NY Times On Iraqi Gays

Last week I asked gays to be mindful that despite victories in Iowa (and now Vermont & D.C.) we still had a long way to go to provide the most basic human rights to gays in The Middle East.

My piece was met with more scorn that I expected. One reader told me that we need to mind our own business! I truly hope isolationism is not the lesson that the left has learned from the Iraq War.

Now, The New York Times has stepped up with a brilliant (yet horrible) piece on gay Iraqis. It's worse than I thought.

In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.

“Three of my closest friends have been killed during the past two weeks alone,” said Basim, 23, a hairdresser. “They had been planning to go to a cafe away from Sadr City because we don’t feel safe here, but they killed them on the way. I had planned to go with them, but fortunately I didn’t.”

The entire piece is worth a read for a look inside Iraq's developing gay culture. It's extraordinarily unfair of American gays to advocate for gays to come out and express themselves and then abandon them to be murdered by thugs.

Queerty has more on what you can do.