Gay asylum seeker to be sent back to certain death

Could happen to a Christian asylum seeker, too. Or, why I am not a moral relativist and I do not believe all cultures are equal and none superior to another.

Bruce Bawer writes from Oslo:

For years, apparently, “Azad” has lived in Norway without causing any problems or being a burden on the state. But now an appellate court has ordered that he be deported to Iraq. If he goes back there, he says, “my clan will kill me.” Indeed, the court recognizes that if it becomes known in Iraq that “Azad” is gay, he risks “exclusion, isolation, and physical punishment.” (In fact, he risks much worse.) Nonetheless the court has ruled that “Azad,” in the words of NRK’s report, “must comply with his homeland’s sociocultural norms.”

Let me repeat that: he “must comply with his homeland’s sociocultural norms.”

Forget freedom. Forget Norway’s sociocultural norms. Forget the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In making a decision that for “Azad” may mean the difference between life and death, what matters to an appellate court in Norway – a Western European country, a member of NATO – is “his homeland’s sociocultural norms”…however brutal and primitive those “norms” may be. NRK notes that “Azad” is far from alone. In the past two years, Norway has turned down no fewer than forty of fifty-two gay asylum seekers. The records of many other Western countries are not much better.