As often as the LGBT community can point to other developed nations like the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain that have far more extensive protections and civil rights guarantees than we do here in the U.S., sometimes it also pays to remember that the very occurrence of these debates puts us decades ahead of some of the other countries in the world. A rather dark example of the kind of persecution faced by gays, lesbians, and transgender people can be found in a country that is on the news every night for its myriad assortment of attacks and other violence.
Apparently, the rise of Iranian-backed Shia militias and elements within the Iraqi army has led to a “virtual pogrom” of Iraqi gays, according to PlanetOut Network. To start in a country that is already highly intolerant of the underground LGBT community is bad enough. To add to that situation roaming, heavily armed, religiously-inspired paramilitary groups virtually begs for systematic persecution and destruction of gays, lesbians, and transgender people.
Imagine the fate of this Iraqi boy, Ahmed Khalil. You are fourteen, and your family lives in desperate poverty. You are surrounded by violent gun clashes, restrictive security measures, power shortages, and a pressing lack of running water and food. You are afraid to leave your house to even go to the market. As if this were not enough, you are despised, loathed, and threatened for your sexual orientation, when it is known. You become a prostitute. You are fourteen. Perhaps your family forced you to become one. Perhaps you do it in order to save your family from starvation. Regardless, you have been forced by your circumstances into the most degrading and intolerable roles for a human. You are fourteen. And one day, perhaps tipped off by a neighbor, or an arrested client, army soldiers pull up to your door, drag you into the street, and shoot you repeatedly, first in the head, then into the rest of your body.
As a teenager, my gut tightens and tumbles imagining the
position of a fourteen year-old boy
in such a situation. The LGTB movement
in the
But perhaps it is time to lift our gazes beyond our
city-councils, our statehouse, our Congress and our courts and to focus a
little more attention on the global LGBT community to which we belong. Our country’s position in
I am not suggesting that no attention is being paid this
issue, or that the U.S. LGBT community ought to devote exhaustive resources to
aiding oppressed LGBT communities throughout the world. But we can bring attention to the gruesome
fates of people, even kids, like Ahmed Khalil. Even now in the House, HR 2265, the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007, would prioritize the
authorization of refugee status for, among other groups, Iraqi gays and
lesbians “subject to violence, intimidation, or discrimination by state
or non-state actors.” A little noise
goes a long way in countries where so few have a voice.
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