Homosexuality and LGBT rights in Vietnam - Essay Example

The country hosts highly talented people belonging to a variety of professions including artists, scientists, lawyers, and economists. Still, the discrimination of the society toward the LGBT community in general is overt. Vietnam is just another country among a range of conservative countries in which homosexuality is perceived as a taboo. While people hold different views about it, the view against homosexuality is carried by a vast majority of people in the society. Although a Google search over the keywords “Dong tinh” leads an individual to more than 250 million links in a fraction of a second, yet most of the links reveal the negative stance of the society of Vietnam over the topic of homosexuality.

Most people in Vietnam express curiosity and distress over the topic, and articles citing cases of discrimination against the homosexuals in different ways can be readily found. However, the situation has started to change recently in favor of the LGBT community in Vietnam, even though the country has to go a long way before equality of rights of the LGBT community can be established. A major hurdle in the way of social acceptance of the LGBT community in Vietnam is certain misunderstandings.

At a conference organized for gay-rights, Le Quang Binh, the think-tank leader mentioned that while 57 per cent of the Vietnamese thought of homosexuality as a social fad, 48 per cent of them thought that it was a curable condition. Nguyen Thanh Tam, the Viet Pride founder recalled the curiosity shown by people to see the rainbow flags at the last year’s event in these words, “People were running up to us asking why we were carrying rainbow flags. They wanted to know what product we were marketing” (Tam cited in Phillips).

According to the LGBT activist Tam, life for the lesbians is made particularly complicated by the police as the police hauls them in for questioning on charges that while their gender is mentioned as female on their identity cards, they look like boys to the cops. A major barrier in the way of the LGBT movement is social conformity. People belonging to the minority are understood by others with difficulty since people tend to follow the norm that being different is bad. Rights of the LGBT community in Vietnam is a pleasant outlier among the human-rights statistics’ bleak set.

The police has arrested many dissident bloggers in 2013 whereas the total number of political prisoners in detention in Vietnam surpasses 150 (Phillips). The case of Dieu Cay, the campaigning journalist is one of the most high-profile cases in Vietnam. “Suffering a raft of serious health problems that require round-the-clock care, the activist is serving a 12-year sentence for “disseminating antistate information and materials,” and on June 22, embarked on an ongoing hunger strike to protest his treatment” (Phillips).

Same-sex couples in Vietnam have been fined for many decades for holding the relationship ceremonies in the past. Contrary to the decades-long history of anti-gay sentiment in Vietnam, circumstances have started to change in favor of the LGBT community as a result of alteration in the laws. Gay and lesbian couples are likely to soon be allowed to conduct ceremonies of relationship in Vietnam. Lawmakers in Vietnam have started to conduct a debate regarding the hope of the advocates of gay rights and their allies that Vietnam might permit same-sex marriages in near future.

Of late, the National Assembly of Vietnam has scheduled the commencement of a debate regarding amendment of the Law of Marriage and the Family which would, in effect, annul the ban placed over same-sex marriage, though the law would not allow