A Gay Palestinian Criticizes Gay Hawks!

April 28, 2003
Toppling Saddam won't free gays

Gay hawks like to claim that regime change in Iraq will mean greater freedom for gays there, but that's not the case in Iraq or even within our own military.
By MUBARAK DAHIR

GAY MEN AND lesbians who endorse the war in and occupation of Iraq — and possible future military action against other countries like Syria — need to stop using the guise of caring about the plight of gay Arabs to rationalize their support. It's an argument fraught with emotional manipulation, hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty and factual error.

Even the most dovish opponents of military intervention in Iraq rightly concede that there were plenty of reasons to topple Saddam Hussein and his government. He was a harsh and brutal dictator, and it is near impossible to find anyone, regardless of his or her political leanings, who is sorry to see the rogue gone.

Gay and lesbian proponents of the war and the occupation should stick to this core truth when arguing their case. Invoking the supposed freeing of gay Iraqis actually weakens their position.

THE TRUTH IS that the plight of gay and lesbian Iraqis — just like that of gay and lesbian Afghanis — will change little under whatever new government is installed.

There is no denying that gays in Iraq and other Arab countries are persecuted. But the forces of oppression that keep them down in the Arab world are complex, and cannot be altered by simple "regime change." Religion, tradition, culture, family pressures, ignorance of the contemporary understandings of modern psychology and other factors make life extremely difficult for gay Iraqis and those in other Arab nations.

To believe that life for gay Iraqis will be better — or different in any real way — than it was under Saddam Hussein is willfully naïve. The social, religious and cultural forces that oppress gay Iraqis will not have changed one iota under a new government.

Furthermore, the line that invading Iraq, and now possibly Syria, will "free" gay people there is heaped in hypocrisy. The forces that are supposedly emancipating our downtrodden gay Iraqi brethren are themselves hyper-homophobic. How can anyone seriously argue that the United States military is an instrument for gay liberation?

From there, the layers of hypocrisy only deepen.

Gay hawks mouth the mantra of gay liberation in Iraq and Syria, and go to lengths to point out how oppressive those regimes are to homosexuals. Yet what about other neighboring countries that border Iraq?

Saudi Arabia is probably the most socially backward nation in the world, run by unsavory dictators who are infamous in the Arab world for their suppression of freedoms of all kinds. Saudi Arabia even allegedly executes openly gay people. If ever there was an argument for overthrowing a country, Saudi Arabia should take the prize.

But the Saudi leaders — who are sitting on what is by far the world's largest oil reserve — are our political allies. Hush, then, any talk of invading them.

And what about Egypt? Right now, the Egyptian government is carrying out a choreographed crackdown on gay men and gay life in that country, arresting and jailing dozens of gay men through entrapment, Internet stings, informants and possibly even telephone wire-tappings.

International human rights groups have documented torture, threats and beatings against gay Egyptians. Even our own government has spoken up against the outrageous persecution.

But are gay hawks urging that we send the Marines to Cairo to "liberate" the gay men suffering there? Hardly.

BUT THE MOST infuriating hypocrisy to the claim that we are invading foreign countries in the interest of freeing gay people is the way we treat gay Arabs and gay Muslims here in the United States.

Most gay Arabs and gay Muslims in this country come here specifically seeking the incredible social freedom to be gay that they would never have at home. But particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, gay Arabs and gay Muslims have felt under attack here, even from other gays.

I have been personally spared most of that prejudice. Though I was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian father, I had an American mother, and I was primarily raised in this country. I don't have dark skin or an accent or any of the other telltale signs of my Arab heritage, other than my name.

But in the past two years, and particularly as the propaganda on the Iraq war went into overdrive, I know from friends and colleagues and dozens of sources I've interviewed that gay Americans have often been prejudiced and unwelcoming to Arabs and Muslims living here.

To talk about "liberating" gay Iraqis in Baghdad while we mistreat gay Arabs and Muslims in our own midst is just too much to stomach.