A gay soldier Assad’s army
Contents:
GAYS
Early the morng on June 28, 1969, New York police raid the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street, the cy’s most popular gay bar. From a CIA memorandum entled “Homosexual Invtigatns” that was wrten 1980 for the purpose of vtigatg lleagu.
GAY MEN
From plats submted by four San Diego firemen who were orred to drive a fire tck a July 21 gay-pri para. At a fom on same-sex marriage held the late Neti at New York’s Lbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgenr Communy Center, several archects and engeers of the iative to sgle out the legalizatn of marriage as the prcipal—ed, the only—issue of nsequence for the LGBT muny argued that the legalizatn of same-sex marriage was an sentially nservative unrtakg. André Gi, among the first openly gay wrers, offered one clue—“The laws of mimicry, ” he wrote L’Immoraliste:.
To turn the unterculture qutn on s head, n someone be gay whout beg queer? Who puts what where is fact important, not bee of the obssns of the homophob and misogynists but bee sex the receptive partner is vulnerable, open, at greater risk.
BLACK GAYS
Speakg wh Jam Baldw late his reer, a televisn terviewer remarked, “When you were startg out as a wrer, you were black, impoverished, homosexual. Some years back, as the thor of a book on what means to have and keep fah, I was ved to the first and last Gay Spirualy Summ, held at the Garrison Instute, on the Hudson River Palisas. When I asked Hassan, a twenty-four-year-old reporter for a lol TV channel Damasc, if he uld troduce me to members of Syria’s gay muny, he took me to an anonymo-lookg bar the heart of the pal’s Old Cy.
So took me by surprise when, shortly after we entered the dim, verno tablishment and found a seat, he looked me the eye and said, matter-of-factly, “You do know I’m homosexual, don’t you? Such refully choreographed disclosur happen all the time Damasc, where homosexualy is illegal.
I’d had no ia that Hassan — not his real name — was gay, and I was not alone: there were many people his life who didn’t know. His bt iend, who was unabashedly homophobic, had once told him that he uld never be iends wh a gay man. As every other untry where gay life is supprsed, homosexualy Syria has veloped s own private language.
GAY ACTIVISTS ALLIANCE ZAP AT HARPER’S MAGAZE OFFIC
The Arabic word “jaw, ” meang “weather, ” is ed to intify someone as gay. Gay men tend to drs better, said Hassan — who’d long ago gused that I was straight. While there were no gay bars, as such, Damasc, plac like the Old Cy bar were, Hassan’s words, “gay-iendly.
” A young crowd, posed mostly of gay men, gathered here at least twice a week. “What kd of mhabarat would want to fd gays? ” Neher she nor Hassan, turned out, had ever known anyone who was nvicted of homosexualy.
In fact, the bar’s young clientele, gay and straight alike, were for the most part supporters — albe unenthiastic on — of the regime of Print Bashar al-Assad. The Islamic State, which now ntrols much of the northern part of Syria, regards homosexualy as an abomatn punishable by ath. At the end of 2014, the group had begun to release a seri of vios and photographs that showed allegedly gay men, bldfold and bound, beg phed om the roofs of tall buildgs.