Looking Beyond Our Borders

Joe, left, and Frank Capley-Alfano, of San Francisco, join dozens of others at a rally against Proposition 8 in Sacramento, Calif., March 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

In Iraq, a man named Hamid had to flee Baghdad after his partner of ten years was killed. According to Hamid, "It was late one night in early April, and they came to take my partner at his parents’ home. Four armed men barged into the house, masked and wearing black. They asked for him by name; they insulted him and took him in front of his parents. All that, I heard about later from his family. He was found in the neighborhood the day after. They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out."

Hamid’s story is by no means a freak occurrence. He is one of 54 gay Iraqis whom Human Rights Watch interviewed for a report about the status of gay men in Iraq. (Human Rights Watch only includes data about men in its report, explaining that because of the lack of freedom for and visibility of women in Iraqi society, the threats to women often take different forms than the threats targeted at men.) The horrifying 67-page report, released this week, is titled "They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq." It finds that indescribably terrible violence against gay or purportedly gay men has been on a sharp increase since the 2003 U.S. invasion, and that much of this violence is being perpetrated by powerful militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army—not, as was previously thought, by renegade individuals.

Back in America, by contrast, the LGBT movement is preoccupied with a very different set of issues, primarily marriage equality. In last week’s big news, Equality California (EQCA) announced that 2012, not 2010, is the year to push for repeal of Proposition 8, the anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiative that passed last fall. On a conference call with reporters, EQCA explained that in 2012, more young people, who overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage, will be voting, and, in the words of EQCA’s marriage equality campaign director Marc Solomon, it "takes time and commitment… to undo the untruths that our opponents have been telling." This "time and commitment" will take the form of a strong (and well-funded) 38-month campaign, which Equality California expects will cost $40-60 million. EQCA assured reporters that they will still have enough resources to help Maine activists fight the state’s own version of Proposition 8. Marriage equality is an issue in particular that is highly attractive to donors wanting to see their investments pay off.

Meanwhile in Washington, as Solomon and Kors were talking about their organization’s political strategizing, the President of the United States was making a more symbolic point. President Obama’s first set of recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom included Harvey Milk, the assassinated first gay holder of public office in a major city; and Billie Jean King, the tennis star and LGBT rights advocate. The White House ceremony in their (and the other recipients’) honor was just finishing during Equality California’s press call. At the same time, activists in Rhode Island prepared to protest a National Organization for Marriage event and activists all around the country were planning last Saturday’s "Kiss-Ins" to protest the arrest of gay couples for kissing in public in Texas and Utah.

But Iraqi security forces don’t seem to be able to stop the violence against gay men. The torture and murder of gay men in Iraq includes injecting glue in men’s anuses and then forcing them to take laxatives. “Unmanly” men are often targets, and the violence takes the form of an honor killing. According to some of the men Human Rights Watch interviewed for its report, Iraqi security forces have sometimes even helped to perpetuate the violence—even though Iraq, unlike many of its neighboring countries, does not actually criminalize homosexuality. Persecuted men in Iraq can’t flee to nearby Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iran because of anti-sodomy laws. And finding safety in Iraq isn’t always an option, either. Iraqi LGBT, a London-based expatriate organization, is doing work to establish safe houses in Baghdad, but its volunteers have been captured and tortured by militiamen.

It wasn’t possible to be openly gay in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, either, but the harsh hand of that regime provided a comparative stability that non-governmental torture, murder, and vigilante killings weren’t daily occurrences. Now, as Human Rights Watch phrased it, "Murders are committed with impunity." The men interviewed repeatedly said that they felt as if there was no reason to live.

Boris Dittrich, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT rights project, explains that American-based human rights organizations are involved in LGBT rights overseas. For example, Dittrich cited a coalition group called the Council for Global Equality, of which HRW is a member. He said that the Council’s "scope is really global," focusing "not only on the [United States] but on international issues." After Human Rights Watch released its report, the Council expressed concerns about the findings to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, who responded by calling the violence "appalling." He said that the embassy was working with the Iraqi government and non-governmental organizations to stop it.

This is a good indication that global LGBT activism is working—it seems logical that the United States must be held partially responsible due to its role in destabilizing the region. There the American embassy isn’t the only U.S.-based organization that can help: In the report’s conclusion, Human Rights Watch recommends that U.S. military forces in Iraq assist the Iraqi government with training police and security forces, and in preventing the militias from acting unchecked. But the U.S. military force itself doesn’t allow LGBT soldiers to serve in its ranks openly. And domestic problems of homophobic and transphobic violence aren’t an automatic consequence of being LGBT, but such violence is still an enormous problem in America today. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the United States should get its own LGBT equality ducks in a row first.

Another reason for Americans’ apparent lack of interest in international issues could be that people who aren’t members of the global activist community simply aren’t aware of the horrors that LGBT people in other countries face. Boris Dittrich observed that one of the key barriers to raising awareness in the United States is with the media. It is often "difficult to get foreign stories in the American press." It is, of course, understandable that a local fight over marriage or an LGBT rights ordinance would attract local press in a way that international human rights violations wouldn’t—but without media and blogosphere coverage, Human Rights Watch’s findings will not be nearly as effective at raising awareness as they could be.

After reading the Human Rights Watch report about Iraqi violence against gay men, the complicated back-and-forth of the politics of LGBT equality in America might seem less urgent. The dollars poured into marriage equality seem less of a priority when, in Iraq and in many other countries, being gay (or even perceived as such) amounts to a death sentence. President Obama may have awarded the Medal of Freedom to Harvey Milk (posthumously) and Billie Jean King, but it seems a small gesture in comparison to what the U.S. government could do to help Iraqi citizens as it reduces its troop presence.

While the United States certainly has its own problems to sort out, it would be nice to think that Human Rights Watch’s findings could provide the catalyst for citizens transcend the traditional factionalization and to pledge at least some resources to fighting violence, hatred, and oppression for LGBT people abroad.

Emily Rutherford is a staff writer and editorial intern with Campus Progress. She is a sophomore at Princeton University. Follow her on Twitter.

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