A Demonstration Against Homophobia and Transphobia

On May 17th, the Lobby Alliance for LGBT human rights will install one hundred tombstones on the Ketagalan Boulevard in order to raise social awareness of the International Day against Homophobia and Trasphobia, IDAHOT .

 

International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia was first held in Canada 2003.  The Declaration of Montreal which was endorsed by the participants of the International Conference on LGBT Human Rights in 2006, called on all countries in the world, to recognize and promote the 17th of May of each year as the International Day against Homophobia to awake the world to accept that individual human beings have different sexes, racial or ethnic origins, and religions, and that these differences must be respected and not be used as reasons for discrimination. Refusal to accept and respect would lead to ignorance and prejudice. These ignorance and prejudice not only lead to discrimination and violence against LGBT people but also violating their essential human rights.

 

We will send a letter to every principal of middle school and high school in Taiwan before 5/17, due to the fact that most LGBT discrimination acts in Taiwan take place on school grounds. In 1994, two seventeen-year-old girls left a note that said,” the nature of the society is not meant for people like us…” , before they took their own lives. In 2000, a twenty-year-old Yeh Yong-Chih (葉永鋕) was found dead alone in the school bathroom, he had been continuously bullied in school because of his sexual orientation. In 2011, a junior high student had jumped from the rooftop for being called names over the years in school. What have caused these tragedies are the stigma of biased family education, failing to adopt Gender Equality Education Act, and the profund misleading value of discrimination against LGBT from our very own society.

 

The letters aim to make every principal realize their obligation to protect every student’s right to free expression, and also to establish an environment respectful of students’ sexual orientation and gender identity.

 

 

 

  Our society has never really realized: When most people live freely, and yet they feel great animosity towards differences of other individuals, the collective animosity nearly suppresses the qualification of existence of others. Existence comes with conditions. Those who do not fit in mainstream values are usually determined ineligible by the society. In human history, via all kinds of institution, our society always persecutes, bullies and insults and thus rules out and eliminates those who do not fit in heterosexual values.

 

On May 17^th, the International Day against Homophobia and Trasnphobia, IDAHOT, the Lobby Alliance for LGBT human rights will install one hundred tombstones on the Ketagalan Boulevard for those “killed by homophobia”, with their names engraved. We resurrect and honor those who were killed by homophobia -- remember, these tombs are not for revenge, these tombs are to free the world from fear.