One Utah

From Doug Ireland.

For the very first time, an official United Nations human rights report released last week has confirmed the “violent campaigns” against Iraqi gays and the “assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq.”

The details are, unsurprisingly, depressingly familiar.

UNAMI Human Rights Office “was also alerted to the existence of religious courts, supervised by clerics, where alleged homosexuals would be ‘tried,’ ’sentenced’ to death, and then executed.”

“The trials, presided over by young, inexperienced clerics, are held… in ordinary halls. Gays and rapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty,” the UNAMI report says, citing a report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, adding: “One of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. ‘Most [gays] have been killed and others have fled,’ he said. Indeed, the number who have sought asylum in the U.K. has risen noticeably over the last few months… [This judge] insists the religious courts have ‘a lot to be proud of. We now represent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thieves and terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds.’”

One man, 32 year old Hussein, reports:

“I’ve been living in a state of fear for the last year since Ayatollah Sistani issued that fatwa, in which he even encouraged families to kill their sons and brothers if they do not change their gay behavior,” he said. “My brother, who has been under pressure and threats from Sistani’s followers about me, has threatened to harm me himself, or even kill me, if I show any signs of gayness.”

Hussein had already lost his job in a photo lab because the shop owner did not want people to think that he was supporting a gay man.

“Now I’m very self-conscious about my look and the way I dress-I try to play it safe,” said Hussein, who is slightly effeminate. “Several times I was followed in the street and beaten just because I had a nice, cool haircut that looked feminine to them. Now I just shave my head.”

Indeed, even the way one dresses is enough to get a gay Iraqi killed.

“Just the fact of looking neat and clean, let alone looking elegant and well groomed, is very dangerous for a gay person,” Hussein said. “So now I don’t wear nice clothes, so that no one would even suspect that I’m gay. I now only leave home if I want to get food.”

. . . “Things were bad under Saddam for gays,” he said, “but not as bad as now. Then, no one feared for their lives. Now, you can be gotten rid of at any time.”

It’s not just Iraq and it’s not just whacked out Islamic theocracies like Iran. El Salvador is seeing an increase in violence against glbt persons, violence in which the police, as often as not, participate.

In this week’s incident in the nation’s capital of San Salvador, Hernandez said, “three detectives of the PNC [the national police] insulted and brutally beat up four transgendered youths. The detectives called for reinforcements, and just to arrest one of the young men it took 10 police cars and 18 policemen, who joined in beating the youth so badly he wound up in a local hospital-a typical example of the excessive force police use when targeting gay people.”

Even in relatively modern and liberal Turkey, the editor of a gay magazine faced jail time for violating a vague law against obscenity.

There are religious groups in the United States that call for the death penalty for gays and lesbians. These “Christain Reconstructionist” groups believe we should live under Levitical law.

The folks at NCCJ lead workshops in which participants begin to explore the various levels of prejudice - they have some memorable mnemonics. A fast car goes vavoom.

AFASHCAR - Ageism, Faithism, Ableism, Sexism, Heterosexism, Classism, Appearancism, and Racism.

VAVM - Verbal, Avoidance, Violence, and Murder.

The point of course is simple. The eight isms are the types of prejudice and vavm is the ways in which it is expressed. Verbal is just what it says - speaking the words of prejudice (gays and lesbians want to recruit our children). Avoidance means simply avoiding members of the targeted group - it can in some cases take extreme and damaging forms such as parents kicking their gay children out of the house (by some estimates nearly 1/3 of the homeless youth in Utah are queer). Violence and murder are self explanatory.

These expressions of prejudice build on one another. As we speak prejudice, we make it easier to enact prejudice. The core of systems of prejudice is the believe that other persons are less than the speaker. Sexism assumes that women are less than men - even the soft forms of sexism which claim we’re equal but have separate spheres and roles implies that women aren’t as capable as men of working in offices or doing certain jobs.

Heterosexism assumes were are all heterosexual, that queer people can change their orientations, and that we should all be heterosexual. Iraq seems to have experienced an explosion of heterosexism that has become homophobia. An Iraqi cleric actually issued a fatwa against homosexuals. The semi-official campaign of violence and murder against gays and lesbians in Iraq will continue and probably grow worse. Attacks on queer persons are just part of fundamentalism’s war on modernity.

In the end, Karen Armstrong’s statement that our fundamentalists have more in common with their fundamentalists than our fundamentalists have in common with our moderates resonates with me. Both sides have rejected science in favor of religious ideology and both sides are too willing to sacrifice the dignity, health and lives of queer folk in the name of sexual purity. Their fundamentalists and our fundamentalists are bit too alike for my personal peace of mind. Our home grown theocrats and AmTaliban just aren’t that different from the whack jobs running a variety of nations around the world.

This entry was posted Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Bigotry, Homophobia, Religious Fundamentalism, Taliban. Both comments and pings are currently closed.