“It’s a question of fundamental justice.” With those words, Canadian Member of Parliament Svend Robinson laid out why he has been involved in the push for legal marriage of same-sex couples in Canada.

This week as more than 300 people gather for the International Network of Lesbian and Gay Officials (INLGO) 19th Annual Conference, fundamental justice is bound to be a major theme.

Robinson, sponsor of the groundbreaking same-sex marriage protection legislation in Canada, will participate in the International Network of Lesbian and Gay Conference in San Diego Nov. 20-23. Robinson was the first openly gay elected MP in Canada. Out since the Spring of 1988, Robinson has been fighting for GLBT rights since he was first elected to public office in 1979.

“I had the pleasure of helping write the [Canadian] constitution back in 1980 and ‘81,” Robinson stated. “At the time, the constitution did not explicitly discriminate based on sexual orientation, but it did not explicitly protect based on sexual orientation, either. I tried to include a bill for same-sex marriage, but it was defeated.”

This year, Robinson is seeing his work come to fruition. In 2003, Canada became just the third country to legalize same-sex marriages. The Netherlands and Belgium were the other two.

While a number of other countries work to end the discrimination against same-sex couples in marriage and union laws, in the case of Canada, Robinson wants to be very clear: “We are not just talking about unions here, we are talking about full-fledged marriage.”

But with only three countries on the “I-do-and-so-can-you” list, where does that leave the rest of the world, including those of us in the United States?

For a majority of GLBT individuals around the world, gay marriage is not even on the radar screen. These individuals are still fighting for what Ariel Herrera of Amnesty International calls “a much broader framework of basic human rights.”

Herrera is the national field organizer for Amnesty International’s OutFront, one of the largest organizations that monitors and works on behalf of LGBT human rights around the globe.

“When we talk about the struggle for LGBT rights around the world,” said Herrara, “in most cases we are talking about a fundamental basic human rights issue: to be free from the brutalities and torturing that is inflicted, including in many cases the death penalty.”

Most commonly called sodomy laws, many countries have enforceable laws that prohibit or regulate sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex. But some countries use other language to police sexual activity such as “morality laws,” “anti-social,” “immoral,” “hooliganism,” “loitering,” “unnatural,” “indecent,” and “causing a public scandal.”

(It was not until this year with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that struck down the Texas state sodomy law. As recently as 1960, every state in the Union had sodomy laws. At the time of the Court’s decision, 13 states still had sodomy laws.)

Herrara used the recent trials in Cairo as a clear example of these types of indirect laws where there is a lack of formalized sodomy laws.

“As of this moment,” said Herrara, “there are over 100 cases [in Egypt] that have been documented of men who have been detained and charged for ‘habitual debauchery’ for being gay or allegedly being gay. Despite international pressure, the persecutions have not abated.”

Examples such as Egypt often seem the norm rather than the exception, especially in parts of the world where religion and state are more firmly intertwined. But Dr. Aeyall Gross, a member of the law faculty at Tel-Aviv University in Israel, points to a fallacy we often fall into: defining an entire region by one high-profile case.

Specifically, in the case of Israel, said Dr. Gross, the Egyptian trials have absolutely no bearing on the Israeli gay rights issues.

“Israel has no formal or informal sodomy laws,” Gross said. “What happened in Egypt will not influence Israel, even though we have peace [accords] with Egypt. It is not considered at all a model or influence on Israel. There have been no attempts to revive sodomy — or related laws — in Israel.”

While this may not apply to Israel, Herrera explains: “In countries that don’t have formal sodomy laws, they can still experience these kinds of abuses [such as in the case of Egypt]. Even though there is no explicit law against same-sex relationships, the state finds other ways to persecute GLBT individuals. Vague general laws that are used broadly, such as the ‘habitual debauchery’ laws in Egypt, are mainly used for detaining and charging gay individuals.”

Along with Amnesty International, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a non-governmental organization whose mission is to work through advocacy, documentation, coalition building, public education, and technical assistance, is considered one of the world’s foremost watchdogs for GLBT human rights.

“We work to challenge the treatment of LGBT individuals around the world,” said Paula Bartlett, executive director of IGLHRC. “More than that, though, we work to change that treatment.”

IGLHRC recognizes 87 countries in violation of basic human rights regarding GLBT persons by having enforceable laws against sex between consenting adults of the same sex (see sidebar).

“We will sometimes categorize countries as having a certain level of abuse legalistically,” said Bartlett. But we don’t want to isolate countries as the worst. There is hardly a country in the world that on some level doesn’t present some form of obstacle [to GLBT persons].”

While the United States does not appear on Amnesty or IGLHRC lists, most people in the U.S. would be hard-pressed not to recall the Matthew Shepard case. Last month marked the five-year anniversary of the tragic death of the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, who was brutally beaten and left to die tied to a fence. We have all heard stories about injustices against GLBT citizens. It touches every continent.

In 1996, Saudi Arabia made headlines when it flogged and expelled 23 migrant Filipinos because they were at a party with a gay friend.

Members of the GLBT rights group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) participating in the 1995 Harare International Book Fair were threatened and their stall was burned down.

Just this year in Honduras, Elkyn Suárez Mejía, a transgender woman known as China, provided vital information to the police about the death of a friend. China is a vocal GLBT rights advocate in the country. Since then, China has been the subject of multiple threats on her life, but the police refuse to give her witness protection.

The United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered the standard bearer for human rights around the globe. Article 2 states that “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

While the Article steers clear of sexual orientation as a category for protection, the Declaration is typically used in policing a country’s compliance with universal human rights standards.

In February of this year, for example, an Iranian dissident known simply as Shayda made history when he applied for asylum in Japan, marking the first time a refugee has applied to that country on the basis of sexual orientation. Shayda was denied asylum by the Justice Department and took his case to the courts.

Because of the recent focus on Islam in the news, the story is making headlines around the globe for international GLBT rights. The IGLHRC is aware of at least 14 Iranian gays and transgenders in the United States and nine in Canada who have gained asylum since 1995.

Goudarz Eghtedari, an Iranian dissident and human rights activist, testified at Shayda’s trial in Tokyo.

“Homophobia is universal,” Eghterdari said during his testimony. “There aren’t many people who are really interested in this issue, unfortunately. Within the Iranian community, it’s taboo. No one likes to talk about it.”

With the recent increased involvement of the United States in the Middle East, political pundits and scholars alike have been discussing the role of Western influence on the rest of the world. How can we say that a country is violating “universal human rights” when we define those universalities in strictly Western terms?

Dr. William Chandler, a professor of Political Science at the University of California San Diego’s Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies offers his own take on the issue.

“There is no such thing as a non-culturally-biased standard. We do apply Western standards to a basic truth about human rights, in part because the West has defined international relations and law more than any other part of the world.”

But Chandler suggests things would be very different if a different set of beliefs was applied. In essence, he concluded that as long as the West continues to define international relations and law, “universal human rights” will be defined in Western terms.

While Chandler emphasized that his remarks merely reflect his own opinion and are not based on extensive research, they do seem to represent a great number of Western scholars’ viewpoints.

IGLHRC’s Bartlett has more direct experience in working with gay rights abuses and says that playing the “Western-biased card” is a defense mechanism for many cultures.

“Cultures get constructed against dignity,” said Bartlett. “West-bashing is an easy way to keep the conversation from happening when we get men from Pakistan contacting us that they desperately want to get out of their country — and we get regular communication from people around the world — people who are not concerned as much about living gay openly as they are fearful of simply being found out and brutalized.”

On the other hand, German Legislator Volker Beck maintains that human rights are universal, regardless of who is applying a definition.

“Human rights are indivisible and apply universally,” said Beck, who will be attending this week’s INGLO conference.

Roddy Shaw is the convenor of the Tongzhi Laws and Policies Task Force (TLPTF) of the Tongzhi Community Joint Meeting, a coalition of more than twenty GLBT groups in Hong Kong and Chairperson of Civil Rights for Sexual Diversities (CR4SD).

“Asian countries have to accept there is a universal right which they have an obligation to protect once they signed and ratified the international conventions,” said Shaw. “Even if they have not signed the conventions, there is international customary law with which they shall comply. Human rights for LGBT people are the same [as universal human rights].”

Shaw is also a long-time activist concerning anti-discrimination law, gender, sexuality and law, equal ages of consent, equal rights in marriage and family for GLBTs, AIDS prevention and care, and human rights protection for all.

With regard to a Western influence on the Asian region, Shaw points to the “slow fading away of the hard-line, authoritarian leaders, recently marked by the step-down of Dr. Mahathir [Mohamed] in Malaysia.”

In 2001, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Mahathir, who was Malaysia’s Prime Minister for 22 years, warned he would throw out any gay British minister should he visit the country with his male partner.

“The British people accept homosexual ministers. But if they ever come here bringing their boyfriend along, we will throw them out,” he said in the interview. Mahathir’s former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, who was once designated to be his successor, is currently serving a 15-year jail term jail on charges of sodomy and corruption.

Reacting to the ban on gay ministers, Britain’s Foreign Office issued a direct statement saying, “[Britian’s Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw strongly considers that people’s private lives are private.”

Mahathir’s remarks were seen as a direct rebuke of Ben Bradshaw, the openly gay Foreign Office minister who met with the Malayaian high commissioner to London. While Muslims in the region largely applauded Mahathir’s firm stance, the West, in particular the European Union, universally decried the comments.

In September, EU ministers endorsed a proposed set of rules ensuring that same-sex married couples from the Netherlands and Belgium (the only countries in the EU where such unions are legal) are recognized across the EU by countries whose own gay and lesbian populations are still far from receiving the same recognition. Under the new rules, which have yet to be made law by the EU parliament, gay and lesbian EU citizens and their families will be able to move freely around the EU and obtain permanent residence in any EU state once they have been residents there for at least five years.

But don’t be fooled. Not everybody in the West agrees with the direction the EU has taken.

Beck experienced this first hand. In July, the Vatican released a 12-page document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith urging Catholics to try to stop the spread of same-sex marriage.

In the document the Vatican states “marriage exists solely between a man and woman.... Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.… Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior ... but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.”

“The Vatican and a small minority of the protestant churches in Europe have spread hate campaigns against gays and lesbians,” said Beck.

The Vatican is not the only religious organization openly opposing the EU’s progressive policies. Even countries applying for membership differ in their degree of GLBT protections.

A Dutch minister threatened to vote against Cyprus’ membership due to gay rights violations, setting off an intense debate between the secular and religious groups on the island, traditionally a very socially conservative country.

As the subject of gay rights came to the forefront, Archbishop Chrysostomos, the veteran primate of Cyprus’ all-powerful Orthodox Church, called on the island’s population to “revolt against homosexuals.” He went on to call GLBT individuals “depraved sinners” and threatened to “excommunicate the perverts.”

Lousewies van der Laan, vice-president of the European parliament’s budgetary control committee was quick to respond in a letter to Cyprus’ EU negotiating team: “I note with regret that not all applicant countries are ready for full equality of homosexuals. But I do expect basic anti-discrimination laws to apply. Gay rights are human rights and as such are non-negotiable.”

Beck says there is a much brighter side than this picture might paint.

“Fortunately, most German citizens and citizens of the EU can no longer be influenced [by these hate campaigns],” he said. “The European Union released guidelines against the discrimination in employment, and that includes a discrimination based on sexual orientation. These guidelines must be enforced on a national level by all members of the EU, old and new alike.”

A Harvard Law School graduate, Gross was awarded the Diploma in Human Rights from the Academy of European Law in 1998. In the mid-1990s, Gross worked with the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg, Germany, so he knows first- hand the influence that the EU can have on human rights — and gay rights, specifically.

“In Israel, we have many non-European Jews and Arabs,” Gross said, “but the European culture is very dominant.”

Often there are populations that are kept on the periphery in the discussion of basic human rights — not to mention gay rights — within their country’s borders. Frequently these are tribal communities whose members are not represented in the government.

In the United States, this is illustrated in the case of Native Americans. Jack Jackson, a member of the Arizona State Legislature and a member of the Navajo Nation, explains how groups can be marginalized in rights discussions.

“You have to realized that Indian people in general are unlike most minority races [in the United States],” said Jackson. “For many, the most important issue to members of an Indian tribe, and specifically for those members who live on-reservation, is the issue of sovereignty. Issues such as adequate health care, quality education, unemployment become issues of basic survival. They don’t even get to the point of being invited to discuss issues like gay rights.”

And even within tribal communities, differences arise that can be perceived as divisions to those on the outside. Jackson explains how this happens with members of the Navajo Nation.

“I cannot express enough the differences between Indian populations who live on-reservation versus those who live off-reservation,” said Jackson. “I got my gay identity outside a reservation. I tend to have those feelings that other gay Americans have.

“Being gay is a white man’s concept. Most tribes have a place in their traditions for gays and lesbians. People identify as two spirits, one female and one male. For a lot of tribes [having two spirits] was very sacred. It was more of a spiritual identification and not defined in contemporary sexual identities.”

In many ways, Beck agrees.

How homosexuality is expressed is certainly different depending on the country,” Beck said. “While there is historically a relatively young Western model, there are also traditional forms [of same-sex relationships].”

However, not everyone agrees that homosexuality is a ‘white man’s concept.’

“I have to disagree with Mr. Jackson that homosexuality is a ‘white man’s concept,’” said Hong Kong’s Shaw. “While the gay identity may be a Western concept, homosexuality as I understand it as the physical and emotional attraction and affection between two members of the same sex, is quite universal.”

“You find evidence of homosexuality across cultures and throughout history,” Shaw continued. “Homosexuality may co-exist perfectly with families, procreation, etc. (such as in China). Same-sex affection may exist in married life, between people of varying gender identity and across cultures.”

While the underlying principles of homosexuality may be defined in different terms traditionally. Jackson and Shaw may, in fact, be on the same page. As in the Navajo traditions, says Shaw, “in Asian countries, homosexuality has a place in history, culture and society.”

One major difference, though, is that while Navajo tradition celebrates the idea of ‘two spirits,’ Shaw notes for example, that, “in China … marriage and procreation is important. As long as you are married, it is acceptable for you to have same-sex relationship as much as it is for extra-marital affairs.”

If this seems like a marked difference between celebration and toleration, it is.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy on a major scale to move civil rights down the continuum to celebration.

In April of this year, at the age of 46, Hong Kong legend pop star and actor Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing leapt to his death from the balcony of the health club at the five-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. The entire region took pause.

Nearly every major radio and television station in the city carried the news of Cheung’s death.

The well-known actor starred in the acclaimed 1993 film Farewell My Concubine, directed by mainland director Chen Kaige and nominated in the American Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film category.

In the film, Cheung played a Beijing opera actor who was tormented by bitterness and frustration his entire life — especially in love affairs — and committed suicide in the end. The film scooped a series of awards that year, including the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, sharing the spotlight at the Festival with The Piano.

Cheung’s illustrious 26-year career included extraordinarily bold — and sometimes eerily foreshadowing — roles. Cheung’s last film was called Inner Senses, a film with a clear message about suicide, depression and controlling one’s inner demons — a message that Cheung himself unfortunately did not retain.

Thousands of people brought white flowers: lilies, carnations, roses. White is the traditional Chinese color for funerals. The flowers at Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel were piled so high there was no room to walk on the sidewalk.

Cheung was a heartthrob for Chinese women, a role model for aspiring gay actors, and one of the first male Asian film stars to take openly gay roles.

He left a note saying he had been suffering from emotional problems. Within five months of his death, the main Hong Kong suicide hotline reported a record high number of calls for the month of September, nearly five times that of calls prior to Cheung’s death.

Besides being known as a popular culture megastar, Cheung was equally well known for being openly gay. After a failed relationship with actress Teresa Mo Shun-Kwun, Cheung and Tong Hok-Yau, a banker, started a relationship in 1985. For the next twelve years, Cheung and Tong kept their relationship a secret.

In 1995, after reporters took pictures of him and Tong, suggesting they were lovers, Cheung dismissed the report by saying people were trying to set him up as a homosexual.

Cheung changed his tune two years later. In 1997, Cheung publicly declared his love for Tong during a concert. Before singing Teresa Teng’s megahit, “The Moon Represents My Heart,” Cheung singled out Tong and said: “Apart from my mother, Tong is the person I love the most.”

After that, the two did not hide their relationship from the public. In fact, Cheung went on to embrace his status as a gay icon. In 2000, his “Passion” concert series became notorious for gender-bending outfits that included skirts, wigs and high heels.

Says Hong Kong GLBT activist Shaw of Cheung’s death and the impact it had on Hong Kong, and the world at large: “People were devastated. However, they showed a great deal of compassion for Leslie’s surviving spouse, Tong. Nothing critical was spoken about their relationship. All there was was compassion. It’s encouraging to see the public’s approval of such an openly gay relationship.”

It is a shame that it sometimes takes a global tragedy on the public scale of Cheung’s suicide to bring a country to the point of “compassion.”

Along the way, many have come to define GLBT rights in general in terms of gay marriage. Not everyone agrees with this approach.

“It would be a flawed way of looking at the state of human rights in terms of LGBT individuals’ rights around the world,” said Amnesty’s Herrara of the idea that same-sex marriage protection is a fix-all. “To put it simply, I don’t think having gay marriages would stop horrendous persecutions around the world. I don’t think it would stop people from being tortured, detained, arrested or killed.”

However, there are countries going down a holistic path, ensuring equal protection of same-sex couples while at the same time addressing a broader framework of human rights. Herrara points to Taiwan as a good example.

“Taiwan is currently going through the process of evaluating their overall human rights concerns,” Herrara said. “At the same time, they are looking very closely at protections for GLBT individuals. Taiwan is really looking to the West for examples.”

On Nov. 1 of this year, the island nation saw its first gay pride parade. Approximately 1,000 people marched in the parade. While some called it China’s first gay pride parade, many still wore masks.

At the same time the people were afraid to march openly, the government was doing everything possible to assure participants of their safety — to the extent that the cabinet and the office of the president were busy drafting legalized same-sex marriage.

To think that a country could move within the same year of having its first gay pride parade to recognizing same-sex partner marriage is a true testament to the very word that describes the collective LGBT community in Taiwan — “tongzhi,” which means, literally translated, “comrade.”

Sometimes, though, things seem to happen in a more random fashion. In Singapore, for example, “amazing things happened,” said Shaw.

“The president [of Singapore] recently made a statement of policy in a media interview that homosexuals are allowed to work in the government, but the law still makes it a crime to have sex between men,” explained Shaw.

“Is he saying that the government wants to hire potential or actual criminals? Does the government scrutinize whether these men (not women, [for whom] it is legal to have sex between [each other]) are celibate? Doesn’t that then constitute illegal intrusion into their privacy? I cannot see how that makes sense, although as an activist I am happy to see the progress the Singapore government makes.”

EJ Graff is the author of What is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution. The book reviews the history of marriage in the West, and argues that same-sex couples fit today’s Western marriage philosophy and laws.

Graff explained that, throughout the West, marriage has been forced to the top of the gay-rights agenda because no other legal idea so comprehensively helps a couple care for each other through sickness, disaster, divorce, disputes and death. However, most developed nations don’t start with marriage rights: instead, they recognize same-sex partners through some partial or parallel system. For Graff, the United States hasn’t done that, and therefore lags badly behind most of the developed world in recognizing and regulating same-sex pairs.

“If I had to paint a map of the world’s treatment of same-sex partnerships, you would have three countries in full 100 percent red for full marriage rights: Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium,” Graff said. “Behind them in dark orange, giving same-sex couples nearly everything except the M-word itself, would be Scandinavia, South Africa, and Germany — soon to be joined by Switzerland, England, and Scotland. Next there would be the yellow countries and provinces, where same-sex partners are given about half the legal recognition that married different-sex pairs have: France, Portugal, New Zealand, most of Australia, half of Spain, Vermont, Hawaii, and soon California.”

“Over the next two years, the most likely contenders for bright marriage red would be Massachusetts, Spain, Sweden, and South Africa.”

If her arguments are decidedly Western in scope and language, as far as Graff is concerned, there are clear reasons.

“It was not appropriate for me to argue about other cultures when I was debating within the West’s cultural traditions: you don’t win an argument about marriage in the West by saying that there have been female husbands in Africa, even if that’s factually accurate.”

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the Freedom to Marry Coalition, goes a step further. Wolfson argues that the fight is not for gay marriage, but rather for the end of discrimination in marriage — period. Wolfson was a lead attorney for the Baehr v Anderson case in Hawaii. He was among those who helped convince the Vermont Supreme Court that gay and straight partnerships should be given equal legal treatment.

“The first thing I tell people is, ‘Don’t call it gay marriage.’ That is reinforcing the right wing’s argument that we are trying to create something new and different and special,” said Wolfson. “The institution is called marriage. We are not fighting for gay marriage, we are fighting to end discrimination in marriage.”

That being said, Wolfson says that we can use a lot of what we learn from other countries right here in the United States.

“I would say that the single most important impact that the can be seen through the Canadian and EU examples is that they show societies much like which ours are treating same-sex couples equally — and the sky isn’t falling.”

And while Graff made clear that her views are not in conflict with international organizations such as Amnesty or IGLHRC, she does fall into the camp of those advocates in the West who suggest that gay marriage is the critical factor in the fight against discrimination of GLBT individuals.

Still, IGLHRC’s Bartlett can’t help but put things in a more global context.

“My view of human rights is to allow people family choice, whether that is marriage or not,” said Bartlett. “It is too limited to say that marriage is the only answer.”

Freedom to Marry Coalition’s Wolfson argues that with the same-sex protection laws in place, the decline of other discrimination will follow.

“We can see in other countries like us — in Canada, for example, where we share the same ideals of pluralism and democracy — that within a short period time after legally ending discrimination in marriage, more and more people in the public support it. It brings about real and immediate protections and securities for families.”

Hong Kong’s Shaw suggests a slightly more subtle progression. If the idea is “that the rest of LGBT human rights will fall into place with the onset of same-sex marriage,” Shaw said, “I doubt it.”

Instead, Shaw says that in many countries, there are very concrete events that need to take place before same-sex relationship discrimination ends.

“Take the US as an example,” said Shaw. “You probably cannot have same-sex marriage legalized while in some states it is still criminal to have sex between consenting adult men. Take Canada as another example. You probably would not have had Halpern vs. Canada if the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was not in place, i.e. the anti-discrimination/equal protection constitutional guarantee. Canada would not have three provinces making case law to allow same-sex marriage” without these other formal protections in place.

U.S. House of Representative Member Barney Frank (D, MA) explained why gay rights are so important here in the U.S.

“This country was founded on wonderful ideals that are only partially realized,” said Frank. “One important strain is that groups originally excluded come to get benefits afforded to all people. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are the most recent to come along.”

Frank, who is a co-sponsor of nearly every major piece of gay rights legislation before the House, explained why the U.S. should continue to make its case for gay rights.

“We should continue to make this fight politically. The best way to win rights is to use the political system and persuade others through the political process,” said Frank.

“To have gay marriage in some [U.S.] states recognized but not in others is not sustainable politically,” said Frank, echoing Shaw’s view. “But I do think if you have gay marriage in several states, people will begin to see that their fears are unjustified.”

Like Robinson, Frank says he is in a unique position to make the case for gay rights in the United States. Frank has been fighting for basic human rights his entire political career.

“I have been fighting hard for fair treatment for all people,” said Frank. “I am proud of my record on fighting against discrimination based on race, based on sex and handicaps. As an openly gay man — as one of only a handful that have served openly in Congress — I have a special degree of knowledge. I have an obligation to fight for gay rights.”

Beck recalls his 10-year battle to bring same-sex partner recognition to his country, and notes the similarities with Canadian MP Robinson’s efforts.

“For me, the execution of same-sex civil rights was always a central point,” Beck said. “It became a question of justice. I take pride in the fact that I was able to contribute as a delegate to bring life to the partnership law [in Germany].”

“When I was able to accompany the first gay and lesbian couples to the registry office on Aug. 1, 2001, this was one of my finest days. It was an absolute highpoint in my political life.”

No matter what specific element of gay rights you are talking about, it seems to come down to something everyone agrees on: fundamental justice. The only question is, justice defined by and for whom?