Guest Post: A Saudi Perspective, Part 1 منظور سعودي
By: Tariq Aziz
Forward by: Jeremy Boulat (me)
With deep gratitude towards Tariq Aziz, I present the 1st part of Tariq's thoughts, in a rough translation from Arabic. Tariq is a Saudi Arabian with a popular Twitter account and blog. I present this with no personal comment as I want it to stand on its own merit. Let me just say that in KSA being LGBT is like walking on a tightrope between two very tall buildings... without a net.I conducted a survey through my Twitter account on the sexual orientation of individuals, males and females, in our societies: is it heterosexual, in the sense of attraction to the opposite sex, or homosexual, in the sense of attraction to the same sex, or bisexual, in the sense of attraction to both the same sex and the opposite sex?
More than four thousand people participated in it, and the result was that 20% are homosexual, 22% are bisexual, and 58% are heterosexual, which means that 42% of society is sexually attracted to the same sex and is able to establish a same-sex relationship Integrated without being disgusted or disgusted by it!
The issue of homosexuality is a sensitive and silenced topic in our society, despite its presence at a significant rate. Its occurrence in our society is higher than the percentage of Shiites in Saudi Arabia and even higher than the proportion of Shiites worldwide, for example!
Homosexuality is also present in the rest of Western and Eastern societies alike and throughout time!
The issue of homosexuals is an issue that is no less important than any issue concerning other minorities in the world, whether religious, ethnic or sexual minorities. There is no room for it to be taken lightly or to belittle the importance and need to pay attention to it.
Reluctance to approach the subject does not provide anything. Rejection and contempt is presented in a traditional way that focuses on its contravention of common sense, and it is one of the major sins that is forbidden in Sharia and other well-known traditional justifications.
We are still among the societies that believe that homosexuality is a disease that requires treatment in any way. This is despite the fact that it was removed from the list of diseases from the DSM by the APA in 1973, and not classified as a disease since 1990 by the World Health Organization. Rather, as a result of medical and scientific progress based on recent data and numerous psychological and social studies in this field, it is considered that homophobia is disease and not homosexuality. Research has also shown that homosexuality is a form of natural and positive sexual diversity among humans, and that it does not have a negative impact on humanity. Rather, it is the fight against it that carries negative effects that could be catastrophic!
In terms of human rights, the issue of homosexuality is one of the most important contemporary issues in the field of minority rights, justice and equality, and gay rights have been considered as basic human rights according to Amnesty International, in addition to the issuance of a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council to support gay rights as human and civil rights worldwide. It was signed by most of the member states whose societies began to enact laws in their favor and criminalize incitement against them and consider discrimination against them a hate crime, which helped improve their lives and their ability to form integrated emotional relationships with social, psychological and emotional stability not different from the rest of heterosexual human beings, including many successful and creative people. And homosexuals are brilliant in many fields, such as art, science, media, sports, politics, etc.
On the other hand, a significant minority objected to that decision, the majority of whom belonged to Arab and Islamic countries and other societies characterized by ignorance, backwardness and general human persecution.
To this day, we continue to push gays and lesbians to practice their homosexuality in unsafe or suspicious ways. This constitutes a danger to their health, harm to their psyche, destroys their morals, or a hideous exploitation of them that is not without contempt, blackmail or bullying, by forcing them to suppress and conceal their sexual feelings and orientations, and forcing them to live by pretending they are different even in marriage!
How many young men married a lesbian because she is obliged for social reasons and complications and cannot exchange him for what he wants in terms of emotions, feelings and sexual life, so that the husband falls into a cycle of questions and self-doubt so that their relationship becomes destructive to dreams and hopes and is like a tragedy that is not without catastrophic negative effects on both parties, or the opposite!
Those who did not come from space and do not live outside our societies, they are either our brothers or sisters, our sons or daughters, our relatives and friends or acquaintances, neighbors or colleagues!
They live among us with their suffering and pain in a society that despises them just because they express or practice their sexual orientation, and religious programming for their permanent reprimand for their conscience and their sense of shame and their living in a cycle of confusion, anxiety, depression, blame, and the belief that God hates them and will torment them most, or that they are pathetic patients in the best case, so that all this is preventing them. From reconciling with themselves first, and integrating into their societies without concealment or concealment, second.
I do not exaggerate if I say that homosexuals are the most peaceful, persecuted, and deprived minority of rights, appreciation and respect in our societies, and they are distorted, despised, abused, incited, and discrimination is systematically practiced against them, even though they are an essential component of the fabric of society, for nothing but extreme ignorance of the reality of homosexuality in all respects. And from all sides, even those who pay lip service to humanity and accept individual differences, or those associated with knowledge, culture and erudition!
Either linking it to AIDS and other STIs with all ignorance and without regard to the development of means of protection and precautions in sexual intercourse required in homosexual or heterosexual relations alike, or rejecting homosexuality on the pretext that animals are without a mind and nevertheless rise above it and do not practice it, while this is an essentially false argument for several reasons, the most important of which is that it is a false claim because homosexuality exists among animals. The fact that there are those who are ignorant of this does not give value to the citation of animals over their rejection, or to be presented as a sexual relationship of brute and not human without regard to love, feelings and emotions as if homosexual relations are just about sex!
Or that it is mixed without justification with issues of harassment, rape, and sex with children or animals, without the slightest consideration of basic principles whose violation does not differ between same-sex or heterosexual relationships, such as the capacity and consent between the two parties to engage in sex or exchange of love that are available in same-sex relationships, and are completely absent with children or animals and cases of harassment and rape. This in addition to the fact that there is failure to understand the idea that homosexuality as a sexual orientation differs from sexual identity and is not a choice nor is it subject to the will and is not transferable or change, so in the case of heterosexual orientation. Just as the heterosexual person cannot find himself in a homosexual relationship, but may be disgusted by the thought of it, so does a fully homosexual person feel disgust with a heterosexual relationship.
Granting them their freedoms and rights does not mean imposing homosexuality on everyone, for their homosexuality is on themselves and for heterosexuals, their lives are as it is.
What makes the issue more complicated is the weight of religious heritage and its sanctity with its traditional understanding of homosexuals, which wastes their blood, permits killing them and calls for their extermination in the most brutal and harsh ways and contradicts mercy and humanity, in a society that inserts religion as a standard in almost everything!
Despite the existence of modern religious trends that began to reconcile with homosexuality in the interest of man, away from religious rigidity and reverence for his rulings, which date back to centuries ago, in which there is a difference in human conditions, developments, legal and cognitive progress, and in line with the idea of divine justice and its broad mercy and that a heavenly religion that represents mercy and humanity cannot stand against a peaceful group of people without having a place in it, whether some Christian churches, as well as some Islamic views in the West, they (homosexuals) do not have any presence or acceptance in our Arab societies so far.
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I believe that accepting homosexuals and recognizing their rights will raise the human value in our societies and enhance diversity and respect for difference regardless of the sexual orientation and appearance of the individual, and it also protects heterosexual males and females from getting involved in homosexual marriage because they are in disguise and do not have another social option to live in their societies!
Homosexuals and heterosexuals remain, and neither of them compels the other to practice what he does not accept, and each party shall bear the consequences of his sexual orientation as long as options are available to him, and he has his rights to facilitate his life, and its requirements are available and acceptable socially, legally and medically based on that inclinations!
Protection such as those for social relations, love, marriage, adoption, fertility, IVF, etc should be provided.
We need an intensive media awareness campaign to review humanly, socially, legally, religiously and cognitively in this field, because the homosexual issue is a just human issue before anything else, and homosexuals if it is not you may be your son, daughter, brother, sister, relative, relative, or any of your acquaintances and colleagues, dear you, but he cannot disclose to you his suffering and pain for fear of being killed or rejected, ostracized, belittled and excluded!
The aim of this is not to invite everyone to practice or spread homosexuality because this is unrealistic and not fundamentally required. Homosexuality is not a religion or belief that can be advocated, spread and embraced, nor an idea that can be convinced and applied, it is an involuntary sexual and emotional orientation and tendency that cannot be altered or converted. Allowing its owner to practice it and live through it will not affect the attitude of heterosexuals, who will remain as they are with their sexual orientations, lives and reproduction, and no one will harm or assault them and will not be forced to practice homosexuality as some of us fancy!
Just as your support for women's rights does not necessarily mean that you are a woman and will not make you so if you are not primarily a woman, as well as your support for children's rights does not require you to be a child nor does it make you so, and also with regard to support for animal rights and other issues, support for gay rights is not required to be gay. It will not make you so just because of their support, because the issue is a humanitarian and human rights issue, and the majority of societies that gave homosexuals their rights and voted for them were the majority heterosexual and not gay!
In my opinion, the time has come to recognize the rights, dignity, and humanity of homosexuals, and not to underestimate them or their cause as if it were a marginal or imported matter that does not concern us. In our ignorance, we continue to oppress them, reject them, hate them, persecute them and rob them of their most basic rights, feel ashamed of them, complicate their lives and psyche, and force them to hide instead of accepting them!?
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Some sources:
1) http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6803&Itemid=1926
2) http://www.apa.org/about/policy/sexual-orientation.aspx
3) http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/Amer_Psychological_Assn_Amicus_Curiae_Brief.pdf
Note: Twitter surveys give quick indicators and do not represent a scientific research or scientific study, so they do not substitute for specialized studies and statistics, taking into account the criteria for selecting samples to give more accurate results whenever the sample is wider and more comprehensive and subject to high standards that require greater effort.
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