OK, so maybe Huffington Post writer Johann Hari didn’t exactly say gays were being beheaded in the Deep South, but that’s exactly what he implied by saying that the Deep South one of the most homophobic places on Earth.
This bizarre assertion came in an article that defended Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie about a gay Austrian fashion designer:
The joke isn’t on gay people; it’s on the bigots who, when confronted with this creation, believe he is real, and typical of gays. Baron Cohen literally risked his life to make the point. He went to some of the most homophobic places on earth — the refugee camps of the Middle East, and the Deep South of the US — and behaved as a gargoyle drawn from the subconscious fears of homophobes.
There you have it. Homophobia is as bad in the American South as it is in the Middle East. Except for one thing. Unless we’re mistaken, they’re only comparable in the twisted mind of Johann Hari.
Hari should read what the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association says about homosexuality in Islamic countries:
Homosexuality is illegal in most Muslim countries and punishable by death in several. Amnesty International, Homan (an exiled Iranian group) and other human rights groups regularly report shocking abuses and crimes against homosexuals. For example, in April 2001, nine gay men were given prison terms of 4 to 5 years with 2400 to 2600 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Abdul Sami (18) and Bismillah (22) were killed by the Taliban by having a wall toppled on them in 1998. In 2001, 52 men were arrested following a party on a river boat and charged with “immoral behaviour” and “contempt of religion” in Egypt (a supposedly “moderate” Islamic country). Many were given prison sentences with hard labour.
Iran has been particularly enthusiastic in its persecution of homosexuals. Estimates of the numbers of gay and lesbian people this evil regime has murdered range from hundreds to thousands but, as many executions are not public, and bereaved families may cover up the reasons out of shame, the higher estimates are plausible. Those cases that have been publicised include three gay men and two lesbians beheaded in January 1990, and 70 people executed in the early 1980s for trying to set up a lesbian and gay organisation. The Iranian Chief Justice, Morteza Moghtadai, justified the 1990 beheadings by saying, “The religious punishment for the despicable act of homosexuality is death for both parties.” False, trumped-up charges of homosexuality are also used to suppress political opponents, as happened to Dr Ali Mozaffarian, a Sunni Muslim leader executed in Shiraz in 1992.
Now we readily admit that we can’t read every newspaper in the world every day. So we may have missed the stories about gays being beheaded in Alabama and lesbians sentenced to hard labor in Mississippi.
Or maybe there’s another possibility:
Perhaps the HuffPo writer is as prejudiced against Southerners as he claims Southerners are against homosexuals.
Source: HuffingtonPost.com, GALHA.org
