DOES RACISM TRUMP HOMOPHOBIA?!

Is racism worse than homophobia? The callousness of this question should hit any thinking person like a ton of bricks. Jerry Matjila, South Africa's representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, is one person who is not fazed by a ton of bricks. For him, homophobia is not nearly as unsexy as racism. Indeed, he falls just short of openly endorsing homophobia. He regards attempts to defeat racism as having moral priority over attempts to deal with homophobia. Hence his claim that protecting gay rights "demeans the legitimate plight of the victims of racism".

This raises two questions. Is there a relevant moral difference between racism and homophobia? And just how committed is the government to a foreign policy based on human rights principles?

First, let's turn our attention to the question of moral equivalence. Prejudice refers to actions or attitudes that unfairly differentiate between individuals or groups. We assess the appropriateness of differential treatment by asking whether it is rational. Discriminating against the blind by not allowing them to drive on the road is a justified form of discrimination because sight is rationally related to safe driving. When discrimination is not rational in this way, then it is unjustified. And, because unjustified discrimination negatively impacts on those at the receiving end of such behaviour, it is not merely irrational but also immoral.

It follows from this definition that prejudice could be based on almost any trait. Someone might be discriminated against because their sex is arbitrarily regarded as an indicator of what they are capable of. But other traits can be the basis of prejudice too, including class, accent, sexual orientation, country of origin, language, culture and so on. So long as the discrimination is arbitrary, it counts as an instance of prejudice. Both racism and homophobia are unjustified forms of discrimination. They are morally equivalent.

Some black victims of racism are simply homophobic. This stops them from seeing or accepting the moral-equivalence argument. Matjila is a homophobic victim of racism. This failure to see the moral equivalence between racism and homophobia explains why black lesbians get raped to "correct" their sexual orientation. It is one of the most macabre moral paradoxes of post-democratic South Africa that many victims of racial prejudice forget their past and nonchalantly throw prejudicial attitudes in the direction of gay people -- including those who share their lived experiences of racism. How and why victims of prejudice turn into monsters is a question best left to psychologists. From a moral point of view, however, there is no normative argument that justifies a hierarchy of prejudice.

First, the history of prejudice is not restricted to racism. Gay men and women were slaughtered side by side with Jews in Nazi Germany, for example. Today, gay men and women continue to be killed in many countries in a systematic expression of violent hatred that is similar to that experienced in apartheid South Africa by black people. Second, even if racism has more historical resonance in South Africa than homophobia, that in itself does not constitute an overriding moral reason to regard the one as less uncool than the other. Prejudice is an equal-opportunities bastard that needs to be rooted out in all guises.So why, if this is the ethical truth of the matter, do we see evidence of inconsistent thinking and acting by our government representatives?

First there was the infamous remark by President Jacob Zuma that in his youth he would proudly have knocked out a gay person. A truthful recollection, perhaps, but in the absence of a sensitive discussion of why that behaviour was misguided, it amounted to a shocking affirmation of continued violence against gay men and women. Then there was the appointment of journalist Jon Qwelane as a top diplomat, despite his verbal and emotional violence against the gay community. To add insult to injury, he was sent to Uganda, a country flirting with the possibility of legally sanctioning the killing of gay people. The government also took forever to respond to regional cases of homophobia such as the widely reported case of a Malawian couple who dared to attempt to get married. In the light of these instances, the idea of a moral foreign policy is really oxymoronic.

There is also, of course, the voting pattern at the United Nations. In December 2008, South Africa failed to support a UN General Assembly joint statement on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity. South Africa also voted to remove the term "sexual orientation" from the definition of unlawful killings in the UN General Assembly resolution on extrajudicial executions. Representatives abroad who are responsible for these moves have never been unequivocally reined in for their sloppy moral thinking. It leaves one with little doubt that Pretoria sanctions these callous actions.

Indeed, Matjila's boss, Ayanda Ntsaluba, the director general of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, supported him, merely saying that he should have used "more elegant" language. This is about as progressive as a verligte white imploring his verkrampte cousin to speak "more sensitively" about the "Bantus"; it is really just an encouragement that the cousin be less transparent. Similarly, Ntsaluba's thoughtless reaction is an unsubtle plea to Matjila to hide his homophobia rather than to eradicate it. Ntsaluba should be disciplined for this by his political elders. But that presupposes a government that cares.

What is the upshot of all this? It exposes prejudice in the hearts and minds of many ANC foot soldiers who hold important positions. Previously, these attitudes did not translate into conservative policies. Hence we have the most comprehensive jurisprudence on gay rights in the world. Yet we need to be vigilant. In fact, we should start to worry about the widening gap between our constitutional vision and reality. What matters to a black lesbian woman in Gugulethu is not so much what our constitutional text implores but rather whether she can freely roam the streets without fear of homophobic abuse. Progressive South Africans have understandably but mistakenly placed excessive faith in the Constitution as a catalyst for bringing about changes in attitude and behaviour on the part of both the state and ourselves. We are now learning anew that the fight against prejudice must be a bottom-up one rather than a top-down one.

Fortunately, many organisations have taken the lead. They need our collective support.These homophobic actions on the part of government officials also cast serious doubt on the ANC's commitment to principles of human rights. Constitutional history has yet to tell the story of specific individuals whose influence led to some of the progressive clauses in the Bill of Rights. Some of us, in the absence of knowing which actors at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa won the gay rights battles, have generously imputed progressiveness to all ANC members and government officials. That is a mistake. The exposure of a foreign policy that is not committed to human rights principles tells a different story.

Domestically, the ANC has less space to be honest about its leaders' illiberalism because it has trapped itself in a language of tolerance. But away from the domestic spotlight, it is increasingly coming out of the closet as an organisation infested with homophobes. Before this homophobia seeps into our domestic policies, we must start educating both ordinary folk and state officials about what constitutes prejudice and why all forms of prejudice are wrong, as well as how to respond to our own impulses to be prejudicial against those different to ourselves, and how to react to others' prejudices against ourselves or those too vulnerable to speak for themselves.

Sadly, we cannot rely on the government to lead this project. It is up to us.