I don't know what is with the gay issues that I've been buying it for this past week. First I sent this essay that I wrote back in 2nd year to Tamaraw Bayan about how gay people can so easily be narrowed down to pervert and promiscous people despite their efforts. Imagine how happy I was when I received an email from the site that they had indeed posted my essay! Ahihihi! Any disappointment and sadness that I felt when I lost at the Pen Power suddenly went away as I read the comments from readers. There was even this Kevin who was so persistent in his views that if we were indeed facing each other dabating on it, I would have strangled him. Hahaha! Ok that was a lame joke.
And now this article. I came across it at towerload.com where I usually read news and issues about gay people.
A 21-year-old lesbian has become the first person in Nepal to be officially recognised as a third gender person under the Maoist-led new government, a move being hailed as a landmark for sexual minorities in a country still dominated by a strong feudal society.
Bishnu Adhikari, who was forced to leave her home in Pokhara town by outraged relatives and neighbours, Wednesday became the first person in Nepal to be given an official identity card that described her sex as 'third gender' instead of the usual male and female categories.
She was issued an official ID that gave her gender as 'Third'.
Naulo Bihani (New Dawn), a Nepali NGO that works for the rights of gays and lesbians in Kaski district in central Nepal, said Adhikari had applied for citizenship at the Kaski district administration office asking for an ID that would identify her as third gender.
Adhikari, a human rights officer employed by the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), the pioneer organisation in Nepal to champion the cause of gays and lesbians, was inspired to ask for a third gender ID after Nepal's first publicly gay lawmaker Sunil Babu Pant visited Pokhara about 10 days ago.
During his visit, Pant, who is also the founder of the BDS, gave a public speech discussing the constitutional rights of third genders and encouraging them to demand a citizenship certificate that truly identified them.
The MP, who was nominated to the newly elected constituent assembly by a minor communist party that is a partner in the ruling coalition, said it would also be a test of the interim constitution promulgated after the pro-democracy movement of 2006 that ensured equality for every citizen.
Adhikari had a tough fight acquiring the ID she wanted.
Krishna Adhikari, regional coordinator at Naulo Bihani, said the officials first rejected her demand saying she looked exactly like a man and therefore should be issued an ID that described her as male.
However, after she consistently refused to accept it, saying that in view of the new changes that had electrified Nepal her request should also be heard, the officials went into a huddle among themselves and then finally relented.
Adhikari's fight was made easier by the Supreme Court of Nepal that in a landmark judgement last year said gays were 'natural' people. It directed the government to remove all discrimination against the community and ensure for them the rights enjoyed by all other citizens.
Last year, Chanda Musalman, a gay man who became a transgender, dressing as a woman, wrested partial recognition for her community when she was given an ID that described her gender as 'both male and female'.
I sometimes can't help myself to become so emotional when I read articles like this. It's one thing to empathize, it's a whole different thing to actually experience what third gender people are experiencing.
I suffered 18 years of my life inside my closet and I have my fair share of encounters with homophobes, but compared to what gay people from other countries experience, I can still say that I am indeed lucky. Imagine coming to the hospital to visit your partner who met an accident and you won't even be allowed to see him because "you're not in the family" or in other words, even if you share the same bed every night, you two are not legal. Imagine growing up in a country where in a total of 300 homosexuals under the age of 18 commit suicide every year, leaving notes that they cannot face it anymore because they are not accepted by their family and that they are being bullied in class. Imagine the fear that some gay people are having when they set outside their community where the rate of gay hate crimes are staggering.
And now because of the authorities in Nepal, homosexuals there can finally step into the light and be recognized equally without the fear if prejudice and discrimination. Society indeed is changing. I hope that I'd live to see the day when we'd be able to leave this foolish discrimination behind us and work together as equal, not only superficially, but sicerely in our hearts and minds as well.
