by Rex Wockner
[story filed Sept. 2, 2001]
OAKLAND, Calif. -- It was like a gay United Nations.
About 100 GLBT leaders from 40 countries
converged on
Oakland Aug. 27 to Sept. 2 for the
21st world
conference of the International Lesbian
and Gay
Association (ILGA).
Delegates came from Argentina, Australia,
Chile,
China, Costa Rica, Estonia, Ecuador,
Guatemala, India,
Jamaica, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico,
Nepal, New
Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru,
Romania, Russia,
the Philippines, Poland, Slovakia,
South Africa, Sri
Lanka, Venezuela and Zimbabwe -- as
well as from
several Western European nations,
Canada and the USA.
"ILGA used to be very Eurocentric,"
said Secretary
General Kursad Kahramanoglu. "There
are as many
non-Europeans as Europeans here this
year. In the
past, even when ILGA world conferences
were outside of
Europe, we only had European [attendees].
This year
they're not overwhelming the conference."
Held at Oakland's Federal Building,
State Building and
City Hall, the conference was greeted
by Mayor Jerry
Brown, the former California governor
and U.S.
presidential candidate.
"I really appreciate your work," Brown
said at a gala
reception in the City Hall rotunda.
"I join in
solidarity with you for those that
are not here but
are suffering the ravages and the
prejudice of
homophobia and discrimination in violation
of human
rights in this country and often,
even more so, in
different places -- [in hopes] that
this gathering and
our collective power will turn the
tide till someday
justice rules for everyone whether
it's gay, lesbian,
transgender, bisexual, black, Latino,
Asian, whatever.
Ultimately the human family has to
come together."
ILGA conferences draw "the cream of
the crop" of GLBT
activists, said delegate Cynthia Rothschild,
a board
member and GLBT activist at Amnesty
International USA.
"ILGA provides a site that doesn't
exist elsewhere for
the people who are the heart of the
movement.
"I come away with heightened sensitivity
toward
struggles beyond my own in this nation,
beyond my
chosen organizations," Rothschild
said. "I come away
with political partnerships. It's
rejuvenating. It
strengthens our work when we go back
home. We build
teams of advocates for different kinds
of work, and
that feels particularly compelling."
Which is not to say ILGA has not always
been
disorganized, poor and rife with political
disagreement.
"ILGA is so anarchic and chaotic,"
said Ashok Row
Kavi, India's most well-known and
outspoken gay
activist. "The Europeans are too wary
of handing too
much power to the Latin Americans
and the Asians. In
India, we've been working on a rather
large network,
just like ILGA, and it's about as
bad as ILGA --
organizing Indians. Get three Indians
and you have
three political parties."
The conference reflected ILGA's disorganization.
Attendance was down, some scheduled
workshops did not
take place, delegates had trouble
finding meeting
rooms, some sessions degenerated into
bickering, and
security guards at the Federal Building,
where the
bulk of the sessions took place, claimed
to be unaware
of the gathering and confiscated journalists'
cameras
as a threat to national security.
"ILGA has a big challenge in the future
because other
international organizations are growing,"
said Jordi
Petit of Spain, a former ILGA secretary
general. "The
only way to go is to join with these
other
international networks. We need to
work together to
fight for our rights, for example
against the Islamic
opposition. We also need the support
of pink business.
The gay and lesbian volunteer movement
cannot do it
alone in the future for ILGA."
Given that its primary function has
been as a
networking tool for far-flung GLBT
activists, ILGA
faces competition from the Internet
as well.
"We can do in one second things that
some years ago
took weeks or months, like, for example,
the case of
the 52 men jailed in Egypt for being
in a gay bar,"
Petit said. "The Egyptian government
had to shut down
its e-mail system because of the thousands
and
thousands of messages of protest and
solidarity from
gay and lesbian activists around the
world."
Oscar Atadero, president of ProGay,
the Progressive
Organization of Gays in The Philippines,
believes ILGA
could regain some of its former "luster"
by reaching
out even more to Third World GLBTs.
"As an organization, ILGA is a mess,"
Atadero said.
"But, for me, it's very empowering
to see lots more
delegates from the Third World. We're
making our
voices heard. I think ILGA has lost
a little luster
over the years. My unsolicited advice
is that if it
really wants to reinvigorate or reinvent
its
importance, there should be more ILGA
conferences
outside the developed world. ILGA
can make huge waves
in developing country capitals. These
are where the
reaction, the conservatism, the violence
against gays
are on-going and still not addressed.
Putting the
conferences outside the developed
world would inject
new blood and a new mission for ILGA.
Here [in the
developed world], I think it's kind
of blown itself
out."
For delegate Kim, from the only lesbian
organization
in Beijing, China, the ILGA conference
was inspiring
but too advanced.
"It's very far from my reality," she
said. "Some
workshops are very useful, for example,
the
fundraising and how to deal with the
media. So far,
that's not our concern yet, of course,
because we have
media censorship, but it's very interesting
and
inspiring to learn. Most issues are
too advanced --
they are northern issues. We are trying
to create some
southern space within ILGA."
Kim's group, Beijing Sisters, has four
members. She
asked that her last name not be published.
Delegate Tariq, from Pakistan, hardly
knew what to
think. He'd never before been outside
of Pakistan, an
Islamic nation where gay life is limited
to extremely
cautious cruising in parks and hotel
lobbies. He found
ILGA on the Web and they invited him
to the
conference.
To have any kind of gay organization
in Pakistan --
political or social -- would be "dangerous
and
impossible," he said, "due to tradition
and religious
and legal systems."
Do he and what he described as his
"little number of"
gay friends have private parties?
"Impossible," he
said. "Legally, it is sanctioned."
When a reporter offered to take Tariq
across the bay
and show him San Francisco's gay Castro
neighborhood,
he seemed troubled at the suggestion
unless the
reporter had some "contacts" there.
Although attendance was down significantly
at this
year's ILGA conference compared with
the group's large
European confabs in the late 80s and
early 90s, a 2003
gathering is scheduled for Manila,
in the Philippines.
That gathering could draw greater
numbers if, as some
European delegates suggested, the
low turnout this
year can be blamed primarily on the
bad exchange rate
on the U.S. dollar for Western Europeans.
Delegates
from Third World and former communist
nations usually
attend ILGA conferences on scholarships
while
delegates from the developed world
tend to pay their
own way.
For more information on the Manila
conference or other
ILGA activities, e-mail ilga@ilga.org.