Ayoon Wa Azan (The limits of personal freedom)

When I started working in London in 1977, I was surprised to encounter a protest nearly every day. To be sure, Fleet Street, traditionally home to Britain’s newspapers, begins from Aldwych Square, where many courts are located. Protesters would wave banners and chant slogans, calling for legal protection for gays, or homosexuals as we called them back in those days. I had trained with Reuters in Fleet Street in the previous decade, and I thought that I knew the British press and local traditions well. Yet I was surprised by the protests, as I did not imagine there would be people raising banners along with slogans exposing their sexual orientations. My issue today is personal freedom, not sex, which has no place in Al-Hayat or indeed this column. The experiences of 1977 came back to me as I was following reactions to the speech made by Queen Elizabeth this week on Commonwealth Day. Despite Queen Elizabeth’s Commonwealth pledge for gay rights, gay groups criticized the British monarch for failing to criticize member states that outlaw gay and lesbian acts. The queen’s speech is drafted by the government on her behalf. Neither the British government nor the queen can influence decisions by independent sovereign nations, and yet gay groups want to impose their choices on other people, and even want the British monarch to back them. This may be a case in point for the saying “Give him an inch and he'll take a mile.” To be sure, the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 stipulated that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, the declaration does not specify how each person can attain their happiness, and certainly does not allow people to impose what they see as the requirements of said happiness on others. The U.S. army had a famous slogan about gays in the military, which was “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This policy was in use from 1933 until September 20, 2011, when it was repealed, and replaced by a new law that allows gay and lesbian soldiers to declare their orientation. In Britain, as I recall, there used to be a law, the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967, which decriminalized homosexual acts in private. Protests in the decade that followed led to passing another law, of which I only recall the phrase “between consenting adults.” The age of consent was 21 in the ‘60s, and became 18 in the ‘70s. I believe that the policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” or “between consenting adults,” guarantees personal freedom of homosexuals without imposing it on the remainder of people. Particularly so when many people are religious, and the three monotheistic religions – and the laws based on them – restrict sexual acts to being between men and women within wedlock. I hope that the reader will notice that I am not criticizing or rejecting the freedom of others. Instead, I am trying to safeguard my freedom not to be exposed to acts I reject, since the freedom of every human being ends where the freedom of another person begins. When I was young, we had in Lebanon political leaders, who were also independence heroes, famous for being gay, as well as one renowned journalist in my time. Yet I do not remember that anyone assaulted their freedom, or that they demanded that other Lebanese follow their example. Indeed, the foundation of freedom is that it should be shared among all, and that none would have more freedom than others. Today, I find that changing American and British laws that were by themselves adequate only encourages the minority to demand more. In Britain at present, there are those who are even calling for allowing church marriages between a man and another and a woman and another. Issues like this should remain behind closed doors even between a married man and his wife, or especially between them. In the end, personal freedom may be preserved by safeguarding the dignity of all people and not by imposing the views of one segment that is a minority in every country, on another that is a majority around the world. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.