Being the only child, and a son of a Marwari family, he was a pampered child and had a carefree childhood until he started his schooling at the age of 6. That’s when he realised he was different and that he was sexually attracted to the boys in his class. Not knowing how to explain this feeling or this unusual situation, he decided to not pay heed to this feeling and concentrate on his education. He was so brilliant and extraordinary, that he became a national level UCMAS Champion. He could calculate at the tip of his fingers and within seconds, that too any given calculation. He could speak for hours on any given topic. He always had updates on current events, when people of his age couldn’t even name the president of the country. He was smarter than most children his age. And he still is.

Everything was fine until he stopped socialising and stayed aloof from the society. He then started to skip the lectures in the school. Naturally, questions like “Is he being bullied? Has he lost interest in studies? What is wrong with him?” crossed everybody’s mind in the family. We then came to know he was writing a book. He was just 17 when he started to write this book. And I secretly read a few pages of this book out of curiosity when he was not around. It talked about human hypocrisy and human helplessness. It talked about how life is an infinite loop of being, about how we think we are playing but we are not the players but the ones who are being played. I knew there was more depth to this. Everything was a puzzle to me until I got an opportunity to spend time with him when he visited Mumbai for an interview.

On the very first day, I realised that there was something different. The way he would blush,  the way he fancied my pink wallet, the way he would sing songs of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift with that peculiar accent and the way he walked. I knew immediately what the reality was and how what was once a puzzle, now made complete sense. I asked him upfront whether he was straight to which he remained mum. Scared, I asked him again. “Are you gay by any chance?” To which he responded, “Please don’t tell my mom.”

I rolled my eyes, panicked and started with my set of uninformed questions in a hurry. I yelled and asked him, “Where do you think we live, America? It was Adam and Eve, and not Adam and Steve. Can we get this fixed?” To which he replied in a sarcastic tone, “Yes I’ve heard Baba Ramdev can cure homosexuality through yoga.” We were chatting about the Met Gala and the few fashion disasters which followed and as soon as he dropped the gay bomb, I was like, “Oh! So do you guys feel like wearing pink all the time?” Everything about him, his existence, his choices and his lifestyle changed everything for me. And I couldn’t believe he was not straight. I was very inquisitive and started with my stupid questions which he answered calmly. De-bunking my pre-conceived, even prejudiced thoughts.

1.     My Claim – Oh you are gay! You are going to hell. The Bible says that’s a sin.
His Argument- Oh, so you might be a regular visitor of Hell and Heaven. What does it look like? Do they have Netflix in hell? You know what is sin sister? War, rape, murder and pineapples on pizza. And when talking about the contentions in the Bible, Bible says wearing two fabrics mixed together is a sin, drinking alcohol is a sin, extramarital affairs are a sin. So why do you get so butt-hurt about only this? Believe me, all these religious books were written by humans (of course men) probably high on some form of marijuana.

2.     My Claim- Oh you are gay! It is against Indian culture! It is a western influence.
His Argument- Oh! You are so spiritually awake. You know, what is also not part of our so-called Indian culture? Your sequinned slit cut gown, your glittering tuxedo suits or your brand new watch that you imported from New York. And you know what has been a part of Indian culture? Dowry, Sati, ghunghat pratha, wearing suti clothes and draping yourself modestly in sarees. When am I seeing you in dhotis or sarees?

3.     My Claim- Can you become straight, change yourself? Can we fix it? Is it some genetic problem?
His Argument- Oh honey! How does that work? Can I convert you into a lesbian the way you claim to convert me into a straight man? Or there is some secret switch or some secret potion to do the same? You cannot fix it, because neither is it a problem nor is there anything broken. What needs to be mended is your narrow mind. Being gay is not genetic. It is not an individual choice. You are a female not by choice. You are who you are, right? Did you have any choice? Similarly, why question my existence? You say it is a disease, but have you ever put the question the other way round, asking if being straight was a disease?

4.     My Claim- Family comprises of a mom and a dad. What about your marriage? How are you going to have kids, honey?
His Argument- Oh! How successful are your “normal” marriages? I just read that divorce rates are skyrocketing, gone through the clouds. And how ‘well’ are your bandwagons of moms and dads who have parented their kids? I hear about kids running away, domestic violence, fights, suicides every other day. No, I am not lamenting, I am just stating some facts. If a single mom or a single dad can raise their children, then I am quite sure two moms and two dads can do that as well. Marriage is the connection between two souls and as far as I remember the soul has no gender.

5.     My Claim- It’s not normal. That’s not love. There is no acceptance for this in the society.
His Argument- Love is a beautiful thing, a feeling between two souls. Don’t divide it on grounds of gender, religion or any other filthy sets of discrimination that you could come up with.

Don’t you think it is highly unacceptable and cruel to discriminate someone on the grounds of their sexuality? We were all in primary classes and we all might have written those bland essays on ‘Myself.’ Show me one person who might have written, ‘My name is X. My father is Y. My mother is Z. I am straight.’ How does my sexuality define myself? It is my work, my personality and my compassion which define me. How does Shakespeare being a bisexual make any difference to his legendary works? Or how does Lady Gaga being a bisexual make any difference to her music?

It is unfortunate that how because of orthodox people like you and others, and because of the denial we face from the society, the suicide rates among the LGBTQIA people have risen alarmingly. The eve teasing, social alienation, bullying and the sense of inferiority, have all led them to depression and never-ending sadness.

But I am strong, I will fight and I know there are many like me. I will be the change. I will spread love and you can continue spreading hate.

These conversations, my questions, his answers were an eye-opener for me. From that second, I felt so proud of him, his existence, his choices and his lifestyle. I realised it is the discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender which is against the law of nature and it is love which is the law of nature.

(The author is a fifth-year student of Government Law College, Mumbai.)

The post I am proud of my gay brother appeared first on SabrangIndia.

These are five Muslim countries where being gay is not a crime. What do they have in common? None of them were colonized by the British Empire. Many countries in the Global South, whether Muslim or otherwise, are generally using colonial laws that pre-date their local penal codes to criminalize romantic love between consenting same-sex couples. Whether in West Africa, or Southeast Asia, in the heart of Europe or the Middle East, these countries remind us that the conversation on gay rights is not as clean cut as some might have imagined it to be.

1. MALI
Gays in this African nation might face local homophobia, but the law is on their side. In 2010, a Malian volunteer for the Peace Corps wrote that she looked up the laws dealing with sexuality, and saw that Article 179 of the Malian penal code did not specify heterosexual or homosexual sexual activities, but instead decried public indecency. She said that she was relieved because most “countries in Africa, 38 to be exact, have laws against homosexuality and some with the death penalty.”

[Rider: Neither male or female same-sex sexual activity is specifically prohibited in Mali, but public indecency laws may be used against LGBT persons. There exists in society, also a strong homophobia.]

2. JORDAN
Jordan was under the Ottoman Empire, where homosexuality was decriminalized 75 years earlier, but between 1922 and 1945 the country was a subject mandated by the League of Nations. However, in 1951 the new nation made homosexuality legal. “Jordan is considered an open minded country, and when coming to cities, the tolerance is even higher,” said the editor of My.Kali, a gay magazine that is based in the capital, talking to the Italian-based e-Zine Il Grande Colibri. “And considering the fact that it’s an Islamic country, the morality of the culture could be a huge pressure to many people to remain discreet, but it never stopped many of my friends and other LGBTQ people to come out and show who they are,” he added.

[Rider: Technically legal but no specific  protections.]

3. INDONESIA
In Indonesia being gay has been legal since, well, forever. No, really, the country never had any legal prohibitions against homosexuality, at least since its founding as a nation. Further, the country has the longest running LGBT organizations in Asia. Despite having the largest Muslim population, Indonesia has remained a great example of the importance of the separation of religion and state. On the other hand, Singapore (non-Muslim) and Malaysia (Muslim), who are neighbors to Indonesia, have laws that make it illegal to be gay. The later two have both been colonized by the British Empire.

[Rider: No law against it officially and centrally but provincially there exist some Islamic laws]

4. TURKEY
In 1858, the Ottoman Caliph decriminalized homosexuality. This affected many countries in three continents. When Turkey became a solo nation in 1920, it didn’t see a need to change this law. Omer Akpinar, who is with KAOS LG, which is one of the largest LGBT organizations in Turkey, told Mashable that their organization was never censored. Jack Scott, a British writer who moved to Turkey with his partner and who is the author of Perking the Pansies: Jack and Liam Move to Turkey, said his “obvious union with Liam has never attracted bad publicity from any Turk,” talking to the real estate company Quest Turkey.

[Rider: Not a crime but public displays and morality laws are applied in some cases.Gay men still get discriminated about donating blood and in the army}

5. ALBANIA
Being gay has been legal in Albania since 1995. This pre-dominantly Muslim nation has been in the forefront of gay rights in the Balkans. In 2013, ILGA Europe said that the country was the friendliest nation to the gays in the area, as it has a welcoming government and an anti-discrimination law. Kristi Pinderi, who is with the LGBT organization Pink Embassy, says that the anti-discrimination law is “important because in theory a teacher, for example, who is transgender, and decides to go and teach wearing a dress, I can’t imagine what the reaction would be, but the law protects that need, if there is a need like that,” talking to the organization International Day Against Homophobia.

Other countries with a large Muslim population and where homosexuality is legal include Abkhazia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Niger, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, and Tajikistan.

All of the above mentioned countries, like the entire world, have varies challenges for LGBT people. However, because the law is on their side, living in these countries create an atmosphere where one can imagine a fight, a possibility of freedom, and the dream that one day being gay is not any different from being straight.

(Afdhere Jama is the author of  Queer Jihad: LGBT Muslims on Coming Out, Activism, and the Faith. He lives in the United States)

Source: LGBT Muslims. The riders have been inserted by Sabrangindia
 
 

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