by Bruce Bawer
Here’s the kind of thing that makes you proud to be an American. On June 26, the U.S. Embassy hosted a meeting “to support the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals in Pakistan.” Co-hosted by a group called Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, it was attended by more than 75 people, including “U.S. Embassy officials, military representatives, foreign diplomats and leaders of Pakistani LGBT advocacy groups.” Deputy Ambassador Richard Hoagland, told Pakistani gays: “I want to be clear: the U.S. Embassy is here to support you and stand by your side every step of the way.”
One can only imagine how it feels for a tormented and terrorized gay person in Pakistan to hear such words from a high-ranking representative of the world’s most powerful country. I can only hope Hoagland means it. We are speaking, after all, of a country where gay people, when they fall into the hands of authorities, are routinely imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and, at worst, put to death in accordance with sharia law. Many Pakistani gays never end up in the hands of the law: their families carry out the execution themselves. And what makes all this worse is that the woods are full of people – including, shamefully, gay people – eager to dissemble about it, such as the self-identified “gay Muslim” reader who responded to a post by me yesterday with an e-mail full of brazen disinformation, including the outrageous lie that in Pakistan “homosexuals have not been executed with sanction of the law for over a century.”
It is still exceedingly rare for Western governments to take action in defense of the human rights of gays in the Muslim world; such efforts are, of course, to be encouraged and applauded. But the Embassy meeting was not exactly cheered by Pakistani leaders. On the contrary, a group of influential Pakistani figures, including the head of the powerful Jamaat-e-Islami party, condemned the American venture as “cultural terrorism,” second in danger only to missile attacks.
“Such people [i.e. gays – B.B.] are the curse of society and social garbage,” said the statement issued by the Islamic officials on Sunday. “They don’t deserve to be Muslim or Pakistani, and the support and protection announced by the U.S. administration for them is the worst social and cultural terrorism against Pakistan.”
The Islamic officials demanded the Pakistani government arrest the participants under the country’s laws and said the meeting was “tantamount to stabbing the Muslim world in the chest.”
Perhaps one positive outcome of this meeting will be that it will have helped clarify for at least some of the Westerners involved that for many Muslims, including respected and prominent public figures, the very act of treating gay people with a modicum of human decently is indeed tantamount to an act of terrorism toward them and their religion. Which, in turn, may help illuminate for these Westerners just what kind of conception the individuals in question have of religion, and, consequently, just how deadly serious the issue of basic human rights is in the Muslim world – not just for gays, but for all people in that region who have embraced the radical idea that they, no less than anyone else, are endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Dish 