Nuwas Munto
Right after 9/11, Muslims all over the world started experiencing hatred against their religion. Of course this Islamophobia is nothing compared to the gross homophobia prevalent in most Islamic countries. Westerners find it hard to get over the images of men being stoned to death just because of their sexual orientation. From then to now, Muslim Mullahs have come up with the peace loving verses of Quran, such as ‘If you kill one man, you kill the whole humanity.’ Some reformists have taken a step ahead and even concluded that Islam has everything against bi-curiosity, and nothing against homosexuality as long as gays don’t harm anyone. Yes! The Muslim world is changing. Gradually, but it is changing.
Just a marriage or a political statement too?
But why am I telling you about Islamic reformation when this magazine is more about Queer lifestyle and health? Because, like Muslims and other groups who are changing to fight against prejudice and unfair treatment against them, so must we. No, I am not enjoining you to go through a reformative therapy! What I am saying is that we must change the negativity entailed by the word ‘gay’ the moment it is spoken to a straight man.
Majority of heterosexuals view homosexuals as ‘sexually perverted sex freaks’, and homosexuality as an outcome of not being able to have or sustain a sexual relationship with opposite sex. But can we really blame them? What do we expect them to believe about us, when majority of our community is really filled up with ‘sex freaks’? How many monogamous gays do we know? How many virgin gays do we know?
On one hand we proclaim ‘homosexuality is beyond the issue of sex’ and on the other hand we are sleeping around every third same-sex person we can find on the block. What one does in one’s room is nobody’s business. But then we must also concede another fact: sexual promiscuity is self-destructive. It makes one view one’s same-sex, or opposite sex, if you are gay or straight respectively, as nothing but sexual objects.
Why change your lifestyle for those hetero-idiots out there, you might ask. And the answer is this- Because we need them to cooperate with us, and accept us. No matter how proud we are of our sexuality, we can’t deny the fact that we live in a heterocentrist world, and so we need to amalgamate ourselves into their system. For that we must change their pre-conceived ideas about homosexuality and homosexuals. Gays are as normal as any other person. In fact we are more sensitive and humorous that heterosexual men, and we are stronger than a heterosexual woman. We are gregarious and we know what it feels like to be discriminated against. Thus we sympathize with the feelings of other minorities. See, we are so special! But how can we transfer such a message to the other guy, who’s straight, and in whose mind anti-gay religious ideas are inculcated? By changing the way he looks at homosexuals. He views them as sex-obsessed men, who failed at seducing women, and thus turned into sinners whom God is going punish on the last day of Judgement. Therefore, as a community, whether in India or in Pakistan or in America, we must strive to change this almost true notion of heterosexuals against homosexuals. We must start practicing monogamy to show them that sex is just one aspect of sexuality. That we are love spreading angels and need to be loved back. That we can fall in love too, though not with opposite sex. That we have certain self-respect for ourselves.
I know of one gay man and one bisexual one, both of whom fell in love with straight men. What did these men do to get their honey’s attention? You got it right. They used their body to lure them, which any person would do. So what did the heterosexuals do? You are right again! They used their bodies and fooled them into believing that they loved them. After their hunger was satiated, these gay men were thrown away heart broken. I am sure, you must have come across such stories. Only if these homosexual and bisexual men had thought once before they got into the bed of heterosexual men, at least out of their self-respect. Thought of whether these heterosexuals deserved them. Thought of what would they do if they were thrown away the way they were. Only if they had made these heterosexuals wait long before they had sex, and then see, if they were emotionally compatible.
It’s funny how we lament over the issue of trying to change homosexuals, through at the same time having sex with the opposite sex, since it’s all in genes, while we think we can turn heterosexual men and women, homosexual. Rather we turn them into anti-gay bi-curious individuals. So, it’s not only about the conception of homosexuals in the society any longer, but our individual self respect.
But on the whole, if LGBT society wants to be considered civilized and decent and be able to be active, it must act as one. It must embrace monogamy, to eradicate the tag of ‘sex freak’ from the LGBT society. And we can do a lot to then change the concept of Queer lifestyle among heterosexuals. Just see what Aisha Fayyazi Sarwari has to say here about her pre-conceived notions about gays:
”Raised Muslim, I thought homosexuality was a sin. My earliest forum entries still searchable in Google cache, attest to the highly moral, electrifyingly, religion-based view on homosexuality.”
And here’s what she has to say about it after she had a wonderful openly gay senior in U.S:
”My notions got knocked down just as fast when I worked as community reporter under one of the most competent and impressive men who headed the community relations department at KRON 4, CNN affiliate station then in 2003. He was openly gay, often referring to his partner of 7 years with a smile on his face. His partner played the orchestra at Broadway. In the time I worked with him, he covered every community issue, including the one about Muslim Imams with as much conviction as he would others like mounting crime or local pollution. He never used his position to overzealously promote his cause…….Apart from the OTT nude-gay parades in San Francisco that my poor old mother once got stuck in when we went off looking for a Pakistani restaurant, I see no real damage gay and lesbian people can do to the world apart from break down the walls of prejudice.”
We can change so many heterosexuals when it comes to their concerns of homosexuals destroying our societies. Only that we must also change ourselves, so as to break down the walls, built and cemented with the help of abnormally sex oriented notions about gays, which act a preclude to them understanding us, and believing that we can be as natural and healthy towards our society.
I believe we must change to change them.
To think that we have to see his ugly drunk face every time the President speaks at the Capitol makes me want me to puke!!
enabled this. And the indies and disaffected Democrats who switched to vote for Republicans, because change was happening fast enough or whatever, have enabled the party that gave us 8 years of dismal job growth. I’ll never understand the logic behind voting these guys back in power.