News Dedicated to Muslims lesbian,gay,bisexual

[Rasputin]

Iranian gay men safe in Netherlands

The Dutch government Wednesday granted special asylum rights to Iranian gay men and lesbians, despite earlier comments by Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk that they would be safe in their home country as long as they were discreet, the Reuters news agency reported.

Verdonk, whose tough stance on immigration and asylum has been condemned by many on the left, based her decision on an unpublished report by Human Rights Watch, which refers to systematic abuse of gays in Iran, her ministry said in a statement.

She also extended a moratorium set to expire this month for Iranian Christian asylum seekers to remain in the Netherlands until May 2007.

"Homosexual Iranian asylum seekers can now find a safe haven in the Netherlands from the persecution and inhuman treatment they face in Iran," Frank van Dalen, chairman of gay rights group COC Nederland, told Reuters.

"A year ago, an Iranian asylum seeker with a death sentence hanging over his head was still sitting at Schiphol airport waiting to be deported," van Dalen said.

Verdonk raised the ire of gay groups in March when she moved to lift her reprieve on the deportations. When lawmakers in the ruling coalition joined the opposition Labor party in fighting Verdonk's plan, she backtracked until an "investigation" could be completed in the fall.

[abadani69]

woooow, dige chi kaar hast ke nemikonan

[Rasputin]

Homophobic tabloid walks free

In September, GAY.com reported The Sun’s appalling approach to journalism when they covered a story on the gay World Cup. Titled ‘Three Lions on my Shirtlifter’ the witless feature was a thin excuse for a host of homophobic jokes.

The newspaper printed a ‘fantasy team’ of players with ‘comedy’ names based on real players world-wide. The offensive gems included; Ivan Campo, Arsenio Love, Mince Hilaire, Peter Shirtlift and Dong-Jin Kim.

GAY.com printed the journalist’s e-mail address and encouraged readers to share their thoughts with the man responsible for the article. Gossip website Holy Moly re-printed the story and it was read by nearly 20,000.

It seems that GAY.com weren’t the only ones enraged by the article, Northampton Borough Council member Councillor Peter Evans (Labour, Castle) complained to The Sun and contacted Northamptonshire Police about the article.

Evans said: "The headline was an absolute outrage. It used a derogatory term which could quite easily encourage people to be homophobic."

"A lot of people have read this thing. It's gone right around the gay community and people have said it's outrageous."

Evans reported The Sun to Northamptonshire Police, accusing the paper of a hate crime.

After being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), The Sun was informed it did not break any decency guidelines.

Understandably, Councillor Evans was shocked and disappointed by the findings and plans to take his case to Government ministers, reports Northampton News.

He said "They've said that because nobody was mentioned by name in the article, there was no breach of any code.

"But people I've spoken to still say it was offensive and I don't think they could have got away with saying anything like this about any other minority group.

"I'm now going to take this to the Government and tell them this is a toothless complaints system."

It’s difficult not to agree with Evans, especially when one considers The Sun wouldn’t dare publish similar jokes about another minority. If the Muslim community were pilloried in such a fashion, the Muslim Council of Britain would be up in arms and Downing Street would be dragged into the row.

If this article didn’t break official guidelines, perhaps those guidelines need revision. This ruling merely gives a green light to homophobia in the tabloid press, a situation which is further fuelled by the complacency and acquiescence of the gay community.

Mr G Patrick, author of the offending article is no doubt celebrating his minor victory, safe in the knowledge he can peddle his ignorant views with no consequences.

Meanwhile, there are children suffering homophobic bullying across the country’s playgrounds, their misery intensified by abusive terms sourced from The Sun.

[Rasputin]

همجنسگرا : مجرم، بيمار، منحرف يا ...؟

مدتها درصدد گفتگو با يك همجنسگراي ايراني بودم. اين فرصت پيش نمي آمد. اكثر همجنسگرايان ايراني، به دليل فشارهاي سياسي و اجتماعي حاكم بر ايران و احساس خطر، حاضر به بيان گرايش جنسي خود و انجام مصاحبه با يك ايراني نيستند. تا اينكه ا.ابراهیم حاضر شد در يك گفتگوي دوستانه، از خودش، گرايش جنسي و مشكلاتش در ايران بگويد. او به دليل مشكلات شخصي به يكي از كشورهاي اروپايي پناهنده شده ست. با هم مي خوانيم :

شما يك همجنسگراي ايراني هستيد،* اين يعني چه؟

ببينيد، سوال شما از دو بخش تشكيل شده، همجنسگرا يك نوع گرايش جنسي و ايراني يك مليت است . فرد همجنسگرا شخصي است كه از لحاظ روحي، جنسي و جسمي، تمايل به همجنس خود دارد، خواه مي تواند مرد يا زن باشد. همجنسگراي ايراني يعني فردي با داشتن اين مشخصات در جامعه ايران .

چطور شد كه همجنسگرا شدي؟

من همجسنگرا نشدم. همجنسگرا بودم. سوالتان را با يك سوال ديگر جواب مي دهم. چطور شد كه شما، غير همجنسگرا شديد؟ لطفا جواب بدهيد..

مسئله كمي متفاوت هست. بيشتر مردم دنيا، لااقل آنطوري كه ديده مي شود ،*مثل من هتروسكشوال (دگرجنسگرا) هستند، يا دست كم اينطور ادعا مي كنند. وقتي من از شما اين را مي پرسم، منظورم اين هست كه چرا با ديگران و اكثريت جامعه، تفاوت داري؟

اين من نيستم كه با ديگران تفاوت دارم. جامعه با من متفاوت برخورد مي كند. همانطوري كه در جامعه، افراد بلند قد و كوتاه قد، چاق و لاغر وجود دارند، در همين جامعه افرادي با گرايشهاي جنسي متفاوت هم مي توانند وجود داشته باشند. يك فرد مي تواند به جنس مخالف خود علاقه داشته باشد يا به همجنس خود

اما خيلي ها ، اين تفاوت را به رسميت نمي شناسند، يعني اين مثال شما را صحيح نمي دانند. همجنس گرايي به عقيده خيلي ها ، يك انحراف است. يك اشتباه، يا يك بيماري است...

اگر از نگاه علمي به قضيه بنگريم و بخواهيم جواب علمي براي اين موضوع پيدا كنيم، مي توان با مراجعه به مقالات علمي و پزشكي* پيشرفته ترين كشورهاي دنيا، مثل آمريكا، كانادا، استراليا، ژاپن و قاره اروپا پاسخ سوالمان را بيابيم. حتي در بسياري از كشورهاي آسياي جنوب شرقي كه پيشرفت علمي آنچناني هم ندارند ، اين گرايش بدور از هرگونه تعصب و پيش داوري و عامي گرايي، يك موضوع صد در صد طبيعي و خواست جنسي قشري از افراد جامعه بنام همجنس گرا شناخته شده است. بسياري از كشورها از جمله آمريكا، آلمان، هلند كليه قوانين اجتماعي و حقوقي از جمله قوانين مربوط به ازدواج و فوت همسر، ارث و پذيرفتن فرزند را براي همجنسگرايان نيز برسميت مي شناسند.

يعني تحقيقات علمي، اين را ثابت كرده كه همجنسگرايي انحراف نيست؟ بيماري نيست؟

تحقيقات به سادگي روشن مي كنند كه نه تنها بيماري نيست، كه در بسياري از موارد به علت وجود اسم انحراف بر روي اين گرايش، اين خواست منحرف شده و مشكلات جدي به بار آورده است.

ممكن هست در همين موارد مثالهايي از ايران بزنيد؟

به عنوان مثال، پسري را مي شناختم كه از نظر گرايش جنسي، همجنسگرا بود ولي بدليل وجود تابوي همجنسگرايي در ايران و نداشتن اطلاعات صحيح از جمله سوالاتي مثل : "من چه كسي هستم؟ و چه مي خواهم؟" خانواده اش او را وادار به ازدواج با زني مي كنند و عروس بخت برگشته به لحاظ عدم برخورداري از لذات جنسي، درخواست طلاق از دادگاه مي نمايد و مرد از ترس كشف رازش، دست به خودكشي مي زند.. حال با نگاه به اين مثال، چند نكته آشكار مي شود :
يك- سركوب غريزه جنسي مرد همجنسگرا و همسرش ( نه اين مرد از لحاظ جنسي ارضا مي شد، نه آن زن)
دو- پديده طلاق
سه- از دست رفتن يك انسان بيگناه
چهار- تشكيل يك پرونده جنايي

شما از نداشتن اطلاعات صحيح گفتيد و پاسخ به سوالات "من چه كسي هستم و چه مي خواهم"، اين يعني چه؟!

بسياري از همجنسگرايان ايراني كه من مي شناسم، بدليل نداشتن اطلاعات كافي در مورد ذائقه جنسيشان دچار يك سردرگمي مي شوند. نمي دانند كه هستند؟ حتي در مواردي كه نمي شود به راحتي از آن گذشت، ديده شده است كه فرد همجنسگرا تغيير جنسيت داده و تبديل به زن يا مرد شدن را، راه حل مناسبي براي مشكل لاينحل خود مي داند. به نوعي مي شود گفت كه پس از ساعتها تفكر،* به ناگهان پاك كن را برداشته صورت مسئله را پاك مي كند. مخصوصا بخاطر بافت سنتي و مذهبي بسياري از كشورهاي جهان سوم از جمله ايران (كه همه چيز بايد در چهارچوب شرع و عرف و مذهب و قوانين اسلامي بگنجد) علم سكسولوژي دستكاري شده و به جامعه گفته مي شود كه رابطه جنسي فقط در چهارچوب شخص فاعل و مفعول مي گنجد. به اين معنا كه علم من در آوردي روانشناسي اسلامي به بازار مي آيد و متخصصيني را به زير پوست اين جوامع تزريق مي كند كه مي خواهند همه چيز را در چهارچوب مذهب و سنت بگنجانند. از جمله علم سكسولوژي را. اگر بخواهيم كمي عاميانه تر صحبت كنيم، بايد بگوييم كه از نظر اين به اصطلاح پزشكان و نظريه پردازان، انسانها از لحاظ جنسي فقط و فقط به دو دسته مرد و زن و رابطه متقابل بين اين دو تقسيم خواهند شد. همان فاعل و مفعول . پس موجود بيچاره همجنسگرا از ديد جامعه وجود خارجي نخواهد داشت يا يك وصله ناجور است. البته از آنجايي كه همه قوانين سنتي و مذهبي تبصره هم دارند، روانشناسي اسلامي هم از اين قانون مستثني نيست و كلاه شرعي مخصوص به خود را دارد. نام اين كلاه شرعي، تغيير جنسيت است .

چرا تغيير جنسيت را كلاه شرعي مي دانيد؟

ببينيد، به عنوان مثال، علي يك مرد همجنسگراي ايراني است. مي خواهد با همان رفتارهاي به اصطلاح اوا خواهرانه يا زنانه، به زندگي عادي خود ادامه دهد. (با توجه به اينكه از لحاظ جنسي، به مردها گرايش دارد.) علم سكسولوژي در جوامع مدرن، لزومي نمي بيند كه علي را وارد پروسه تغيير جنسيت كند. سليقه جنسي علي، در علم سكسولوژي به رسميت شناخته شده و نيازي به مرمت و بهسازي ندارد. اما در يك جامعه سنتي و مذهبي مثل ايران، علي يك شخص ناقص است. او همجنسگراست و همجنسگرا در روابط مردان و زنان مذهبي و سنتي جايي ندارد. پس مردسالاري حاكم بر اين جوامع، علي را نه تنها يك انسان ناقص مي بيند بلكه او را يك متجاوز قلمداد مي كند كه جوانمردي ، مردانگي، مردسالاري و در نهايت سمبلهاي مرد ايراني را زير سوال مي برد. بنابراين علي نمي تواند يك مرد باشد. او را بايد زير تيغ جراحي به يك زن تبديل كرد، به يك باصطلاح خودشان ضعيفه ،* يك مفعول منفعل از ديد يك جامعه مردسالار...


در ايران، به شما به عنوان يك همجنسگرا چگونه نگاه مي شد؟

نمي شود به اين سوال پاسخ قطعي و كلي داد. ديدگاههاي مختلفي در اين زمينه وجود دارد:
دسته اي از افراد معتقدند يك همجنسگرا نه تنها جامعه را به انحراف و ابتذال مي كشاند، بلكه خشم خداوند را متوجه اين جامعه خواهد كرد. اين گروه با توسل به احاديث و كتب آسماني و تفسيرهاي مربوط به آنها، نه تنها فرد همجنسگرا را يك مجرم تلقي مي كنند بلكه وي را مستحق مجازات مرگ به طرق مختلف مي دانند. ( رجوع شود به قانون مجازات اسلامي و توصيه هاي مراجع تقليد مثل آيت الله موسوي اردبيلي و محمدي گيلاني)

دسته اي ديگر، با ملايمت بيشتري برخورد كرده و همجنسگرايي را يك بيماري مي دانند كه بايد در جامعه ريشه كن شود تا نتواند افراد ديگر را مبتلا كند. ديد و رفتار اين گروه در مقابل همجنسگرايان شبيه به برخورد در مقابل يك بيمار مبتلا به جذام يا طاعون است. اين دسته معتقدند همجنسگرا بايد تحت نظر و مراقبت پزشكان مخصوص قرار بگيرد تا نه تنها گرايش خود را به دست فراموشي بسپارد، بلكه ديگر انسانهاي همجنسگرا را به داخل اين نظريه بكشاند : " تو بيمار هستي و بايد درمان شوي! " عده اي هم حكم به تغيير جنسيت فرد همجنسگرا داده و او را يك موجود ناقص الخلقه، بين زن و مرد مي دانند.

عده انگشت شماري هم، اين گرايش را يك بيماري ندانسته بلكه پارا فراتر از اين گذاشته معتقدند انسانها با داشتن گرايشهاي جنسي متفاوت بايد آزادي زندگي مسالمت آميز در جامعه داشته باشند.

دوست دارم كه مثالهاي ملموس تري از برخورد مردم ايران با همجنسگرايان در خانواده، كوچه و خيابان بشنوم...

در بسياري از موارد خانواده ها فقط به رفتار خارجي يك فرد همجنسگرا نگاه كرده و هيچ در صدد يافتن خواستها و مطالبات وي نيستند. مثلا به يك پسر همجنسگرا مي گويند :چرا اين لباس را مي پوشي؟ چرا نوع آرايش موهايت با فلان عموزاده يا خاله زاده ات فرق مي كند؟ حتي در مواردي كه در ايران كم هم نيست، لغات كاربردي براي همجنسگرايان بسيار شديدالحن و زشت است. مثل : اوا خواهر، كوني و لغات زشت از اين دسته... لازم به تذكر مي دانم كه ممكن فردي همجنسگرا باشد ولي ظاهرش نشان دهنده گرايش جنسيش نباشد. در اين موارد مشكل چند برابر مي شود. فشارهاي خانواده و اجتماع بر اين دسته، مضاعف است. براي مثال، ازدواجهاي اجباري و متعاقب آن طلاق و زندگي هاي نافرجامي پيش مي آيد كه نمونه اي ذكر شد...

در پايان دوست دارم بپرسم، آيا شما روزي را مي بينيد كه در ايران با توجه به مفاد اعلاميه جهاني حقوق بشر، همجنسگرايان و گرايش آنها يك بيماري يا انحراف تلقي نشود و از طرف هيچ مرجع حكومتي، قضايي، نظامي،* سياسي و نيز اعضاي اجتماع مورد خشونت و فشار قرار نگيرند؟

اين بستگي به اين دارد كه چقدر به جامعه اطلاعات صحيح داده شود، چه اندازه مراجع علمي در درسترس عموم قرار گيرد. امروزه با وجود اينترنت دسترسي به داده هاي علمي در اين مورد آسانتر شده و سانسورهاي حكومتي كاربردش را رفته رفته از دست مي دهد. ممكن هست تعداد زيادي از ايرانيها، همين گفتگوي ما را بخوانند و شايد براي اولين بار، يك همجسنگرا فرصت مي يابد تا با هموطنانش به گفتگو بنشيند. در صورتيكه در گذشته اين امكان وجود نداشت. تا مادامي كه مسائل جنسي در جامعه ايران، تابو است نمي توان انتظار داشت گرايش همجنسگرايي به عنوان يك گرايش اقليت، به رسميت شناخته شود.

[Rasputin]

Iran: Man Hanged for 'Sodomy'

The official Iranian news agency IRNA has reported that a man has been hanged in public in the city of Kermanshah on multiple criminal charges, including "sodomy" ("lavat" in Persian).

According to a translation of the IRNA dispatch made for the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO) by Hossein Alizedeh of the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission, "Shahab Darvishi, a delinquent person, was executed in the Azadi Square of Kermanshah on Tuesday evening. According to the communications department of the Justice Department of the Kermanshah Province, the above-mentioned was found guilty [by the court of law] of forming a coterie of corruption rings, physical assaults, and the despicable act of sodomy."

A report by the Web site Iran Focus, an exile Iranian enterprise not considered 100 percent reliable by many Iranian experts and human rights groups, claimed that a "gay man" was executed, but this reporter has been unable to independently confirm that information from my own Iranian sources. At press time, Jessica Stern of the LGBT desk at Human Rights Watch told Gay City News that HRW had not been able to confirm from its own sources that the executed man was homosexual.


Arsham Parsi, secretary-general of the PGLO-who has been headquartered in Toronto since granted political asylum by Canada as a sexual refugee-received an e-mail from an underground PGLO activist in Kermanshah whose nick-name is "Raha" (his real name cannot be used for security reasons) who said he had attended the execution. Raha reported that people he spoke to in the crowd appeared to be pleased that the man was being punished because he was a known criminal.

Raha said it was his understanding, after talking to police at the public hanging, that Darvishi, the hanged man, had participated in an assault and rape on a heterosexual couple. But no independent information with details of the hanged man's alleged crimes has as yet become available from non-police or non-governmental sources.

A rough translation of the e-mail from Raha says: "I'd like to give you some information on the execution of this person, and I should tell you that I was present during the last execution. As the security officials mentioned, this man was accused of numerous crimes, including lavat [sodomy]. His story is as follows: He was the leader of a gang that included three others. With his gang he kidnapped a recently married couple (man and woman) from Kermanshah, and after sexually assaulting both of them they killed them. His other crimes included kidnapping, killing someone while in prison, and forming a corrupt gang. These are things that I myself have heard. At the same time, many people were happy with his sentence, and said that he shouldn't have been executed so soon, but rather, should have been turned over to the hands of the people so they could kill him. As a homosexual and a resident of Kermanshah I am telling you these things honestly, and hope that it will be helpful for you."

Reporting on events inside Iran, where the media and the press are tightly controlled and censored by the government, is always difficult-and this is even more true in any case involving homosexuality.

The Iranian government has been waging a vicious campaign against Iranian gays and lesbians, including entrapment via the Internet, raids on private gatherings in the homes of gay people, abductions of gay people, imprisonment, and the widespread use of torture and violence, both by the police and by the basiji, a para-police force that enforces religious moral strictures, does the Tehran regime's strong-arm work, and is under the control of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.

Iranian gays who are arrested are routinely tortured or blackmailed into giving the names of everyone they know who engages in homosexual sex, and those named are then in turn arrested.

The Interior Ministry maintains a computerized list of homosexuals, and those on the list are prevented from leaving the country because the government does not want them telling the story of the sometimes-lethal anti-gay campaign of oppression taking place inside Iran. Still, a steady stream of gay and lesbian refugees has managed to flee the country, and a number of them have related their tragic experiences at the hands of the homophobic authorities, including the torture they experienced, in the pages of this newspaper.

In the past, the Iranian government has used trumped-up criminal charges to execute gay people, and through the use of torture extracted "confessions" from gays to crimes they never committed.

It is not clear why the Iranian government chose to make public the charge of "sodomy" against Darvishi, or why the alleged murder by Darvishi of which police informed Raha was not mentioned in the Iranian Ministry of Justice's announcement.

Since the worldwide protests over the hanging of two gay teenagers in the city of Mashad on July 19, 2005, the Iranian government has refrained from announcing executions for homosexual acts, which are a capital crime under Iranian law. On the first anniversary of the hanging of the two boys in Mashad this past July, vigils and demonstrations were held in 29 cities around the world, from Mexico City and Moscow to London and Warsaw, including in eight American cities.

Underground gay activists in Iran, including the editors of the clandestine Persian-language gay 'zine MAHA, have told this reporter that executions of homosexuals have taken place in secret since the hangings of the two lads in Mashad. Why, then, announce this one-and leave out the alleged murder?

In conversations this reporter had with PGLO activists, human rights group staffers, and Iranian scholars, speculation was rife as to the possible motive of the government in making public the "sodomy" charge against Darvishi. "It could have been to excite public approval of the execution and draw a large crowd, since homosexuality is detested by very religious Iranians," Parsi told Gay City News. Others speculated that the "sodomy" charge might have been tacked on to the other criminal charges in the hopes of dividing public opinion in the West, or that the government hoped to draw protests by the international LGBT community that could then be discredited inside Iran because of Darvishi's alleged criminal record, to the detriment of the cause of oppressed gay Iranians.

The hanging of Darvishi was the 117th execution carried out by the Iranian government this year, according to a count established by Agence-France Presse based on government statements, media reports, and eyewitness accounts.

This reporter has been covering the Iranian government's anti-gay campaign for nearly a year and a half in dozens of articles, and my conclusion is that extreme caution must be exercised before jumping to conclusions about the public hanging of Darvishi-although that execution is certainly to be deplored by all of us who oppose capital punishment, and who find public executions staged as entertainments shocking and barbaric. But, in the absence of hard, independent information, it is certainly premature to conclude that-unlike the hanging of the two gay teens in Mashad-Darvishi was hanged only because he was a "gay man."
This case is too murky at this point to reach any definitive conclusions-except to condemn Iran's continuing widespread use of capital punishment. This reporter will continue to try to confirm more independent information from Iran on the troubling case of Darvishi.

[BehnazNaNaz]

yani dar iran har ki gay hast baiad bemire?yani eslam ino gonah midoone>?

[Rasputin]

Hanging caught on video reveals Iran's crackdown on dissidents

With a smile the young man emerges from a car and swaggers towards the camera, but his balance is off kilter because his hands are tied behind his back and he slips a bit on the grass.
He recovers and bends his gangly body with a laugh, looking for all the world like a teenager making a home video with friends. Another young man follows him, walking stiffly. Someone in a thin grey suit kisses both men on both cheeks and strolls off-camera.

Dozens of people are milling about. A crowd can be seen held back by barriers, but even the guards look relaxed, standing well back from the two with their hands bound. Two rusty cranes on flatbed trucks are parked on the grass, the ropes hanging from each are rough, tangled with knots and the noose at the end looks amateurish - like a random piece of rope washed up on a beach.
Almost casually someone puts the rope round the awkward youth's neck first, then the second, steps back and the cranes pull up the ropes. The second man's body is still, and the camera stays on the taller one until he stops moving, about six minutes.

The film shows the public hanging of Alireza Gorji, 23, and his friend Hossein Makesh, 22, in July in Broudjerd, Iran. According to official versions of the charges, they were put to death because they had behaved 'immorally'. The truth, according to anti-government campaigners, is that the two men were among increasing numbers of political activists being executed by Iran on trumped-up charges.

'Both these men had been involved in anti-government protests in their home town and everyone who watch the hanging knew this,' said a human rights observer in Tehran.

On Tuesday the UN General Assembly condemned Iran for human rights abuses and the video - filmed by a Revolutionary Guard, smuggled out by opposition activists and seen by The Observer - is rare evidence of Iran's efforts to quell dissent. Amnesty International last year documented at least 94 public executions although many more are suspected to take place in secret - in September the authorities told a lawyer for Valliollah Feyz-Mahdavi, 28, that he had died after a suicide attempt in prison. Feyz-Mahdavi had been arrested for membership of Iran's main opposition - the People's Mojahedin Organistation of Iran.

Tehran has now been condemned on more than 50 occasions by the UN for severe human rights violations.

The Broudjerd video has been obtained by an exiled opposition group - the National Council of Resistance of Iran. At the House of Commons on Tuesday, it will be shown to cross-party MPs to encourage the British government to reconsider what the National Council regards as a policy of appeasing the Iranian regime. The group will unveil documents on the execution of more than 20,000 political victims, including evidence for the involvement of President Mohammad Ahmadinejad.

[Rasputin]

Reports claim Iranian gay was hanged

A Web site called Iran Focus reported Nov. 14 that "a gay Iranian man was hanged in public on Tuesday in the western city of Kermanshah on the charge of sodomy."

The report said "Shahab Darvishi was charged with organising a 'corruption ring,' deliberate assault and 'lavat,' which means homosexual relationship between two men or sodomy."

The report credited "the official news agency IRNA" as a source for the story.

The Islamic Republic News Agency's version of the story said the Kermanshah Province Justice Department Communications Department said Darvishi was "found guilty of forming a coterie of corruption rings, physical assaults and the despicable act of sodomy."

IRNA said the death sentence was issued by the Second Court of the town of Sahneh, and upheld by the Second Appeal Court of Kermanshah and the 27th Branch of the Supreme Court.

"Hundreds of Kermanshah's residents were present at the scene of the execution," IRNA said. "They were supportive of the judicial system's decision and called for adopting a tough stance against criminals and disturbing elements."

Iran's version of Islamic law does punish gay sex with execution, and many human-rights activists say, with varying degrees of certainty, that the nation has executed numerous men for the crime since the 1979 religious revolution.

But it is notoriously difficult to fact-check news that emanates from the nation, and skepticism of any one report is always warranted, as Iran does not have a free press.

On Nov. 15, Human Rights Watch's Jessica Stern sent an e-mail to this publication which said, in part: "We are concerned with the charges in the case and by the case's lack of information. One or two sources should be considered inconclusive, especially in reporting on a case of this kind. ... We strongly urge caution until more information is known."

In the same vein, the secretary general of the Iranian Queer Organization, formerly called the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization, commented: "Similar to the Mashad incident last year, it may be extremely difficult to firmly establish why this man was hanged, or whether the charges were fabricated. Whatever the truth is, the Iranian government must be stopped from killing people for sex-related crimes."

On July 19, 2005, two teenage boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were publicly hanged in Mashad, and graphic photos of the executions circulated on the Web. Some Iranian and foreign media said the teens' crime was being gay lovers. Other Iranian and foreign media said they had raped a boy. International human rights groups say they have been unable to determine which version of the story is true.

Nonetheless, "the death penalty is on the books for gay sex [and] it'sat least sporadically enforced," said Scott Long, HRW's LGBT program head, in a Nov. 16 interview.

[Rasputin]

The Rise and Fall of Arab Gays

The New York Times was all sorts of gay this weekend. In addition to the aforementioned article on straights foregoing marriage in the name of queer support, the newspaper's Sunday magazine ran an article on the rise of homophobia in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Some people believe that homophobia's an ancient practice. Of course, considering the notion of homosexuality didn't exist until the butt end of the 19th century, that's just plain wrong. Still, it's tempting to project an American experience on a Middle Eastern country.

According to Negar Azimi, however, the threat to Arab gays reached new heights over the past five years:

[S]exuality in general and homosexuality in particular are increasingly becoming concerns of the modern Arab state. Politicians, the police, government officials and much of the press are making homosexuality an “issue”: a way to display nationalist bona fides in the face of an encroaching Western sensibility; to reject a creeping globalization that brings with it what is perceived as the worst of the international market culture; to flash religious credentials and placate growing Islamist power.

Homosexuality, then, becomes a mere scapegoat in the fight against Westernization, rather than a true moral issue. Read all about it, after the jump.

December 3, 2006
Prisoners of Sex
By NEGAR AZIMI

Mostafa Bakry has a knack for reinventing himself. He is an old-school Arab nationalist, newspaper editor and parliamentarian, and has managed to keep himself in the middle of the Egyptian political scene for almost two decades. He rails against decadence, against corruption — anything that can get the otherwise sleepy Egyptian public excited. This past July, he took on the issue of homosexuality, introducing a motion in Parliament calling for censorship of several scenes in a popular new film, “The Yacoubian Building,” and denouncing the racier parts of the movie as “spreading obscenity and debauchery.” One of the central characters in the story — a mosaic of downtown Cairo life complete with political intrigue, love triangles, the specter of extremism and more — is an affluent, dashing, Francophone newspaper editor who happens to be gay. He has an affair with a simple soldier from the countryside, and thus begins a tale of lust that ends in murder.

“It is a travesty,” Bakry told me not long ago when we met in the downtown Cairo office of his newspaper, Al Osboa (“The Week”). Shelves around his desk were stuffed with plaques, honorary degrees and dozens of gilt replicas of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. He fingered fancy prayer beads as he expounded in the way one would to an adoring crowd. “The American agenda is promoting the rights of homosexuals,” he said in Arabic. “I am not against freedom of expression, but this abnormal phenomenon should not be presented as natural. Even if it has roots here, it is rejected by society. And by Islam.”

In the end, 112 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum signed onto Bakry’s motion. The gesture, however, had little effect. By the beginning of September, the film was still doing well at the box office, and no censorship was in sight. But it didn’t matter. The parliamentarian had made his point; he had raised the flag of morality, religion and public virtue.

The politics of homosexuality is changing fast in the Arab world. For many years, corners of the region have been known for their rich gay subcultures — even serving as secure havens for Westerners who faced prejudice in their own countries. In some visions, this is a part of the world in which men could act out their homosexual fantasies. These countries hardly had gay-liberation moments, much less movements. Rather, homosexuality tended to be an unremarkable aspect of daily life, articulated in different ways in each country, city and village in the region.

But sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular are increasingly becoming concerns of the modern Arab state. Politicians, the police, government officials and much of the press are making homosexuality an “issue”: a way to display nationalist bona fides in the face of an encroaching Western sensibility; to reject a creeping globalization that brings with it what is perceived as the worst of the international market culture; to flash religious credentials and placate growing Islamist power. In recent years, there have been arrests, crackdowns and episodes of torture. In Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, as in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates — even in famously open and cosmopolitan Lebanon — the policing of homosexuality has become part of what sometimes seems like a general moral panic.

[Rasputin]

Egypt’s most famous crackdown got under way at a neon floating disco, the Queen Boat, docked on the wealthy Nile-side island of Zamalek, just steps from the famously gay-friendly Marriott Hotel. In the early-morning hours of May 11, 2001, baton-wielding police officers descended upon the boat, where men were dancing and drinking. Security officials rounded up more than 50 of them — doctors, teachers, mechanics. Those who were kept in custody became known among Egyptians as the Queen Boat 52. The detained men were beaten, bound, tortured; some were even subjected to exams to determine whether they had engaged in anal sex. In the weeks that followed, official, opposition and independent newspapers printed the names, addresses and places of work of the detained. Front pages carried the men’s photographs, not always with black bars across their eyes. The press accused the men of sexual excesses, dressing as women, devil worship, even dubious links to Israel. Bakry’s newspaper, Al Osboa, helped lead the charge.

The Queen Boat was just the beginning. Agents of the Department for Protection of Morality, a sort of vice squad within the Ministry of Interior’s national police force, began monitoring suspected gay gathering spots, recruiting informants, luring people into arrest via chat sites on the Internet, tapping phones, raiding homes. Today, arrests and roundups occur throughout the country, from the Nile Delta towns of Damanhour and Tanta to Port Said along the Suez Canal and into Cairo.

The city’s central Tahrir Square is a vast plaza with awkward pedestrian islands separated by traffic, lined with a Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Arab League headquarters and the Egyptian government’s hulking bureaucratic headquarters, the Mugamma. On summer evenings, it is full of people. Men whistle at passing women, couples linger, tourists are accosted by the oddly seductive call of “You look like an Egyptian” and hawkers promote their wares — not the least of which is sex. In early July of this year, 11 men, said to be conspicuously homosexual, were picked up.

Many of the police reports on arrests of homosexuals have cited “the protection of the society’s values” as a motivating factor, adding that the arrested threatened to harm “the country’s reputation on the international level.” The country’s image is of the utmost importance for the officials responsible for these campaigns. Still, homosexual acts are not against the law in Egypt; most men caught in these roundups are charged with fujur, or the “habitual practice of debauchery.” Some countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, expressly criminalize homosexual acts. But in Egypt, the charges have increasingly involved a creative interpretation of a law introduced in 1951 to combat prostitution — drafted as a response to what was viewed as a remnant of Egypt’s colonial past. (The British introduced the licensing of brothels.)

The Queen Boat affair roughly coincided with a number of circuslike controversies in Cairo surrounding public morality: the outrage following the publication of the Syrian author Haider Haider’s novel “Banquet for Seaweed” (which incited riots at Al Azhar University in Cairo, as the book, about two Iraqi exiles in the 1970s, was interpreted as offensive to Islam); the trial of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American university professor and human rights activist accused of embezzlement, illegally accepting foreign funds and sullying Egypt’s image abroad; and the trial in 2002 of a prominent businessman who had taken 19 wives. Meanwhile the Muslim Brotherhood, which often positions itself in opposition to what it describes as a decadent, secular regime, won 17 seats in Parliament in 2000.

Public regulation of morality is an area in which the secular regime — often through its mouthpiece religious institution, Al Azhar — is in harmony with the Islamists. Al Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest authority, was brought under direct state control by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1961. Through Al Azhar, the secular regime throws the occasional bone to the religious opposition — most often on issues of women and the family. Sometimes, avowedly secular officials and politicians even try to outdo the Islamists in this tug of war over who can win the public’s favor as the guardian of morality.

Tanta is a drab industrial town on the Nile, halfway between Cairo and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. With a population of about 350,000, Tanta has a university and a plethora of cotton-gin and oil factories. It is probably best known for its moulid, a gathering celebrating Al-Sayyed Ahmed Al-Badawi, a 13th-century holy man of Moroccan origin credited with being the founder of the Badawiyyah Sufi order. Al Badawi died in Tanta in 1276, and each year in October, just at the end of the cotton harvest, some two million Egyptians descend upon Tanta and Al Badawi’s shrine for a week of recitations, performances, dancing and devotion.

The rest of the year Tanta is remarkably quiet. One afternoon in August, I met a young man named Hassan at a baroque, upscale hotel steps away from the shrine. Though it is difficult to speak of a gay community in Tanta (not all men who sleep with men in Egypt use the term “gay,” much less identify themselves as such), Hassan is a ringleader of sorts, a thread between generations. A youthful 37, he comes from a working-class family — his father runs an auto-parts shop — and he told me, mischievously, that he got out of military service because he is the only son among girls. For Hassan and many gay men in Tanta, the last few years have been especially hard. “First, there was Shibl’s death, then the affair of Ahmed, then Adel’s death and the arrests,” he explained.

[Rasputin]

Shibl was a friend of Hassan’s, caught with another man in the baths of the shrine — a gathering ground for many gay men at the time. In 2002 he was beaten so badly in detention that he died of cardiac arrest. Ahmed, another friend, was arrested from his home later that year, accused of having sex with two other men in his flat and “forming a group of Satan worshipers.” In prison, he was forced to strip down to his underwear, then was humiliated and beaten to the point of hemorrhaging. After his release, he lost his job as a schoolteacher. One local paper wrote, “A male teacher puts aside all principles and follows his perverted instincts, putting on women’s clothes and makeup on his face to seduce men who seek forbidden pleasures.”

Adel, a third friend of Hassan’s, was killed by an occasional lover. The ensuing investigation, not far removed from a witch hunt, resulted in many suspected homosexuals in Tanta being arrested, including Hassan. He and others arrested told me that they were held in a police interrogation room called “the refrigerator,” marked by a carpet brought in by the police that was caked in Adel’s blood. Detainees were tortured nightly for more than two weeks, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., according to the same sources. Hassan estimates that at least 100 men were detained and tortured. Some men were forced to stand on their tiptoes for those hours; others got electric shocks to the penis and tongue; still others were beaten on the soles of their feet with a rod called a felaqa, to the point of losing consciousness.

Most men were held until they broke, agreeing to work as informants, walking the street to pick up other homosexuals and reporting in each night. “They told us Adel deserved to die,” Hassan told me. “They said they wished all gays would die.” This went on for at least a month, Hassan and others say, in a pattern of detention, torture, informing, more torture.

On my second visit to Tanta, in August, I sat down for a lunch of kapsa, a sweet Saudi rice specialty, with Hassan and Mo, a slight student of English literature at Tanta University. The discussion turned to Islam and homosexuality. Both of them considered themselves practicing Muslims. Mo has combed the Internet for signs as to whether homosexuality is at odds with Islam. He said he had browsed the popular Egyptian lay preacher Ahmed Khaled’s Web site and found nothing. But he did see that Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi had called homosexuals “perverts.” Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric generally considered a liberal, is best known for his television program “Shariah and Life” on the satellite channel Al Jazeera, and for his Web site, Islamonline.

“There is nothing clear about homosexuality in the Koran,” Hassan said. “It reads that the man who does it should be hurt. What does it mean ‘to be hurt’? In the Arabian peninsula they used a stick the size of this pencil (he raises my pencil) to punish men. It’s not like thievery or adultery. And anyway the Prophet was promised boys in heaven. Not girls.”

“I read that one should have their head cut off or be thrown from a mountain,” Mo continued.

Hassan disagreed: “There is no explicit punishment for gays in the Koran.”

Mo countered, “The problem is not the punishment, it is the scandal.”

Hassan, looking triumphant, told us that Pope Shenouda III, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, had also spoken out against homosexuality. (Most famously, in 1990, he asked, “What rights are there for homosexuals?”) “It’s more complicated than you think,” Hassan said to Mo.

Countless interpretations of the story of the prophet Lot — the source of much of the commentary on homosexuality in Islam, as well as in Judaism and Christianity — have been offered. Ambiguities abound, and while there is no consensus on where Islam stands, popular and legalistic reinterpretations take liberties in selecting the bits that suit particular worldviews — whether they are liberal or intolerant. In October of last year, the Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa against homosexuals on the Arabic-language version of his Web site. It was inexplicably removed last May (some say international outrage swayed the image-conscious cleric). And while Al-Qaradawi did call homosexuals sexual perverts, he also noted “there is disagreement” over punishment.

Perched on a hill at the end of a windy road in Helwan, an industrial town south of Cairo and once the summer romping ground for the city’s well-to-do, is the Behman Hospital. With its pruned bushes and tennis courts, Behman looks more like a country club than a psychiatric institute. Dr. Nasser Loza is the medical director there; he is also an adviser to the Ministry of Health and runs a clinic in the upscale neighborhood of Mohandiseen. I had heard through friends that Loza counsels homosexual couples, so I went looking for him.

“They come in with quite banal relationship problems,” Loza told me when we met one afternoon at the hospital. “They manage to have very normal, quiet lives despite society’s negative views about being gay.” He added that on average he sees about one new couple every two or three months. “I suppose most are high-level professionals, some are of mixed cultural backgrounds.” Loza’s patients are the people you hear less of in the din of discussion surrounding homosexuality in this part of the world. Take M., for example, a successful businessman who was among the 52 arrested on the Queen Boat. He has since moved to the States, and recently wrote me in an e-mail message: “Money gave me security. I met my partner at a dinner party. I could travel. And I didn’t have my family on my back because I had moved out. I had a normal life until this happened.”

[Rasputin]

Most often, Loza sees families. “Typically, a family comes in with their son or daughter who has just announced that they are homosexual,” Loza explained. “They want me to help. The first reaction on the part of the family is denial, and then incredible blame.” In 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, but Loza told me that “whether it is treated as a disease or not really depends on the doctor.” While a combination of counseling and antidepressants seems the norm, you still sometimes hear of the application of electroshock therapy.

L., a lesbian originally from Alexandria, is seeing a Cairo psychiatrist. Women have not been subject to the same kind of attacks that men have been in Egypt, perhaps because of their relative invisibility — an invisibility that can itself be oppressive. It can be virtually impossible to meet other gay women. For L., the brunt of the problem is her family. “I’ve been to three psychiatrists, each time taken in by my parents,” she told me. “The first two prescribed antidepressants, they told me it was a phase, that I should ‘cheer up.’ The third prescribed electroshock therapy. I never went back.”

In Cairo, L. is studying communications. She has nothing to do with her family and, through the Internet, has found a supportive partner. The weight of the stigma remains. “When a Muslim dies, there is a required 30 minutes of prayer,” she wrote to me in a recent e-mail message. “When a gay person dies, they bury him and flee.”

T

here is a searing scene in the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri’s 1973 novel “For Bread Alone” in which a desperate young man, having recently moved from the country to the city in colonial Morocco, sells himself to an elderly Spaniard. The scene is explicit (they have oral sex in a car), and the novel, which has been banned or caused controversy in many Arab countries, serves as a stunning condemnation of the power disparities engendered by colonialism. Symbolism like Choukri’s is common in Arabic literature and cinema, providing for what the British writer Brian Whitaker has referred to as a “reverse Orientalism,” in which sex, and specifically homosexual sex, is presented as a foreign incursion, a tool of colonial domination.

Sometimes a stigma hangs over efforts to protect homosexuals from repression or attack. Negad Al Boraei, an Egyptian attorney and human rights activist, has irritated many in the local human rights community by a number of his stances, including his willingness to accept American financing for his work. (He readily dismisses his critics as “communists” and “revolutionaries.” He was one of the first recipients in Egypt of financing from the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative.) I went to Al Boraei to talk about how sexual rights fit into the broader human rights agenda.

“I was telling a friend of mine who works for Amnesty International, we have a lot of problems here — torture, violations against street children, we are full of problems,” he told me. As he spoke he gesticulated wildly with his ring-covered hands. “To come in and talk about gays and lesbians, it is nice, but it’s not the major issue. It’s like I am starving and you ask me what kind of cola I want. Well, I want to eat first. Then we can talk about cola! It’s a luxury to talk about gay rights in Egypt.”

When the raid on the Queen Boat occurred, much of the human rights community declined to take the case on, Al Boraei included. (Some activists even attacked those who met with the defendants.) Hossam Bahgat, a young Alexandrian working at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, told me he was quietly dismissed after he wrote an article calling upon the human rights community to overcome its fears about working on the case. In the West, however, the Queen Boat became something of a cause célèbre. Amnesty International supported protests in front of the Egyptian Embassy in London. A Web site called GayEgypt.com called on Egypt’s homosexuals to wear red on the two-year anniversary of the Queen Boat raid (an invitation to be arrested, it seems), while 35 members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, asking for a stop to the anti-homosexual crusade. It was no wonder that amid this, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram al-Arabi proclaimed, “Be a pervert and Uncle Sam will approve.”

“This was framed locally as an attack from the West,” says Bahgat, who eventually collaborated with Human Rights Watch on the case and later opened his own organization, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “It was important to show that working for the rights of the detained was not a gay agenda, or a Western agenda, that this was linked to Egypt’s overall human rights record. Raising the gay banner when most sexual and other human rights are systematically violated every day is never going to get you far in this country.”

[Rasputin]

In the end, Human Rights Watch avoided laying itself open to easy attack as the bearer of an outsider’s agenda, packaging Queen Boat advocacy in the larger context of torture. Many of the arrested men were tortured, and torture is something that, at least in theory, most people agree is a bad thing. In Human Rights Watch’s 150-page report on the crackdown, references to religion, homosexual rights or anything else that could be seen or used as code for licentiousness were played down. Torture was played up, and it may very well be the first and last human rights report to cite Michel Foucault’s “History of Sexuality.” Upon release of the report in March 2004, Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, and Scott Long, director of the organization’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Project, met with Egypt’s public prosecutor, the assistant to the interior minister and members of the Foreign Ministry. Their effort seemed to have had some effect; although occasional arrests continue, the all-out campaign of arrest and entrapment of men that began with the Queen Boat incident came to an end. One well-connected lawyer noted that a high-ranking Ministry of Interior source told him, “It is the end of the gay cases in Egypt, because of the activities of some human rights organizations.”

When I spoke to Long about his work on the Queen Boat case and its aftermath, he reflected on his advocacy methods in a context in which human rights, and especially gay rights, are increasingly associated with Western empire-building. “Perhaps we had less publicity for the report in the United States because we avoided fetishizing beautiful brown men in Egypt being denied the right to love,” he said. “We wrote for an Egyptian audience and tried to make this intelligible in terms of the human rights issues that have been central in Egyptian campaigns. It may not have made headlines, but it seemed to make history.” Whether the effort made history or simply interrupted it remains to be seen. Long himself noted, “The fact that the crackdown came apparently out of nowhere is a reminder that the repression could revive anytime.”

The possibilities for official repression exist across the Arab world. Early one morning this past August in Saudi Arabia, the police raided a wedding party in the town of Jizan, arresting 20 men “impersonating women,” according to the newspaper Al Watan. Similarly, late last year, 26 men were arrested when a party in Ghantout, a desert region on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway in the United Arab Emirates, was raided. The press went into typical scandal mode, and images of some of the men in women’s clothing circulated on cellphones. A government spokesman was quoted in The Khaleej Times, “Because they’ve put society at risk they will be given the necessary treatment, from male hormone injections to psychological therapies.” Arrests have also taken place in Lebanon — despite its being perceived as having more liberal social mores — as well as Morocco.

In Egypt, religiosity — along with an associated emphasis on public involvement in the private sphere — continues to rise. For the 2005 campaign the Muslim Brotherhood listed beauty pageants, music videos and sexy photographs as issues needing public debate; banning female presenters (even in veils) from state-run television and expanding religious education in public schools were also on the agenda. The brotherhood won 88 seats. And in most cases, there has been complete impunity for perpetrators of attacks on gay men; individual officers responsible for attacks have been promoted or shuffled around. As recently as September, at least one entrapment case occurred in Cairo; a young man was lured via a chat site and tortured — badly beaten and subject to electroshock on his genitals — by the same office of the public morality squad that had conducted Internet-based entrapments.

In the meantime, routine scapegoating of the West, and of its real and perceived agendas in the region, seems to be reaching new highs. The Egyptian government, despite its intimate strategic relationship with the U.S., has been increasing its rhetorical assaults on what is blithely reduced to an imperial, meddling West — ostensibly to parade its nationalist credentials in the face of America’s disastrous exploits in the Middle East. (In September, Gamal Mubarak, the president’s smooth-talking, Western-educated son and heir apparent, went so far as to dismiss Western initiatives designed to foster democratization in the region at a policy conference of the ruling National Democratic Party). Blanket attacks on what is vaguely referred to as “human rights” continue; in late August, Mostafa Bakry’s newspaper, Al Osboa, assailed Hossam Bahgat’s organization, along with an NGO that works on AIDS, for defending “perverts.” The ingredients for another crackdown exist in abundance in Egypt and the region at large.

Today the Queen Boat continues to sit docked on the Nile, its name clumsily respelled “Queen Boot” in garish green neon. It is hardly the gay hangout it once was, instead catering to the very occasional budget tourist. Many dragged away by the police that evening five years ago have since left the country, and others keep a low profile, although there are signs that young people have begun cruising the Nile banks again and meeting on the Internet.

[Rasputin]

As I prepared to leave Cairo at the beginning of the fall, I received an e-mail message from M., the businessman from the Queen Boat, since relocated to the States. “I sit here, and the Americans talk about something called Islamic fascism, the Arabs go on about their values,” he wrote. “All of us, and I don’t mean gay men, I mean all of us who don’t fit the norm — democracy activists, queens, anything — it’s us who get branded as Western, fifth columnists. We pay the price.”

Negar Azimi is senior editor of Bidoun, an arts-and-culture magazine based in New York.

[Rasputin]

New law and old prejudices threaten Nigeria's gay community

In the Muslim north of Nigeria, Bisi Alimi could be stoned to death for having gay sex. In the south, he could face three years in prison. Now, a proposed law would make it illegal just to share a meal at a cafe with gay friends.

The proposal under debate in Nigeria's House of Representatives would outlaw not just gay marriages, but any form of association between gay people, social or otherwise, and publication of any materials deemed to promote a "same-sex amorous relationship."

Anyone attending a meeting between gay people, even two friends in a private house, could receive a sentence of five years under the act. Engaging in homosexual acts is already illegal in Nigeria, with those convicted facing jail terms in the south and execution in the north.

Few in Nigeria's deeply closeted gay community are publicly opposing the bill and it is widely expected to pass.

"This meeting, right here, would be illegal," says activist Alimi, stabbing the air with a French fry for emphasis as he sits at a table with three gay friends and a reporter. "We could be arrested for talking about this. You could be arrested for writing about us."

Other activities specifically prohibited under the proposed law include participating in gay clubs, or reading books, watching films or accessing Internet sites that "promote" homosexuality.

Alimi's been trying to drum up united opposition to the legislation, but says Nigeria's homosexual community is so far underground and the subject is so taboo that it's been difficult. The 27-year-old activist is one of few openly gay Nigerians, having been "outed" by a university newspaper three years ago. None of his companions have told their families they are attracted to men. The risk of arrest, beatings or even death is why they requested that only first names be used for this article.

"A few of my best friends know, but I don't have the courage to tell my parents," 23-year-old medical student Ipadeola says.

"I don't tell people because it is none of their business," says Mukajuloa, a 21-year-old beautician. "Do heterosexual men go around telling the world they are attracted to women?"

Haruna Yerima, a member of Nigeria's House of Representatives, portrays the legislation as aimed at stamping out something already well under control.

"It's not really such a big problem in Nigeria, we just want to prevent such occurrences (gay marriages) from happening here," he says.

Yerima said he approved of the limitations on films and books because they could be used to "make such practices popular." Even social contact between gays should be limited, he said, because it might encourage behavior that was "against our culture...against our religion."

Alimi's friends say the bill will make a difficult life even more dangerous. Families already often cast out gay children and neighbors turn against gay friends.

Civil rights organizations and human rights lawyers have said that the bill could also be used to deny legal representation to gay people who have been arrested.

Attitudes toward gays in Nigeria are typical of those across the continent. In neighboring Cameroon, Amnesty International says accusations of homosexuality and anti-gay laws have been used as a weapon against political opponents. South Africa legalized gay marriages last month in fiercely debated legislation, making it the only country on the continent to do so. But the impetus was more a desire to stamp out all forms of discrimination in a reaction to apartheid than tolerance of gays, who are subject to prejudice and violence in South Africa.

The hostility in Nigeria means that there are very few gay or lesbian organizations in Nigeria. Oludare "Erelu" Odumuye — the nickname means "queen mother" in Yoruba — heads one, Alliance Rights. Odumuye said he has been harassed in the street and detained by police accusing him of promoting homosexuality and running an unregistered organization.

"That bill would criminalize me if it was passed into law. It would criminalize my organization, it would criminalize my friends," he says.

Thousands of people use Alliance Rights for health services, to gather information or to meet, Odumuye says. To avoid harassment, they have no set membership list and their buildings are not in town centers or identified by signs.