Tuesday 5 September 2000
Sri Lanka gays mark anniversary with ball COLOMBO: Homosexuality is illegal in conservative Sri Lanka where offenders can be jailed for 12 years, but the country's most active gay group is set to mark its fifth anniversary with a ball.
The gay rights movement, the so-called Companions on a Journey, is planning a gala on Friday to turn their birthday into an annual ritual with music and dancing at a resort hotel here.
"The main focus is to bring the visible (gay) people together," said the leading gay rights activist and leader of Companions, Sherman de Rose. "We expect at least 300 gay and lesbian people will come together for this."
But the event is more than an exultant show of triumph, organisers said. The celebration is to be coupled with a healthy dose of AIDS awareness and sexual health pep talks in a bid to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, said 29-year-old de Rose.
"What we have achieved in the past five years is the creation of awareness and visibility for people in our community," said the former Roman Catholic brother who shed the cassock and took up the cause of fellow gays.
Following intense campaigning the Companions had limited success when the government in 1995 agreed to review an archaic penal code under which sex between men is punishable by 12 years in jail.
The government agreed to revoke the 1883 Penal Code which outlawed sexual relations between men, but instead of decriminalising homosexuality, the authorities roped women in under the archaic laws.
The Victorian laws introduced under British colonial rulers did not acknowledge that women could have sex with each other and therefore lesbians could not be prosecuted.
However, with the government substituting the word "males" with the gender-neutral "persons" in the 1995 amendment to the penal code, women too face anti-homosexual regulations.
With rising protests from religious groups, the government did not fully push through the penal code amendment and the half-measure has made it worse for the gay community.
Speaking at the "Drop-in-Centre" which has become a haven for gays and lesbians struggling to come out, de Rose admits that the archaic law has not been strictly enforced in recent years.
But while the law is not enforced by the authorities, its mere existence is enough for the police and anti-gay groups to brand them as "perverts" and lawbreakers, he added.
"Article 365 of the penal code is discriminatory and gives a stigma to those who are gay. It leads to a lot of abuses of gay people in our community." Even the venue of the gala dinner dance organised at a resort hotel near here Friday is kept secret for fear that the group may become the target of hate attacks.
A government agency provides Companions with condoms to be distributed among members. They also arrange counselling as well as clinics for sexually transmitted diseases.
The group also conducts AIDS awareness programs and tries to encourage safe sex among gays and lesbians thanks to funding from a Dutch organisation. However, de Rose's Companions got a rude shock in June this year from a most unexpected source -- the Press Council.
The quasi-judicial council ruled that lesbianism equals sadism and is therefore a social evil. Hate mail against women who love women had been published in good faith, the council ruled, to the horror of many, including a press council member himself.
It was de Rose who had complained to the Press Council that a letter published in the The Island newspaper in August last year was promoting violence and hatred of lesbians.
Instead, the council ruled that it was the lesbians who were practising sadism.
De Rose was irked by a letter in the Island newspaper which asked the authorities to unleash convicted rapists on lesbians so that the "misguided wretches" could "understand the reality of natural sexual pleasure."
The former Catholic brother-turned gay rights activist was not willing to offer the other cheek. He is now taking the case to a higher court as the organisation marks five years with nearly 1,000 gays coming out of the closet. (AFP)
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