The Sex and Sexualities Symposium held its sixth annual Undergraduate Sexualities Research Conference on Thursday, April 10. The conference included a keynote speaker, Psychology Professor Sharon Horne of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, followed by several panels that addressed issues of gender, sex and sexuality. The event concluded with breakout discussion sections on a range of topics.

SASS is a student-run group that is part of Triskelion, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer interest group at Brandeis. It is intended as an intellectual discussion group that "is dedicated to more theoretical and academic style discussions related to gender, sex and sexuality," said SASS Coordinator Scott Kluger '15 in an interview with the Justice.
Horne spoke of her research on both national and international issues of LGBTQ rights, focusing particularly on Russia and Africa.

She began by addressing LGBTQ issues in the United States and said that the New England ideology is that LGBTQ rights have already won and are natural. Horne said that Americans have seen so much political and social progress on the issue in the past few years and that political acceptance of gay rights seem inevitable at this point. However, she said that even in the United States there is quite a bit of backlash to this progress and that people are trying to pass legislation in some states to restrict LGBTQ rights, including not allowing discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools. She also pointed out that 33 states still have a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Horne moved on to talk about LGBTQ rights outside of the United States. She pointed out that although many countries do fully support gay marriage and rights, in many places in the world, people are still persecuted for their sexuality.

Because Horne's studies focus particularly in Russia, she went into detail about the problems that the LGBTQ community currently faces in that part of the world. She said that, in the past, Russia was actually fairly neutral in terms of issues of gay rights and that the LGBTQ community was basically left alone there. However, she said that under Russian President Vladimir Putin, persecution of members of the LGBTQ community begun.

The Russian Parliament hosted American anti-gay activist Paul Cameron, who recommended that LGBTQ individuals should not be allowed to teach in schools because they are likely to be pedophiles.

The Parliament also passed the gay propaganda law in June of 2013, which essentially forbids the distribution of information about homosexuality to minors. Horne said that the history of anti-Semitism in Russia has exacerbated the anti-LGBTQ sentiment because, in the past, people often thought that being Jewish and being gay were related to one another.
Horne told the group that in 2012, a law was passed in Moscow that banned pride parades for the next 100 years in all of Russia. She said that this anti-gay sentiment has since spread widely, and that a recent poll even concluded that 63 percent of Ukrainians believed that homosexuality is a perversion or mental disease, while only nine percent supported rights for the LGBTQ population. This lack of support for LGBTQ rights is largely due to the fact that Western news is censored from the general population, so people only consume Russian media and propaganda, according to Horne.

Horne also spoke of the severe anti-gay sentiment in many parts of Africa, including Uganda, Malawi and many other countries. She said that people are persecuted for their sexuality and in some places the penalty for homosexuality can be as extreme as death.

She finished her talk by explaining that there are several websites to get involved with and ways to support those struggling for freedom of sexuality in other parts of the world. Specifically, she mentioned the International Network of LGBTQ Concerns, as well as several Russian LGBTQ support websites. She also said that a great way to help is to donate to support asylum seekers who have to flee their countries due to intolerance for their sexuality.

Three panels followed Horne's lecture. The first was titled "Reproducing Gendered Bodies," the second was called "Intersectionality and Intersexuality" and the third was "Solving the Injustice of Tradition." Each panel addressed a different aspect of LGBTQ life and theory. After these panels, there were themed breakout discussion sections, during which each group could engage in conversation about sexuality in a certain context. The groups discussed media and literature, religion and culture, policy and politics and queer theory.

"I hope that more people are inspired to get involved in or share research that they have done related to these topics," said Kluger in an interview with the Justice about the purpose of the conference.