There's a Global War Against the Right of Gay People to Live and Love. We Need to Fight Back

By Sir Elton John and Johann Hari

There has been a stranglehold on Western gay politics -- until now. We have, understandably, been focused on our own national battles for dignity: to get married, and not get fired for being gay, or bullied into despair as teenagers. But while we were starting to win, millions of gay people were starting to lose -- and lose badly. There are seven countries where the punishment for homosexuality is death, and the number is growing. In dozens more, gay people are being terrorized into the closet, or a prison cell, or the hands of a lynch mob, today, now. To pluck one example at random, this summer, a senior official in Ghana ordered gays and lesbians "rounded up", and announced: "All efforts are being made to get rid of these people." Imagine a thousand Matthew Shephards, lynched with the approval of the state.

These hunted gay people are asking for our help -- and now, at last, organizations are being built to get it to them. This is the new prong to the fight for gay equality, and perhaps the most crucial.

In every human society ever recorded, some people -- around 3 to 5 percent -- have been sexually drawn to their own gender. It is as universal and as harmless a quirk as left-handedness. Yet somewhere along the way, a whole cluster of fears and paranoias furred around homosexuality. There were myths that gay people were subversives or pedophiles or enemies of an invisible deity. For a long time, these myths killed gay men and women in our societies -- and now they are killing people just like us in swelling numbers abroad.

Read more at The Huffington Post...