Cutting foreign aid to anti-gay countries

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thanks for your input, that's very interesting. the reason i chose to focus on sexual orientation is because it is an area that is still under explored and other areas such as markets and democratic conditionalities have been looked at in depth.

next i would like to offer up the stalling of the bill to execute gays in Uganda as an example of how donor pressure was able to effectively kill the bill for the moment. some countries are fully dependent on foreign aid.

lastly how do you feel about the second question about asking GLBT people to pay to have their peers executed by the state using their money?

thank you very much for your response. :smile:

The problem with that is, as you have said, it is only temporarily paused. Even with the pressure from donors it was only just enough to temporarily stop the lives of gay people getting worse. It didn't improve their lives at all and there is a big difference between stopping them introducing new legislation and making them introduce a different new legislation. They would not have been successful had they tried to make them introduce a new law making being gay legal.

I don't see how that is really any different from people paying money to countries that they morally disagree with for other reasons too. Aid money is often misused and spent on weapons, corruption and loads of other things people would disagree with, and i'm sure directly/indirectly it is funding many deaths of people of all sexualities. But you have to consider it is saving an awful lot more lives that are lost because of it. It is unfortunately a non-perfect system, but you have the option of causing a minor amount of indirect harm and a major amount of good, or just doing nothing at all. Personally, I prefer the first option, while it may indirectly cause deaths, the good far outweighs any evil that may occur because of it.

Reply 21

Vozhak

Original post by thisisnew

If it's of any interest I colored a map (because I was bored and I'm sad) on who voted for/against the removal of sexuality from the discrimination list. Green is against and for is red. It's sad that the next big "super power" China voted for the removal.

thanks this will come in very handy.

sadly i am from a country that voted to remove the protection in the developing world, China actually voted against it due to their laws that allow executions in general, the Communist Party and the government have been getting very GLBT friendly lately, opening up HIV centres and having Mr. Gay China competition or something or the other, i am not delusional to think they will turn into San Francisco but progress is being made.

Thanks for the map it will make an awesome appendix :smile:

Reply 22

StakedSalmon

I don't think we should be giving aid at all, so my answer would probably mean very little from you. Look around; there have been little to NO success stories of foreign aid, all it does is prolong suffering and take away the incentive for a viable economy to fall into place. Now, if a system was structured properly and foreign aid was used to simply kickstart a country to life, then great, but that simply hasn't happened and this has been going on for nearly a century.

I think it was Einstein who defined an idiot as somebody who does the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. If we truly want to help foreign, impoverished nations we need to change our game plan. Giving starving kids a bit of food simply isn't enough, even though it feels like the right thing to do. It's a really sloppy band aid for a problem that's only getting worse the longer we cover it up with such unsustainable means.

Reply 23

Vozhak

Original post by Rubgish

Thanks i take your point, it does indeed make a lot of sense and it will make a good counter claim, in my discussion.

Reply 24

Vozhak

Original post by StakedSalmon

Thanks your response is helpful, there are many cases and most times it is the norm that foreign aid is totally useless and that will also factor in my discussion of the issue, a question of why should aid be given at all when it has done and is doing mostly nothing.

thank you. :smile:

Reply 25

jumpingjesusholycow

Original post by Vozhak

even when the "impoverished" are violently anti gay and would if given the chance savage and murder those gay persons who the aid comes from?

Yes. Humanitarianism as a principal and ideology should not be diluted or minimalised with/by the politics of international relations. If Israelis required aid for humanitarian reasons, I would grant them so despite the fact they commit numerous violations of human rights against Palestinians.

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 26

Vozhak

Original post by jumpingjesusholycow

okay thanks that's an interesting angle. don't want to get the middle east involved in this i had bad experiences with that, note the 2 warning points!

just to note humanitarian aide and foreign aide are two different things and i was referring to the latter but i think i get where you are coming from.

Thanks for the response again.

Reply 27

Margaret Thatcher

Original post by jumpingjesusholycow

Humanitarianism can be funded through private and personal charity.

If someone wishes to aid people from an anti-gay country then there are various avenues in which they can do so.

People should have a choice as to whether their earned money funds the governments of countries who restrict liberty for homosexuals and the people who have (in a lot of cases) voted that government in or support their homophobic acts.

Reply 28

Jacktri

disciminating against those that disciminate against gays is in itself discrimination thus undermining the whole anti discimination agenda

Reply 29

paddyman4

No aid. If the people of those countries decide that our aid is more important to them than holding onto their homophobia then the laws will change. If they decide the other way then they've made their own choice and I don't believe we are 'punishing' them.

In general, I don't think money should be given to foreign governments at all, except in times of emergency. International aid should be done through government donations to charities who help people directly, or by aiming money to stimulate trade for mutual benefit.

Reply 30

jumpingjesusholycow

Original post by Margaret Thatcher

I never said anything about funding governments. If you actually read the posts I've made in this thread, you'd have noticed that I strictly applied this to humanitarian purposes as opposed to simply giving them a cash injection. And unless you believe in a completely anarcho-libertarian society, where there are no communal schools, hospitals, roads of public servants, I suggest you shut your mouth. I could just as much argue that I don't like my taxes being spent on the doctors for other sick people. Foreign aid has an important role in fortifying the humanitarian aims of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Your argument has been obliterated. Thank you, come again :smile:

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 31

StakedSalmon

Original post by Jacktri

disciminating against those that disciminate against gays is in itself discrimination thus undermining the whole anti discimination agenda

I suppose locking up paedophiles is discrimination too? :curious:

Reply 32

mau5

If anything, I'd increase it.

Reply 33

jumpingjesusholycow

Original post by Vozhak

I am aware that the two are not synonymous. Aid can be used for different things and I clarified what the aid should hope to achieve, note: Aid has a definition itself, and is not simply an undefined term for giving a sum of money to another country. The idea is that there is some beneficiary, namely, the people of an impoverished nation.

I would rather save the lives of people in a homophobic nation, than allow them to starve because of their administration.

That is the meaning of Humanitarianism.

Reply 34

Vozhak

Original post by Margaret Thatcher

thanks for the input, interesting argument that many have used that the people of the country are not innocent victims but are active violent homophobes.

thanks for the input.

Reply 35

Vozhak

Original post by mau5

If anything, I'd increase it.

can you tell me why please?

thanks.

Reply 36

Margaret Thatcher

Original post by jumpingjesusholycow

I find it amusing how your liberal, liberty-for-all beliefs rarely stretch beyond the Palestinian people.

Cretin.

Reply 37

jumpingjesusholycow

Original post by Margaret Thatcher

I find it amusing how your liberal, liberty-for-all beliefs rarely stretch beyond the Palestinian people.

Cretin.

If you're incapable of making a credible argument, don't try to start one, you'll only lose and make yourself look like an absolute embarassment in the process.

Reply 38

Vozhak

Original post by jumpingjesusholycow

but unlike in other circumstances when the people have no choice such as dictators or countries going to war on the issue of sexuality the people have agency and they many times are violently homophobic, and take great pride in that violence and making their opinions known.

It is that element of a non victim population that makes this issue really important to me because some of the old methods and arguments do not hold true in this instance , it is the people, the populous who are anti-gay, who elect anti-gay governments and who perpetrate the state sanctioned violence.

I give the example of my country where there are anti-sodomy laws on the books as a hold over from the British Colonial era, but they have never ever been used and the populous of my country is not anti-gay, not pro-gay either but nonchalant but any attempts to use them by the state would be met with uproar.

so it is that quandary that i am trying to sort out. are the people victims or do they have agency?

Reply 39

bunty64

Original post by Vozhak

Hey everyone, I'll be writing an independent paper for my final semester concerning foreign aid. I would like to get your opinions on the following questions

Do you think aid should be withheld from anti-gay countries?

Do you think it is right to ask gay/lesbian/bisexual/queer/trans people in the first world to pay taxes so it can be used to execute, jail and torture their peers in places such as Uganda and many others?

For those who think aid should be continued can you please elaborate why, the same for those who think it should be stopped.

Thanks.

NB--- Thanks to everyone who has responded, i did not expect so much responses, this will really help in my study as the area is very unexplored and i do not have the time to take proper public surveys. No one is right or wrong and i appreciate all sides :smile:

in an ideal world it should be stopped but not practically possible..... reason = double standards.....

when america preaches (conservative christian america; still a big force) against homosexuality, the gov can't expect countries like saudi to promote/accept homosexuality... same goes for other christian/muslim countries.....

money talks.... when money is involved we (western gov) don't care about human rights (fact!)