For Gay Iranian Refugees, a Matter of Life or Death
NOTE: This is the second of two parts, the first, on the election revolt, was on EDGE in June.
The international media clamor surrounding last month’s Iranian election, which saw the contentious re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad result in weeks of protests, demonstrations and violence, may have died down, but the unstable atmosphere lives on for residents of the Islamic republic.
They continue to face major restrictions on free speech and threats to their safety if they choose to speak out. And they will not soon forget the street violence that resulted in the death, imprisonment and harassment of many protesters, activists and journalists–all part of the worst unrest the country has seen in thirty years.
This is particularly true for gay and lesbian Iranians, both those who remain inside the country and those who have escaped. They are familiar with oppressive treatment from their government, one which continues to outlaw homosexuality and crack down against any outward display of queerness. The first story (published here June 30, 2009,) examined the environment facing the Iranian queer community, particularly in light of the government’s attempts to silence any post-election voices of dissent.
Building from that story, we now take a look at the climate facing queer Iranians who have fled the country with the hopes of seeking asylum in the West. Forced, in many cases, to leave behind their families, friends and the culture of their blood, their dreams of living in freedom still face a number of challenges.
When gay Iranian refugees and asylum seekers leave, they are sent to live temporarily to a number of a different places, though most end up in small Turkish towns known as “satellite cities,” far from the larger cities like Ankara or Istanbul. They file a request to be granted official refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in order to legally move West, and then they wait. In many cases, that waiting period can last up to three years, a time during which employment is difficult to find and harassment is not unusual.
See For Gay Iranian Refugees, a Matter of Life or Death
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When asked, this gay soldier told
TUSTIN In a calm corner of his garage, a soldier rummages through reminders of the last ten years of his life. Silver coins. A Middle Eastern sash. An Army pistol. Only a few of the souvenirs in Dan Choi’s war chest will fit into his travel duffel.
As he packs, his mom walks in. She reaches around her son’s boulder-sized biceps for a hug.
“Are you staying for dinner?”
“I’m not sure.”
By nightfall, though, Choi will surely be gone. He’s getting out of Tustin, maybe for good.
Monumental change has unsettled the 28-year-old combat veteran and his family. In March, on national television, he said, “I am gay.”
That was news to a lot of people, including his bosses. And, the three short words thrust Choi into the limelight, booked his calendar with equal-rights rallies – and earned him a pink slip from the military.
But all the cameras and microphones that have trailed Choi since then have captured only part of the story. They haven’t been privy to his parents’ distress, his past anxieties or his newfound sense of liberation.
Thousands of other troops have gotten booted for outing themselves (or being outed) as gay or lesbian. But, like clockwork, most have disappeared from public view. Choi figures he will too at some point.
But he’s not going away now, and he’s not going away quietly.
HIGH SCHOOL LOWS
Over loudspeakers, he ranted.
It was 1998, and President Clinton was getting grilled by national media for his then-alleged affair with a 22-year-old intern. At Tustin High School, Choi, 17, took on the role of Clinton scold. He locked himself in a room and commandeered the public address system to decry the commander-in-chief’s weakness and offer what he saw as a cure-all: faith in Jesus Christ.
Choi’s sister, Grace, then a freshman, recalls her brother’s outburst as “surprising, but not embarrassing.”
Their dad, a Baptist minister who fought in the South Korean Army, helped raise his three kids to battle against injustice and sin. Years later, that duty to speak out would inspire Choi to talk about his sexuality – and throw a crimp in their father-son relationship.
“I always think of the story of a throng of people telling Christ to silence his disciples,” Choi says, adding: “And Christ said, ‘… if they keep quiet, the rocks will cry out.’”
But, in high school at least, Choi’s bold talk came with a cost. The acne-faced student body president lost his job as morning news announcer, and was forced into a sabbatical from student government.
Graduation cleaned his slate. Reinstated as president, the straight-A student gave a parting address to his peers. And, bound for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Choi left a rousing, two-page letter in the back of his own yearbook.
“Leave your kingdom,” he wrote to himself, “to be a lonely plebe down in the dump.”
STANDING UP
In a forest near the academy, Choi smeared earth-tone paint on his face and hunkered down with his rifle. Energy-sapping practice missions, he says, were key to his college experience.
On campus, Choi studied environmental engineering. Critically, he also began mastering Arabic.
And he held onto his faith. He led Bible studies in the dorms and recited the “Cadet Prayer” every Sunday with the West Point choir. “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong,” he prayed, “and to never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.”
Still, Choi concealed a truth. Since fourth grade, he had begged God to take away his attraction to other males. In college, he says, he remained unwilling to “explore” his sexuality.
In 2003, the Iraq War kicked into gear. Choi, now clear-faced and brawny, was soon sent to serve in the Persian Gulf.
There, he says he “greased hands” with elder Muslim Sheikhs, patrolled the Triangle of Death and designed a reverse-osmosis water plant for Baghdad citizens. He also passed on his knowledge of Arabic, as a teacher to thousands of American troops.
Throughout it all, compelled by the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Choi kept mum about his sexual preference.
His final wartime task, delivering backpacks full of cash to contractors, kept him awake at night. It was around the time of that mission, sleepless in the desert, that he started asking a tough question:
Do I really want to keep lying?
When his tour ended, he wanted to boomerang back to Iraq. But that dream was brought to a halt in March when, on behalf of scores of West Point alumni and active-duty servicemembers, he went public with his sexual orientation.
WAR IN PEACE
On his last afternoon in town, rice steams in the kitchen as, upstairs, Choi sorts through a box of Army accolades.
“Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be one of those stodgy old veterans wearing all his stuff,” he says, laughing, clutching a handful of medals.
Proud but tired of the half-truth, the highly decorated soldier returned from Iraq in 2008 and ditched reenlistment. Instead, he became a platoon leader in the National Guard. Stationed in New York, he met someone, parked down the street and lived in his car to be close to his first boyfriend.
Then Choi came home to Tustin to come out to his mom and dad – 19 times in fact, to show he wasn’t bluffing. He handed his dad a copy of the book “Loving Someone Gay.” A few days later he discovered it unopened on the floor of his closet.
“They don’t accept it,” Choi says. “And I don’t think they will anytime soon.”
Neither will the military. After his first of several prime time TV appearances, Choi, the rare Arabic-speaking serviceman, received an ultimatum from his employer – accept discharge or stand trial.
His chances before a judge seem slim, based on the dismissal of 12,500 past soldiers.
But he believes the fortunes of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian members of the armed forced could be changed if Congress were to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a move President Obama favors. So, Choi keeps talking to news anchors and shouting to crowds, which strains his home life – and, recently, compelled him to pack up and move.
“Silence is not a right,” Choi says.
“Silence is an unacceptable, inexcusable wrong.”
See When asked, this gay soldier told
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L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center to President Obama: ‘We Need Action and We Need It Now!’
Center CEO Welcomes Obama to L.A. With Open Letter, Urging Him to Fulfill Campaign Promises and Speak Out in Favor of LGBT Equality
LOS ANGELES, CA — The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Chief Executive Officer Lorri L. Jean released the following letter to President Barack Obama today:
Welcome to California, Mr. President. I welcome you with a heavy heart because of the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Prop. 8, relegating same-sex couples to second-class status and denying us that most noble promise of America, “liberty and justice for all.”
You are arriving in Los Angeles on the heels of emotional demonstrations throughout California and our nation and your silence at such a time speaks volumes. LGBT people and our allies have the “audacity to hope” for a country that treats us fairly and equally and for a President with the will to stand up for those ideals. From you we expect nothing less.
We know the country faces many serious challenges and we have strived to be patient. We’ve waited for the slightest sign you would live up to your promise to be a “fierce advocate” for our equal rights while watching gay and lesbian members of the armed forces, who have never been more needed, get discharged from the military. And so far you have done nothing. No stop loss order. No call to cease such foolish and discriminatory actions that make our nation less safe.
You pledged to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Mr. President. You promised to support a “complete repeal” of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and pledged to advocate for legislation that would give same-sex couples the 1,100+ federal rights and benefits we are denied, including the same rights to social security benefits. You said, “Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples.”
What of those promises, Mr. President?
Your commitment to repeal DOMA has been removed from the White House Web site. Your promise to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was removed and then replaced with a watered-down version. And in the aftermath of yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling, you have remained silent while your press secretary summarily dismisses questions about the issue.
We not only need to hear from our President, we need his action. And we need it now.
We need your words, Mr. President. But we also need your deeds. We expect you to fulfill the promises you made to us. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Do not delay, Mr. President. The time for action is now.
Sincerely, Lorri L. Jean Chief Executive Officer L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/la-gay-lesbia…
California School Bans Sixth I Presentation on Harvey Milk
California School Bans Sixth
Grader’s Presentation on Harvey MilkFaces Possible
ACLU Lawsuit For Violation Of State Education Code
RAMONA, CA – Wrongly citing a school policy on sex education, a
California
school illegally censored a sixth grader’s classroom presentation about Harvey
Milk earlier this month. According
to a demand letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union to the
Ramona Unified School
District today, the school violated Natalie Jones’s
free speech rights when it refused to allow her to give the presentation in
class. Instead, the school
improperly required classmates to get parental permission to see the
presentation during a lunch recess.
“This whole thing is unbelievable –
first my daughter got called into the principal’s office as if she were in some
kind of trouble, and then they treated her presentation like it was something
icky,” said Bonnie Jones, mother of the Mt. Woodson Elementary School
student. “Harvey Milk was an
elected official in this state and an important person in history. To
say my daughter’s presentation is
’sex education’ because Harvey Milk happened to be gay is completely
wrong.”
The assignment, part of an
independent research project class, was originally to prepare a written report
on any topic. Natalie Jones, who
was inspired to write about Harvey Milk after watching Sean Penn win an Academy
Award for portraying him, got a score of 49 out of a possible 50 points on the
written report. Students were then
told to make PowerPoint presentations about their reports, which they
would show
to other students in the class. The
day before Natalie was to give her 12-page presentation she was called into the
principal’s office and told she couldn’t do so.
When Bonnie Jones spoke with the
superintendent about the presentation, he said Natalie couldn’t give her
presentation because of a district board policy on “Family Life/Sex
Education.” A few days later, the
school sent letters to parents of students in the class, explaining that her
presentation would be held during a lunch recess on May 8, and that students
could only attend if they had parental permission.
“The principal and superintendent
grossly misinterpreted school policy.
They illegally censored student speech protected by the First Amendment
and the California Education Code,” said David
Blair-Loy, Legal Director of the ACLU of San Diego and
Imperial
Counties. “Writing or talking about a gay
historical figure who advocated for equal rights for LGBT Californians is in no
way the same thing as talking about sex, and school officials should
not pretend
otherwise.”
The Ramona Unified School
District policy on “Family Life/Sex
Education” reads in part:
“(P)arents/guardians shall be
notified in writing about any instruction in which human reproductive
organs and
their functions, processes, or sexually transmitted diseases are described,
illustrated, or discussed. In
addition, before any instruction on family life, human sexuality, AIDS or
sexually transmitted diseases is given, the parent/guardian shall be provided
with written notice explaining that the instruction will be
given…”
“Schools that act as if any mention
of the existence of gay people is something too controversial or ’sensitive’ to
discuss are doing a disservice to their students,” said Elizabeth
Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s
national LGBT Project. “This school
completely overstepped its bounds in trying to silence Natalie Jones
by shunting
her presentation off to a lunch recess time and misusing a school policy to
justify requiring parental permission to see it.”
In today’s letter, the ACLU is
demanding that the school:
·
Apologize in writing to Natalie
Jones and send a letter about that apology to all the parents who were sent the
principal’s letter about the presentation
·
Give
Natalie Jones an opportunity to give her presentation to all the other members
of her independent research project class
·
Clarify
in writing that the parental notification and permission portion of the “Family
Life/Sex Education” policy only applies to the curricula identified as “course
content” for “Family Life/Sex Education instruction”
The ACLU is giving the district
five days to respond or it may file a lawsuit on Bonnie and Natalie Jones’s
behalf.
Harvey Milk, one of Time Magazine’s “Time 100 Heroes and
Icons of the 20th Century” in 1999, has been the subject of several books, an
opera, a documentary film that won the 1984 Academy Award for Documentary
Feature, and a feature film released last year that won two Academy Awards for
Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.
Milk’s birthday, the subject of a bill pending in the California legislature
that would make it a state holiday, is this Friday.
For additional information,
including copies of Natalie Jones’s presentation on Harvey Milk, the school’s
letter to parents, and the Ramona U.S.D. “Family Life/Sex Education” policy,
visit http://www.aclu.org/Milk.
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Global video mashup for International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia 2009 hits the Internet
359 people from 48 countries take part in massive global web video project to mark the IDAHO 2009
A global project to create a public awareness video for the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHO) on May 17 has attracted the participation of 359 people from 48 countries across six continents around the world. The groundbreaking project is a joint undertaking of the Paris-based IDAHO Committee and the social network Gays.com, attracting 50,000 people to its website within a month.
Said Louis-Georges Tin, founder of the IDAHO committee, “We are overwhelmed and, at the same time, humbled by this torrent of enthusiastic support that has poured in from all four corners of the world since we kickstarted the video project in April. People have made the effort to go to such places as the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Merlion, the Petronas Twin Towers and the Eiffel Tower to shoot their video, contributing to the spectacular visual feast you see in the mashup.”
In April, members of the global LGBT community were invited to step out in front of the camera and in their own language introduce themselves, state where they are from and how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The result is a video that sends the powerful message that LGBT individuals are present in every country, every society and every corner of the world. Participants submitted videos in all of the world’s key languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil and even American Sign Language.
In addition to the groundswell of support from local communities from around the globe, renowned celebrities, activists, politicians and web personalities have also participated in the project. These include (in alphabetical order):
Ali Hili: Gay Iraqi activist now living in exile in London and founder of the Iraqi-LGBT group
ANT: Host of VH1 reality series Celebrity Fit Club and U.S. of ANT on MTV’s LOGO channel
Lizzy the Lezzy: Animated lesbian standup comedy character with a cult following on Youtube
Michael Buckley: Celebrity host of the entertainment show What the Buck, the 5th most subscribed comedy channel of all time on Youtube
Michael Kauch: German member of parliament and coordinator of the gay and lesbian policy for the Free Democratic Party
Stephen Williams: British Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Bristol West
Said Kenneth Tan, spokesperson for Gays.com, “Much has been said about Stonewall 2.0 and netroots activism since the Proposition 8 vote against gay marriage in California. This project was made possible only by the Internet, and we believe there are a limitless number of opportunities for the LGBT community to harness the power of the Internet to educate, raise awareness, promote equality, and to debunk myths. We have been honoured to partner with the IDAHO Committee in the execution of such an amazing project.”
Prior to the launch of the video, Gays.com announced that it experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which began at approximately 3.50am Hong Kong time on May 15, 2009, causing the entire website to be inaccessible.
A distributed denial of service attack occurs when a multitude of systems attempt to flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system with illegitimate website requests. The flood of traffic by these requests cause the Internet bandwidth of the attacked site to be consumed to such an extent that the website is inaccessible to other legitimate users.
Said Kenneth Tan, Gays.com spokesperson, “The timing of this DDoS attack on Gays.com is by no means a coincidence. We have been working for weeks on this high profile video campaign together with the Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The final product of this campaign, a public awareness video, was going to be launched on the campaign site at http://gays.com/idaho on Sunday. This is a well-timed, well-orchestrated assault by a large botnet with tens of thousands of PCs sending requests to our site. Engineers with our Internet Service Provider remarked they have never seen an attack of this intensity before. We deplore these unscrupulous actions by an organised group to harrass, intimidate and silence us for what we are doing.”
Added Tan, “Our technical staff are now working round the clock to restore services to legitimate users. In the meanwhile, we are going through our access logs, gathering information through various mechanisms and connecting the dots to identify the origin of the attacks. We will be working with law enforcement officials to bring the cyberterrorists to justice.”
The video “IDAHO 2009: One Voice, One Message, Heard Around the World” is now accessible at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Rp8ep_ezE
The Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) is a network of activists, present in over 50 countries, who seek to promote the idea of an international day against homophobia and transphobia. This day has been recognized officially by a number of governments around the world and provides an opportunity for the LGBT movement across the world to unite in a powerful demonstration of collective visibility.
Gays.com was designed for members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as the world’s first LGBT social networking website that designed for real people with real names an real world connections. The site aims to build an authentic social environment that helps people maintain their relationships with people they actually know. Launched in May 2008, Gays.com is headquartered in Hong Kong with a development team spread between Shanghai, China and Bielefeld, Germany.
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PRINCETON: Students picket same-sex marriage opponents
PRINCETON — Waving umbrellas and posters, around 30 Princeton students danced and cheered in front of the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) Nassau Street offices Wednesday to voice disapproval of the group’s opposition to same-sex marriage.
NOM, which was founded in 2007 by Princeton politics professor Robert George and Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, is a nonprofit organization that serves as a resource for organized opposition to same-sex marriage around the country, according to its Web site. The group is based in Princeton, across the street from the university.
”The fact that NOM exists so close to campus and that it was founded by a Princeton professor, yet that there hasn’t been much discussion about the issue, gives the impression that Princeton is ambivalent,” said Emily Sung, a sophomore who helped organize the protest. “That’s what we’re combating. We want to end the silence.”
Many protestors showed up in rain gear, referencing NOM’s “Gathering Storm” commercial, which features actors standing in front of a foreboding background of storm clouds. The commercial, part of NOM’s $1.5 million “Religious Liberty Ad Campaign,” warns of a coming “storm” in the fight over same-sex marriage.
See PRINCETON: Students picket same-sex marriage opponents
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Obama Needs to End Silence on Biggest Civil Rights Move of Our Time
Barack Obama has appointed a hyperactive director of faith-based initiatives, Josh DuBois, and sees little problem continuing the blurring of church and state that George W. Bush and Bill Clinton initiated in their terms. I remain very uncomfortable with evangelicals and other preachers — many of whom have narrow and bigoted views of America’s 21st century civil rights challenges. See Obama Needs to End Silence on Biggest Civil Rights Move of Our Time
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Larry Kramer Blasts Yale’s ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Gay History
When more than 300 Yale alumni and their guests arrived at Yale for the University’s first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender alumni reunion this weekend, they found not only camaraderie, but also controversy.
The first-ever recipient of the GALA Lifetime Achievement Award, gay activist Larry Kramer ’57, harshly rebuked the University for its treatment of gay history as an academic field during the three-day reunion, which was jointly organized by the LGBT alumni association Yale GALA and the Association of Yale Alumni. At a dinner ceremony Saturday, Kramer said the University has wrongly relegated the study of gay history to LGBT studies, arguing that there is a significant semantic difference between gay “history” and gay “studies.”
Declaring that queer and gender theories are “relatively useless,” Kramer — who was among the first to call for action against the AIDS crisis — said gay history has been “hijacked” by queer theorists.
Kramer and Yale have clashed before; in the mid-nineties, Yale rejected a sizable gift from Kramer to create either an endowed chair in gay and lesbian studies or a student center for gay students. In 2001, Kramer’s brother, Arthur Kramer ’49, gave a $1 million gift in Larry’s name to found the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies, which was closed after five years when the gift was spent.
In order to demonstrate the importance of gay history, Kramer declared that he believes many prominent American historical figures were gay, including George Washington, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.
The study of gay history is therefore important as a means of promoting acceptance for LGBT individuals, Kramer said.
“The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen because most of the world hates us,” he said. “They don’t know we’re related to Washington and Lincoln.”
While alumni sat attentively throughout the speech and gave Kramer a standing ovation, some said afterwards that they were standing not necessarily out of agreement with Kramer, but rather out of respect for his activism in the wake of AIDS.
“He’s been a provocateur all of his career, since the AIDS crisis,” said Ken Demario ’64. “I don’t know if this was an appropriate forum for as nasty a broadside as his was against the University.”
In a brief interview after the speech, Provost Peter Salovey said he agreed that the study of LGBT history is important.
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Students’ silence supports gay rights
More than a third of all Vashon High School students took part in the national Day of Silence April 17, showing their support for the school’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) community by refraining from speaking all day. They wore stickers indicating their level of participation: completely silent, silent unless speaking was necessary or speaking but supportive of the day’s actions. Those who chose silence, said teacher Marcella Murphy, did so “because gay and lesbian students feel silenced by their peers. They feel they can’t speak out on who they really are because they feel harassed or bullied.” The event raises awareness of the LGBTQ community at Vashon High School and nationwide, said Murphy, advisor of the school’s Gay Straight Alliance, which sponsored the event.
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Arizona School Agrees To Lift Rainbow Ban Following ACLU Demands; Gay Student Now Allowed To Wear Wristband
Quintanilla contacted the ACLU in February after her son Chris’s principal told her he wouldn’t allow her son to wear his cloth wristband with words “Rainbows are gay” to school anymore. Last week, the school finally gave assurances to the ACLU that it would not censor Quintanilla’s wristband in the future.
“Students have a constitutional right to free speech at school, and school officials should be aware of their responsibility for upholding this cornerstone of our freedom,” said Elizabeth Gill, staff attorney for the ACLU national Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project. “This district was right to come to its senses and back down from violating the First Amendment, because students have 40 years of Supreme Court precedent on their side when schools do this kind of thing.”
In its letter, the ACLU reminded PUSD officials about the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines in which the Court wrote, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights… at the schoolhouse gate.” The letter also pointed to Gillman v. Holmes County School District, a Florida case in which a high school principal had attempted to ban symbols in support of LGBT rights, including rainbows, at school. In that case, a federal judge ruled last May that the school had violated students’ First Amendment rights. Both cases were handled by the ACLU, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Tinker decision in February.
“The schools we entrust to teach our children about society and their freedoms should know better than to violate one of our most fundamental freedoms,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “We’re glad that PUSD has seen the light about this, but we’re going to be keeping an eye on this district and hold them to their word that they’ll respect the First Amendment from now on.”
The letter the ACLU sent to the district last month is available here:
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/lgbt/schoolsyouth/az_armb_letter.pdf.
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