It seems like the barriers to full equality for the LGBT community are falling left and right, but in at least 78 countries worldwide, homosexual acts are illegal.
The Kaleidoscope Trust, a British rights group, is drawing attention to the situation with this disturbing but effecting PSA, launched this week and produced by renowned marketing agency M&C Saatchi. The organization is dedicated to fighting for full international acceptance of human rights for all, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.
“It is hoped that this film will come as a timely reminder that whatever freedoms we may enjoy in Britain, those same freedoms are denied to millions of others around the globe,” says Kaleidoscope Trust deputy director
Harjeet Johal. “London will be hosting a huge gay pride celebration this weekend. We are proud to be the charity partners for World Pride 2012 but we are just as determined that nobody should forget the millions of people who can’t be in London and who are made criminals in their own countries because of their sexuality. It should never be a crime to be gay.”
Out actor John Barrowman (Torchwood) has joined the campaign, and calls the clip “powerful stuff.”
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“It brings home to people how they would feel if some crazy law made it illegal for them simply to be themselves,” he says. “What if it were illegal for me to want to sing? Or to have an American accent?” he said in a statement. “We are all human beings and we all deserve the same rights. And that includes the right to love whoever we choose to love.”
Steve
A better comparison might be, “left-handed”. People who are left-handed, know that they have much better dexterity in their left hand than in their right. They know that they are much more coordinated with the left hand than the right. But, right-handed people still claim that using your left hand is a choice, and the left-handed people could choose to do things with their right hand, if they wanted. For hundreds of years, from the dark ages until about fifty years ago, the church taught that left-handed people where inherently evil. Now, we know that there is a biological difference… but some people still believe that left-handed people are “sinister”.
Analog
What a dreadful video.
fagburn
How banal.
Could the trust publish their accounts and say what they do apart from make icky, politically infantile videos?