I really need to get back on the stick here. I was just reading over on the Great Marmot, where I got funneled over to Brendan Carr's law blog, then to the announcement on Human Right Watch. Which reminded me of the letter I got from a queer community activist friend back in Oakland, which I should have immediately gotten out to you. A visit to the above links, plus a read of the call directly from the community, should be a good starting point for your own bit of activism. Pick up the phone, pick up the pen, and read my additional comments at the end of this post:
Hey guys,
First, apology for the mass e-mail. I really don't like sending out these e-mail to a big group, but this issue directly affects me, a lot of my friends, and my family members. If you are living in Korea, or planning on being there, it will most likely affect you as well. Even if you have nothing to do with Korea, I ask you to be aware of this situation, and let others know that no form of discrimination should take place on anybody. For details, please read the article below.
Long story short, Korea has drawn up an anti discrimination bill to prohibited discrimination against 20 categories – gender, disability, medical history, nationality, ethnicity, race, skin color, language, origin of birth, appearance, marriage status, pregnancy status, family type, religion,
ideology or political belief, criminal or detention record, sexual orientation, educational status. With the opposition from many groups, predominantly led by Christian community in Korea, the ministry of justice revised the bill and took out seven of the original 20 categories – sexual orientation, medical history, origin of birth, educational status, language, family type, and criminal record.
If you'd like to support the objection to the revision of the bill please send your name, the organization that you belong to, and your e-mail address to [email protected] ASAP. No need to be living in
Korea to support them.
1. About the Anti-Discrimination Law
The Ministry of Justice has proposed the 'Anti-discrimination Bill' on the second of October, saying that the law is 'the first fundamental law to actualize the principle of equality, which appears on the Constitution. 'As the Ministry has self-commented, the anti-discrimination law could have been a law that put the basic Constitutional principle 'All people are
equal' to practice. Especially, the law addresses discrimination in employment , including recruitment, hire, and dismissal, discrimination in the distribution of commodities /services , such as finance, medical care, culture, transportation, service, discrimination occurred during education/vocational education , and also indirect forms of discrimination which ultimately result in direct discrimination, so that it was expected to bring change to the situation in which discriminatory but legally acceptable actions could also be subjected under jurisdiction.
The original draft of the anti-discrimination bill has prohibited discrimination on the basis of 20 categories, including gender, disability, medical history, age, nationality, ethnicity, race, skin color, language, origin of birth, appearance, marriage status, pregnancy status, family type, religion, ideology or political belief, criminal or detention record, sexual orientation, educational status, [or] social status.
2. The Impairment of the Anti-Discrimination Law
However, the Congressional Missionary Coalition Against the Anti-Discrimination of Homosexuality (Uihoe-Sungyo-Yoenhab), a coalition of conservative Christian organizations such as The Holy City Movement, Korea-Japan Christian Parliament Association, The National Prayer Breakfast Meeting, and The Christian Council of Korea, to name a few, petitioned to the Ministry of Justice to remove 'sexual orientation' from the draft. Also, a number of news papers and the business world stated opposition to a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of educational status, medical history, origin of birth, language, criminal or detention record, and family type, would impede the free entrepreneurship.
But contrary to their concerns, the proposed anti-discrimination law is doubted to have enough legislative power to eliminate discrimination, since victims themselves have to provide evidence of having been discriminated, the bill lacks protection measures like punitive damages and compulsory performance, and also the right of imposing revision decree. Nevertheless, if there were a reason why the anti-discrimination law had to be enacted, it was because the law was expected, in the symbolic and comprehensive sense, to bring change to our society's mindset, prevent discrimination, and protect minorities.
But the Ministry of Justice affirmed, without any acceptable explanations, that it has revised the draft to exclude the seven protected categories, sexual orientation, educational status, medical record, origin of birth, language, criminal or detention record, and family type, and that it has already submitted the draft to the Ministry of Government Legislation. The bill, having been drafted in a painstaking, four year long process of considering the bill, gathering public opinion, and fine-tuning by listening to the voices of those who have been discriminated, has been completely turned over within one month.
3. If The Bill with the Deleted 7 Categories Gets Passed
If the anti-discrimination bill without the 7 categories gets passed,
We have to give up hopes of changing this credential, ageist society, in which one's ability cannot be purely assessed without writing one's education level and age on resumes and cover letters.
We should also quit looking forward to the disappearance of discriminatory behavior existing in the work place by reasons of having been raised in a single parent family, or having had experienced divorce.
Preventing LGBTQ youth from committing suicide because of homophobic education, would not be possible as well.
Unfortunately, we would also have to continue enduring the current situation in which depending on nationality, some people are labeled 'global citizens' while some are branded 'illegal immigrants,' regardless of individual potential and ability.
In this way, benefiting from the anti-discrimination law would be possible only by tacitly agreeing to the discrimination of others. If certain categories drop out of the anti-discrimination law, there are concerns
that the law would be changed for the worse, every time it is pressured and attacked. The anti-discrimination law should be enacted as a 'fundamental law' that prohibits discrimination.
4. We Are in a Hurry!
We are running out of time. The government is trying to pass the law this year, even by going through the outrageous process of deleting seven articles from the original draft. Therefore, we urgently request you to help us blocking the re-written bill from being passed and pushing the original draft of the anti-discrimination bill. It is concerned that the re-written bill might be passed within a week after its consideration by Legislation & Judiciary Committee held on November 12th. If the Right-winged and Conservative organizations allied to attack 'sexual orientation' in the bill, then you, the Left-winged and Conscious, should ally through supporting sexual orientation.
Express your consciousness that no form of discrimination should be practiced on anybody. We ask you to join us in the following activities:
1. If you support the movement on this issue, tell us your name and the name of the organization you belong to, so that they would be included in the joint statement.
2. If possible, participate in the emergent press conference for encountering the anti-discrimination law issue, which is expected to be held on November 8th.
And pre-emptive strike against all the ignorant Christians (note, that does not mean "all Christians are ignorant," but rather "the ignorant subset of the group that could be called Christians") who are going to write in and start thumping the Bibles they would be better off actually reading and understanding:
1) The New Testament is a supernumerary law that supersedes the Old Testament, which is chock full of all kinds of arcane proclamations about which foods one should be eaten with one another, which fibers should not be worn together, what days certain things should be eaten, etc. Yes, what we would today define as homosexuality may have been called an "abomination" there, but you should also think about the Ten Commandments, which all but the hardcoriest of us humans violate all the time. So the Christian community can be forgiven for all its sins, but the sexually different are to be driven out as literal scapegoats, victims of humans acting as arbiters of a God of Wrath, as opposed to a God of Grace and forgiveness?
2) All the words uttered by Christ, as well as the spirit of his example, go against this Old Testament-style, hate-filled campaign against homosexuals. Ask yourself, good Christian, whether your actions are motivated out of love for your fellow man, or out of the simple, blinding hate that was shared by the crowd gathered around the woman convicted of adultery, ready and willing to stone her, which the law said was her prescribed and deserved fate? Christ, in a perfect deployal of Christian (His) logic, did not directly contradict Old Testament law, but simply suggested that "he who is without sin should cast the first stone."
3) The Bible, even if it is a Holy Scripture, is still a book written by Men. Case in point: the above-mentioned parable of Christ admonishing the would-be executioners of the adultress was actually added into later editions of the Bible, which were produced before the printing press by copying them by hand, all done by monks. That's what monks did – they were God's first interns. And He worked them hard. But what was probably just a margin note or apocryphal story used to illustrate the concept of holy Grace versus Justice, the vengeful versus merciful God, got either accidentally (interns still get loopy and tired when working in the wee hours of the night) or purposely written into subsequent editions of the Book. This is simply an established fact, not some opinion. Did you know this, good Christian? Shouldn't this fact matter to you as not something to shake your faith, but help you understand that the Word was not written by a pen hovering over a holy parchment that we copied directly over the centuries, but passed down through Men, and often recorded by Men hundreds of years after the fact?
4) So what's the point? Be a THINKING CHRISTIAN, one who understands the points of the teaching of that Book, one who understands the relationship between the actual books of the Bible. Are you a Christian who, following Christ's example, goes out into the world filled with love and tries to change it for the better, or just a stone thrower filled with hatred and ready to pick and choose snippets of older Holy Law to attack your worldly enemies? Be a REAL CHRISTIAN, one whose actions are motivated out of love, not hate. Christ was a humble man, of humble origins, who was crucified for apparently violating the worldly and holy laws of his time, which BY HIS EXAMPLE AND SACRIFICE, WERE SUPERSEDED. That is why we simply don't go to Heaven or Hell based on some Godly abacus, counting how many times we violated His laws and Commandments – Christ gave his life to save us all and offer all a way to salvation, since all of us are sinful, imperfect creatures. That means the liars, thieves, adulterers, murderers, and yes, if in your eyes, you see them as sinful, those who "lay down" with members of the same sex. And if your main concern is fornication for the sake of pleasure and not reproduction, then let us stone all those who use birth control or have had (and continue to have) pre-marital sex. In fact, MOST of the sex in today's world (even between married couples) is not for reproduction – most people in this society, even with 2-3 kids, have done it a lot more times than that. And if you really want to stop "fornication," then I ask why there are no Christian groups standing around the "love motel" strip over in Shinchon, or any of the huge red light districts around Seoul? I'm not saying they should, but I ask the question: why ignore these obvious bases of ongoing sin that should be fought by good Bible thumpers on the same basis as admonishing gays? It's hypocrisy and prejudice – not the inevitable result of believing in Christ's word.
The New Testament was like God's Word 2.0 – get with the update, real Christians, and remember that God reserves judgement, in the end, for Himself – not you.
Do good work on Earth or get out of God's way. If you think Christ's words and example means you are obligated to hate gays today, or in the old days of America's past, use the Bible to justify slavery, or as an excuse to wage wars in God's name but for worldly purposes – you are a bad Christian, a faulty Christian, one who perverts the words and spirit of Christ's example, rather than do them justice.
