Execution

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Five days before we took to the streets at the Equality March in Washington, DC another execution took place in Iran. The Iranian Queer Railroad http://www.irqr.net reports that on October 6, 2009, Rahim Mohammadi was executed in Tabriz, a city in northwest Iran, after being convicted of sexual abuse and rape during sexual relations between males (a homosexual act called Lavat).

According to Rahim's lawyer, Mr. Mohammad Mostafayi, there was not enough evidence presented to the court to prove such accusations; the court nevertheless decided that once a person is convicted of Lavat, he must be executed. Mostafayi, who had not been informed of the court's decision once it was handed down - and was only contacted after his client Rahim had been executed - wrote a letter of further explanation to the authorities. You can read the full account of this horrific miscarriage of so called justice at www.irqr.net.

We have to write Rights of Passage faster.

March for Equality

Photos: Gay Pope?; Bob and Ed at the Capitol

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In the morning paper openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was quoted as saying that the march for equality here in Washington, DC was an emotional release but a waste of time. But as Robert and I, along with thousands of others from all across America passed noisily in front of the White House, I felt a chill. I think it was hope surging through my body. At the same moment, I turned to Robert and said, I feel like crying - this energy, this sea of humanity surrounding us was certainly not a waste of time.

A call to action was echoing among us. LGBT people of all ages and walks of life had shown up from all over the country to be counted. We were getting organized for a national battle. Everyone seemed to share the sentiment that the city by city, state by state, struggle for equality was falling short. It was at the top, that we needed to assert ourselves. Without out pressing the issue of our full constitutional rights as American citizens our movement would continue to sputter along endlessly.

The spirit of the crowd was unified. It was past time to ask and high time to demand our rights. Our patience has worn thin and the rhetoric of our elected leaders rings increasingly hollow. Once again, we heard our newly elected President promise to lift the ban on gays in the military and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He spoke eloquently at a Human Rights Campaign black tie affair but all of us marching the next afternoon wondered if this promise was forgotten long before dessert was served that evening.

We need to turn the heat up. We need to force the issue of our equality at every opportunity. Change must come at the federal level. The issue of our equal protection under the law is our constitutional right. This demand must infiltrate every piece of legislation spinning out of Congress. There is no silencing us until we possess what we as Americans are entitled to.

As our procession heads up Capitol Hill I notice the hope on everyone’s faces. We all surge forward towards the voices of the speakers on stage calling us to organize anew and to be unrelentingly intentional in our fight for equality.

There is a young man from Montana speaking at the podium. With great emotion in his voice he urges all of us to stay involved. He then asks us to sign up online at Equalityacrossamerica.org or to text our e-mail address & zip code to 37686. Suddenly we are surrounded by a sea of electronic devices with screens aglow beneath the afternoon sun.



We will no doubt have to march together again.

Rights and Wrongs

Gay protester with police officer in China

Guangzhou, China:
The Associated Press reports that on August 25, 2009 when 6 or 7 police officers descended upon People’s Park to “sweep it clean of homosexuals” they encountered an unexpected surprise. Typically, when gay men spot Chinese law enforcement arriving in the park they scatter quickly. Not this time. One brave man stood fast and was soon joined by more than 50 others who faced off with the cops. Seeing they were outnumbered the police made a hasty retreat. It’s already been a good year for LGBT defiance in China. last June, the first LGBT march was held in Shanghai, the nations commercial capital.


Uruguay gay rights front and center

Uruguay, South America:
In another bold move by the Uruguayan socialist government, this South American country is poised to become the first in the region to legalize gay adoption. The action must yet pass the Senate but is expected to do so. This is the third such legal action taken by the Uruguayan government in the last two years to extend more rights to homosexuals. As we have previously reported, in December 2007, the Congress legalized civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. In May of this year, Tabare Vazquez, the first leftist president in Uruguayan history, opened access for homosexuals to military schools. The Roman Catholic Church voiced disapproval. Big surprise.


A woman is disciplined in public

Banda Aceh, Indonesia:
In the last elections the people of this devoutly Muslim province voted to install a more moderate government. In the final days before the transfer of power, the outgoing hardliner’s pushed through new laws with steep punishments targeting adulterers and homosexuals. The legislation includes that offenders may be “stoned to death” for violating moral and religious codes common in Shariah law, a hard line interpretation of the Quran, the Muslim Holy Book.


Drop 377

India
The government of India decided on September 17, 2009 that it will not oppose the Delhi High Court verdict on Section 377 of the Penal Code, which decriminalizes homosexuality by “reading down” the section pertaining to same-sex relations between consenting adults in private. Indian activists are praising this decision as a symbol of tacit support for decriminalization in this landmark case.

Who Would You Want to Meet in a Dark Alley?

Beth-Sua at a vela. New York Times Photo


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I was at the acupuncturist this morning lying flat on my back with seven tiny needles stuck in me. "Howsa feel?" the doctor asked. I rub my head and frown. "Not so good, head hurts." Leaving out the pronouns and smaller words in general, I believe, will make me more understandable to Dr. Chau whose English is limited. Outside his storefront operation, the N Judah rumbles by causing the building to vibrate. Inside the dry, powdery smell of medicinal herbs is comforting. I'm looking forward to a restful hour on the couch. So I'm lying there with the needles and the heat lamps and the treacley Chinese/new age music playing softly in the background when my mind wanders in a southerly direction coming to rest in Oaxaca among the Muxe of Mexico in all their cosmetically enhanced, bewigged glory. To be honest all I know of these "mixed-gender" people is what I've read and seen in a New York Times article from about a year ago entitled "A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexcio."

Distinct indeed. Not only are they full fledged transvestites, but in rural Mexico they are very much out and about. Supported by their families, celebrated at parties and balls in their honor. There are pictures of them with their mothers, fathers and grandparents-- a rough looking lot to say the least and to be honest not the kind of people I'd want to bump into in a darkened alley, and yet they seem to have transcended centuries of hatred and homophobia without a moment of angst.

True no one smiles much but so what, they accept their girls for who they are, even consider them to have special intellectual and artistic gifts. Of her 13 year old Muxe grandson, one woman says, "it is how God sent him." A father extols his Muxe son's virtues by citing what a help he is to his mother; to both of them. " Why would I get mad," he wonders aloud. "Why would I reject him?" I'll leave you to ponder the rarity and wisdom of these two simple, uneducated peasants. So maybe I'm wrong, maybe they are exactly the kind of people I'd want to run into in the dark. Maybe I'd even seek them out with a flashlight and offer them free drinks at the bar of their choice.

From the article, one image in particular is quite arresting; a Muxe called Beth-Sua, born Orlando, is pictured head back, hair adorned with a nest of tiny silk roses and smoking a cigarette at a vela or community celebration. Maybe she's forty or forty five. If ever the line "don't fuck with me fellas" was meant to be uttered by anyone it would be Beth-Sua. She's an organizer and AIDS activist who makes her living embroidering huipiles, the traditional blouse of the Isthmus region. Was there ever anyone who appeared more comfortable in their powdered, mascared skin than Beth-Sua? I don't think so. You go girl! And don't change a hair for me--or anybody else.

Iraqi Impunity

Iraqi couple brutally tortured by Iraqi militia.
www.examiner.com


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When I interviewed Arsham Parsi, the Founder of the Iranian Queer Railroad www.irqr.net last year, I was horrified to learn of the widespread persecution of LGBT individuals in his country. I posted Arsham’s story of how he fled to Turkey and eventually was granted asylum in Canada on May 17, 2008. Since that time, Arsham has worked tirelessly to help other LGBT asylum seekers find sanctuary. But the trouble in the Middle East does not end there.

In neighboring Iraq, Human Rights Watch reports today that Militiamen are torturing and killing gay men with impunity. They are being beaten and left for dead in the streets. The use of glue to seal men’s rectum’s remains a common form of torture. Gay men are being systematically executed and then tossed in garbage bins. Public hangings are taking place in Baghdad with threats and abuses against homosexuals taking place in cities throughout the country. Shiite militias believe that homosexuality is a form of deviance that cannot be tolerated and social cleansing is ordained. “The dead probably already number in the hundreds” according to a source from the United Nation’s Mission for Iraq.

Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org) has just released a chilling report written by the intrepid Scott Long, Director of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender programs. They Want Us Exterminated: Murder Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq is eye opening to say the least. It is heartbreaking to read the first hand accounts of fear, violence, and murder. Iraqi police forces appear to be doing little to investigate or halt the killings. You can read the complete report at www.hrw.org.

But what to do? We’ve donated money to HRW - we all need to donate more. We must all sign the petition on HRW’s web site urging the UN to advocate more forcefully for global LGBT rights. We need to keep the media alerted and awaken the world to these atrocities.

We need to finish our play Rights of Passage sooner rather than later.

The Shape of Things

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Photo: Cactus Flower, Joshua Tree State Park

To celebrate Independence Day we went to Palm Springs on a short writers’ retreat. Since temperatures hovered around a blistering 105 each day it wasn’t too difficult to stay near the air conditioner with our laptop and bang out some work. Our primary goal for this self-imposed 5 day exile was to reassess our progress to date and to make further headway on our core storytelling structure. While there is still a very long process ahead for the making of the play, what follows is a snapshot of the shape of things for Rights of Passage.

After re-evaluating our winter 2009 sojourn to South East Asia, we have confirmed that the main story line in the play will unfold on the island of Bali, Indonesia. The golden rule of writing is to set forth with what you know. Having visited this unique and magical place 10 times in the last 23 years we have a solid understanding of the rich ceremonial based cultural traditions of Bali. This we believe, provides the perfect theatrical backdrop for our central character, a gay Hindu named Wayan, and his journey toward adulthood.

With Wayan’s personal rites of passage anchoring the center of the play we plan also to include simultaneous scenes that will momentarily suspend his journey at key junctures in the narrative. Expanding the storytelling in this way will accommodate comparative or contrasting LGBT voices and experiences from Africa, the Middle East, the European Union, Central Europe, Latin and North America.

The ongoing challenge, of course, is how to navigate and coordinate storytelling of such epic proportion. Writing aside, we’ve barely scratched the surface in our exploration of the use of media, puppetry, music, dance, and production design elements for the play. Truth be told, with such a culturally diverse pallet to work from, these decisions feel rather daunting at the moment. We expect, at some point, the characters in Rights of Passage will begin to assert their own control and provide answers to many of our questions. Still, it’s hard to be patient and trust that it will all come together in due course.

Our research continues to unveil so many stories aching to be told. The good news, at least for us as writers, is that we are finding more similarities than differences in the global LGBT human rights struggle than we had anticipated. While the continuum of progress is distinctly varied by region it appears that the root causes of LGBT oppression are eerily universal. There are indeed common threads that can be woven together to form the narrative of the play.

There is still much travel to occur, many interviews to conduct, and more than a few scenes to write. Such is the shape of things now and yet to come for Rights of Passage.

One of our aims is to incorporate the goals of the Yogyakarta Principles into the play. To find out more about them, click here:

http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/

Gay Window on the World

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United States:
Bravo to Gay rights activist Cleve Jones for announcing the National March for Equality in Washington, D.C. scheduled for National Coming Out Day October 11, 2009. http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com We need to show up in force and demand full equal rights. Now is the time to book your flight and hotel. With months to spare there are plenty of deals to be had!

In other news from the U.S., President Obama gets a thumbs down from us for his decision to grant partial domestic-partner benefits to federal workers. Obama called the move "only one step" that would be followed by the granting of health care and other benefits, once Congress votes to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. The President gets limited points for this watered down version of his campaign pledge and should have found a way around DOMA to enact full benefits immediately.

Credit for the President, should however, be given where credit is due. According to Gay and Lesbian Leadership Smart Brief, (sign up at http://www.smartbrief.com/lgbt/)
married, same-sex couples have received approval from the Obama administration to apply for passports using their spouse's last name. The issue was cited in a federal lawsuit filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders that seeks to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.

South America:
Last month Xiomara Duran, a 27-year old transwoman, was killed by six gunshots fired by an unknown individual on Avenida Libertador in Caracas. This is the fourth murder to affect the Caracas transgender community in the last six months. In the past 10 months, two transpeople were shot to death and another transperson was stabbed to death in Caracas.

Middle East:
Reports of torture in Iraq persist. Among them, gay men are being entrapped. Their persecutors then bring them to undisclosed locations, seal their anuses shut with super-glue and then force them to ingest laxatives.

In Turkey, a prominent 28 year old transgender activist, Ebru Sokan, was stabbed to death in her Istanbul home on June 15, 2009.

Cambodia:
We’ve previously covered the Gay Pride Festival held in Phnom Penh this past May. but wanted to share that the organizers have reported that the event has inspired new activism in the region. The five-day event raised awareness of the LGBT community and advanced efforts in education, organizing, health initiatives, the arts and social networking. Plans for next year’s festival are already underway.