There are various indexes of how LGBT+ friendly countries are. For example, equaldex lists Tanzania as rank 181 out of 197 countries (lower is better), with a total score of 12/100 (higher is better, best is Iceland at 92-100). They list their methodology and how their scores are computed, so if you want to present a factual counter-argument you are welcome to (I'm not an expert on the matter). But it seems to me that there is, prima facie, evidence for the claim that Tanzania is one of the least safe countries for LBGT+ people in the world.
That site mostly just looks at legal protections, which don't necessarily say all that much about the "facts on the ground". It also has a few opinion polls, but I don't rate those all that much either.
And there can be huge variations within countries, and nuances in what is and isn't considered "bad". There are 61 million people in Tanzania, and it's three times the size of Germany in terms of surface area. It's a big place.
A few charts is not a "fact". Or I mean, it is I guess, but that doesn't automatically mean it describes reality in any meaningful way.
Obviously Tanzania is not the best place to be gay, but details and nuance does matter, and can make huge differences.
Vibes on the ground are not fact. Actionable law is.
I agree with the people saying that this is in-effect a wholesale rejection of conferences in Africa, and that we should be mindful of that and work on a compromise. But how is it sensible to expect organizations to act on so-called "facts on the ground"?
If those facts haven't already been leveraged to meaningfully affect policy, then there's a burdening question of "why not?"
> Vibes on the ground are not fact. Actionable law is.
I really think this is a view that only makes sense in stable countries with strong rule of law, which I don't think is the case for most of the world. And even in the First World. Are Americans in states that legalized marijuana afraid of a random cop arresting them due to it being federally illegal? Is the average European concerned of being arrested for movie piracy? Seriously there are a lot of unenforced laws around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenforced_law
Not meant to be an argument for either side of this specific case, just a general opinion. Only looking at vibes is not enough but only looking at the law in the books is also not enough.
> Are Americans in states that legalized marijuana afraid of a random cop arresting them due to it being federally illegal?
Yes. Not from street cops, but you better believe I'm concerned about airport security. You'll probably be safe, but I would not recommend a non-US person to test this. It's unreasonable to expect outsiders to understand which laws are enforced, particularly when the consequences of being wrong may include life imprisonment or death.
I agree that law isn't enough; it's not the end of the discussion, surely. But I feel it is the trunk that we should branch from.
If the law is ineffectual: the persuasive burden rests on the people saying so, not on the people reading the law as it exists on the books. Strong/weak rule of law could act against either side here.
In my experience in one of the few blue enclaves in an overwhelmingly red US state[1], selectively enforced laws are frequently used by local law enforcement as an instrument of discrimination against "undesirables".
As a straight, white, young adult male, I noticed a strong correlation between the frequency of "pretextual" traffic stops in neighboring counties and the then-current length of my hair.
Racial minorities have it much worse:
Before Brainard took office, employees of then Carmel[, Indiana]-based One Call, many of whom were minorities living outside of Carmel and working late into the night, complained of being pulled over by Carmel police.
The city’s solution, which [Carmel mayor] Brainard called “terrible,” was to give employees car tags so police knew they belonged there, implying that if you were Black and didn't work there, the assumption might be that you didn't belong there. There was, however, no systemic change within the police department to stop ticketing Black people passing through." [2]
As for marijuana possession,
In Indiana, all but 13 counties are above the national average for racial disparities [in marijuana arrests]. And while Marion County’s rate of disparity is below the national average, there seems to be an alarming trend for surrounding counties to have disproportionately high arrests of Black community members. For example, Hancock, Hamilton, Shelby and Boone counties, all donut counties, have a racial disparities rate of greater than 10x. [3]
For any event or group in the tech sector in the US or Western Europe, having an Equality & Diversity policy and a way to raise complaints and enforceable rules to ban discrimination are basically table stakes. The PyCon community in particular should know this since "donglegate"; whatever one thinks of that incident, the PyCon community in the "west" has since made quite clear that being an inclusive and welcoming environment is as much one of their core values as having python rather than perl as their preferred programming language.
The author of the open letter says that adopting a "human rights plan" (quotes in the original) would "pose a significant legal and personal risk to [the] organisers". Assuming this is true, we have a situation with no easy answer.
I think most people in the python community would agree that an event in a country where making a pro-equality commitment would not pose significant risks to the organisers, absolutely must make such a commitment.
If the choice is between events in Tanzania with no pro-equality statement, and no events in Tanzania at all, I agree that it's a question worth discussing. Should the PyCon policy be "your event must have an equality policy unless you have a good reason not to?"
> Vibes on the ground are not fact. Actionable law is.
Is the law actionable? Is it enforced? What do the courts do? How does the police act? There's a million factors that radically change what "the law" says.
Weed is illegal in the Netherlands. Always has been. Never been legalized. Going by the "facts" of the law would lead to some views of the country that do not align with any sort of meaningful reality.
> But how is it sensible to expect organizations to act on so-called "facts on the ground"?
If you don't know the reality of the situation then maybe you shouldn't act at all because you're ignorant about the entire thing?
I'm ignorant on this topic too; don't really know anything about Tanzania. But I'm also not claiming things about it, or think I know anything meaningful from ten seconds of scanning a website.
Yup. I'm pretty willing to defer to what human rights organizations and the country itself say about their laws.
> Weed is illegal in the Netherlands.
Which:
1. is something that should change if it's an inaccurate reflection of the country
2. is nonetheless a far discussion from (what should be) a fundamental human right
> If you don't know the reality of the situation then maybe you shouldn't act at all because you're ignorant about the entire thing?
The Python Software Foundation didn't act on enabling this conference; that's precisely why the OP exists. Your argument, if you're defending the OP, is instead that we should act on our supposed "ignorance" in the face of laws which say one thing and internet people say another thing.
Never been to Tanzania or Zanzibar, but I would assume that Zanzibar, being dependent on tourism, is more tolerant. Still, if I were gay and that would be punishable with life imprisonment in a country, I would avoid it...
