If Hamas were to win control of the Palestinian Authority in coming elections, expect to see homophobic and misogynistic laws as part of its "liberation." The London Times reports that Mahmoud Zahar, the faction's leader in Gaza who is now extremely popular among Palestinians, said there would be no rights given to "homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick." Israel, by the way, protects gays from discrimination and provides certain spousal rights to same-sex couples, which is why gay Palestinians try to flee there.
In The New Republic, Rob Anderson takes gay groups to task in
How
America's Gay Rights Establishment Is Failing Gay Iranians
(free registration required), noting that in the view of some
leading gay activists:
The moral argument is that Americans are in no position to criticize Iranians on human rights-that it would be wrong to campaign too loudly against Iranian abuses when the United States has so many problems of its own. ...
Activists are more than willing to condemn the homophobic leaders of the Christian right for campaigning against gay marriage; but they are wary of condemning Islamist regimes that execute citizens for being gay. Something has gone terribly awry.
By way of example, he quotes Matt Foreman of the National Gay
& Lesbian Task Force, who described Iran's executions of gays
as the moral equivalent of George Bush's America, saying:
If we think that psychological torture and physical torture and rape and inhumane conditions are not part of our own criminal justice system, than people don't have a clue about the reality of our nation, let alone the conditions of Guantanamo, let alone the sanctions to keep prisoners in Afghanistan.
Compare this, Anderson notes, with anti-apartheid activism of the 1970s and '80s (no one said we shouldn't organize international condemnation against South Africa because America was just as racist!), and you can see how great this failure is.
Anderson also writes that Paula Ettelbrick, head of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC ), "wasn't willing to discuss what progress the organization has made [on Iran]; so it is hard to know whether whatever the IGLHRC is doing is effective or not." Well, in the wake of the article's appearance, Ettelbrick has responded with a column in the Washington Blade on standing up for Iranian gays. That's something, at least.
Update: Gay Patriot writes: "The problem for the American gay community is that our 'establishment' no longer recognizes right from wrong. Only Red from Blue." That about sums it up.
Further: A commenter notes that in Afghanistan
since the overthrow of the Taliban, the traditional if covert
acceptance of same-sex relations has returned, as reported here.
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