Pride & Prejudice - the fight for human rights & health justice
We’re coming to the end of Pride Month - but June has been dominated more by reminders of Pride’s origins as a struggle for rights than a celebration of equality realised.
All forms of human rights are interconnected and the right to health is at the centre of a web of vital freedoms. This month we’ve seen an attempt to deport migrants to Rwanda, the removal of the right to abortion in the US, the UK prioritising corporations’ COVID monopolies over access to vaccines at the WTO, and an ever-worsening NHS crisis as staff struggle to provide the care without the funding needed to do so. It is clear how important it is that we remember and honour the activists who helped us win historic struggles for health justice and LGBT rights, and urgently reignite a fight to protect and expand these interconnected rights.
At the heart of the work Just Treatment does is a belief that when we build patient-power and fight back against corporate control of medicine - we win. One of the most inspiring case studies for this theory of change is the AIDS movement - one which has its roots in other fights for equality, from the gay rights movement in the US and Europe to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
As AIDS started taking the lives of gay men - the community who bore the brunt of the early pandemic - in the US in the late 80s, activists who had cut their teeth in the fight for LGBTQ organising initiated a movement, centred on the leadership of people living with HIV, that spread across the globe and changed the world. AIDS activism revolutionised how science and medicine are conducted, transformed government policy, and brought all-powerful pharmaceutical corporations to their knees.
As millions of avoidable deaths occurred across the developing world, the movement - made up of sex workers, drug users and the queer and trans communities often pushed to the margins - challenged the global rules of the capitalist game. They forced the reform of World Trade Organisation rules to help end deadly - but highly profitable - monopolies of HIV treatment and deliver affordable, global access to these lifesaving drugs.
This enormous victory was fought for and won by fearless queer activists who refused to shy away from challenging the rich and powerful. They protested in the streets, in the offices of state authorities and in the boardrooms of pharmaceutical companies. They shifted the narrative on AIDS and they ultimately saved tens of millions of lives. This is the radical history and legacy of struggle that Just Treatment continues today. It is a source of pride, and vital lessons we must apply to future fights.
But beyond the AIDS movement, the demand for health justice has been a core part of the demands for equity, respect and liberation for LGBTQ people. This is unsurprising when we recognise that the queer and trans communities face many health disparities linked to stigma, discrimination, and denial of rights. The oppression and violence that many LGBT people face across our society is a key driver of poor mental health, substance abuse, and suicide.
According to the 2017 National LGBT survey:
At least 16% of respondents who accessed or tried to access public health services had a negative experience because of their sexual orientation, and at least 38% had a negative experience because of their gender identity.
51% of respondents who accessed or tried to access mental health services said they had to wait too long, 27% were worried, anxious or embarrassed about going and 16% said their GP was not supportive.
80% of trans respondents who accessed or tried to access gender identity clinics said it was not easy, with long waiting times the most common barrier.
And this week, the confirmation that the US Supreme Court is taking away the right to abortion care is a shocking demonstration of how fragile even the rights we have today - never mind those yet to be won. And Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion on the ruling, made it clear - they won’t stop there. He hopes the precedent set by the court on abortion will lead to the overturning of rulings that protect the right to marriage equality and even the right to contraception. As we see the erosion of the right to health in the UK through charging of migrants for NHS care and the underfunding and privatisation of the health service - we must see it in the context of an aggressive global campaign to remove hard won rights and curtail our freedom.
During the AIDS movement, the core slogan of activist group ACT UP was “Silence=Death”. Decades on from this political moment, crucial victories have been won. But some things have not changed. Unaccountable healthcare and pharmaceutical companies and their friends in government are still putting profit before patients’ lives, with devastating consequences. And it is the duty of all of us to refuse to stay silent in the face of this injustice.
Fight for LGBTQ liberation, fight for human rights, fight for health justice!