Malaysia halts music festival after same-sex kiss by UK band The 1975

BlackRose@slrpnk.net to LGBTQ+@beehaw.org – 83 points –
Malaysia halts music festival after same-sex kiss by UK band The 1975
reuters.com
24

Just the other day, I saw a comment on Lemmy lamenting how artists skip over Malaysia for their world tours. This should make it very clear why that is the case.

Good on the band, but it just makes me think more people should make an effort to fully boycott all countries with regressive laws like this. Embargo them.

There go half the United States.

Regressive states should be boycotted too but fortunately the right to marriage has not been eroded in any state yet, although they are trying.

There was just a judge in the news for refusing to officiate a same-sex marriage. In many places it's at the stage of being eroded, just not officially. Bigots are starting to feel like it's safe to discriminate more blatantly than before.

Even if this judge gets slapped down, cases like this put couples in the position of having to shop around for judges, and/or find time and funds for a lawyer, when they should by all rights be able to just celebrate like any other couple, and in the meantime they're left temporarily without marriage rights for hospital visitation/medical decision making, taxes, and parentage.

Also if either person or their child is trans there's a whole nother pile of shite to deal with, particularly re. state laws like Florida's that allow essentially legal kidnapping if a child or parent is trans. If you're trans and have a child from a previous marriage, or if you have a trans child from a previous marriage, you could easily end up in a situation where state law gives precedence to your ex when it comes to parental rights, and I can easily see this being worse if the state also doesn't want to recognize your new marriage/partner because gay.

Edit: to clarify I think we're not disagreeing actually, from what you said. I just wanted to elaborate on this.

Yea I think we're on the same page. Bigots are emboldened right now and trying to take away rights. Things are definitely getting more difficult for LGBT people in some areas.

Do you think, maybe, if they hadn't stopped the festival, that it wouldn't have become an international news story? Streisand Effect strikes again!

i think the one person in the article makes a good point about how this sort of thing can make it more difficult for lgbt people actually living in malaysia, but overall i’d say i think that this is a super great thing overall. it’s ridiculous and terrible how intolerant and stuck in the past some countries are.

For some reason the BBC has an article on this news saying that 1975 is acting as "white saviour"...

WTF. Is the BBC insane?

Its the Malaysian government oppressing its people and they are just artists trying to protest.