Josh Noel, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
As a white heterosexual American male, there
are certain things — OK, plenty of things — I don't need to think twice about.
One of them is travel. There obviously are places where being a white,
heterosexual American male will work against me (probably the American part,
mostly), but usually I'm not too concerned for my well-being in the places I am
most likely to visit.
But a stat caught my eye recently that
underscores an odd irony: A certain group of people who love to travel is among
those facing the gravest risk while doing just that. In a 2012 Community
Marketing Inc. survey of more than 4,000 people identifying as LGBT, 79 percent
of respondents said they held an active U.S. passport. That compares with about
one-third of the general U.S. population.
Crossed with a higher-than-average disposable
income, the LGBT crowd becomes a no-brainer of a target audience for the travel
industry. And indeed, airlines, hotel chains and cruise lines have been some of
the most progressive and aggressive when courting that market.
But the demographic that embraces travel also
faces some of the biggest challenges while traveling. According to the
International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, a
whopping 78 countries have deemed "homosexual acts" illegal. That's
more than a third of the world. Homosexuality is punishable by death —
punishable by death in 2015! — in seven of those countries.
It's a paradox as cruel as it is ridiculous, with
potential blowback both small (such as a double take when same-sex travelers
request one bed instead of two) and unfathomably large (arrest). Eric
Silverberg, chief executive officer of gay social networking site Scruff (scruff.com) said he suspects "almost
every gay couple that has traveled in the last 10 years could cite some example
of prejudice or hostility."
"Gay travelers are absolutely doing a
calculation: Am I going to try to go out tonight and try to find the gay
neighborhood or gay bar, or am I going to just stay in?" he said. "If
you're going to a city with just a few gay bars, you will be much more cautious
as you travel to your destination, especially in the evening."
With those dangers in mind, Scruff has launched a
web page in recent weeks dedicated to "gay travel advisories,"
including the nearly 90 countries and regions that have laws against
homosexuality or frequent discrimination. The advisories also can include push
notifications; for instance, if a Scruff user arrives in, say, Nigeria, an
alert will pop up on a smartphone: "The country you have recently entered
has laws that criminalize sexual acts between consenting adult males as well as
laws that criminalize gay activism and public gatherings." The alert also
notes potential punishment, which in Nigeria includes the death penalty.
"We see this as a duty in our community to
keep people informed and safer as well as to shine a light on these laws to
increase global pressure on reform," Silverberg said.
Popular LGBT website towleroad.com has frequently covered the
perilous relationship between homosexuality and travel, including a recent
story about two gay men who visited the Maldives, an island nation south of
India where homosexuality is illegal.
"It wasn't as scary for them as they thought
it would be," website founder Andy Towle said. "It turned out to be
fine for gay couples to book at resorts there. But they were concerned, so they
booked two twin beds."
Then again, Towle said, he was on a gay cruise
arriving in Dominica that was met by a protest at the dock. He wrote about the
experience for Genre, a now-defunct magazine aimed at gay men: "I had
heard about the past refusal of some Caribbean islands to allow gay cruise
ships to land, but I thought (wrongly) that since then this type of
discrimination had been forced into a corner by the mighty power of the gay
dollar. Not exactly so."
That was in 2003. Towle said the world mostly has
become friendlier to people identifying as LGBT but not completely; discrimination
endures in Dominica, for instance, where in 2012, two men were arrested for
what local authorities deemed "buggery" (or sodomy) after engaging in
a sex act on a cruise ship balcony.
(Brief diversion: in my estimation, the couple
should not have done such a thing and may well have been guilty of a crime. But
a heterosexual couple likely would not have been charged with sodomy, hence the
double standard.)
According to a 2014 LGBT travel survey by
Community Marketing Inc., a significant number of respondents said they
wouldn't feel safe in even middle-of-the-road destinations: South Africa (31
percent), Turkey (44 percent), Dubai (52 percent), Jamaica (53 percent), Kenya
(73 percent) and Russia (82 percent). I asked Towle if there was a destination that
a heterosexual person might embrace that he would avoid. He named Egypt, citing
a recent raid in a Cairo bathhouse in which 26 men were arrested (and later
acquitted).
These are the decisions gay travelers often must
make, Towle said: Which places might present risks to an LGBT traveler? To what
degree does an LGBT couple need to censor themselves when traveling? It's a
consideration even across much of the United States.
"If I was traveling with a partner in rural
Wyoming or Montana or somewhere in the Midwest, I would definitely think twice
about where I was going to stay," Towle said. "Gay and lesbian
people, by the nature of how we grew up, are very used to being aware of our
surroundings and how we present in public. It's no different when we travel."
Twitter @joshbnoel
Copyright © 2015, The Baltimore Sun
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