that Sweden is kind of like my home State of New York in that its citizens secretly bristle at the fact that it loses some liberal cred by not having gay marriage while states like Massachusetts, or in this case other European countries, do. But that really has no basis in reality, so who knows.

It’s interesting to compare the processes in the two countries. Sweden’s path, while taking longer and offering more opportunities for frustration, is also better planned and is backed by the approval of 71% of the population. Plus, gays and lesbians in Sweden haven’t generally faced the same types of violence and discrimination that their compatriots in Nepal have faced in recent years, which makes the situation a little less urgent. On the other end of the spectrum is Nepal, a fairly conservative country which achieved across-the-board formal equality relatively quickly, but without a solid road map. It will be interesting and a real learning experience to watch how these two vastly different countries proceed on these issues in the coming months.

All this being said, I’m far from an expert on the minutia of either Nepalese or Swedish politics. If any readers are more familiar and want to fill in some context, please do so in the comments below. Also, do you agree about the need for more coverage of international gay progress? If so, what’s the best way to go about achieving this? How about approach: slow and steady or quick and ambiguous? I’d love to hear your thoughts!