Poems & More for LGBTQ Pri Month - June is Pri Month, an annual celebratn memoratg the 1969 Stonewall Rts, which took place New York Cy and lnched the lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer rights movement the Uned Stat. Pri Month is also a time to honor the many ntributns of LGBTQ dividuals. Explore the rich tradn of LGBTQ poets and poetry through a showse of d, vio, poetry, and prose.
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GAY PEOPLE ARE RECLAIMG AN ISLAMIC HERAGE
In the old days Mlims were que tolerant of homosexualyFOR DECADES regim the Middle East have alleged that homosexualy is both morally unacceptable and a Wtern import. Many gay activists disagree on both unts.
Homophobia is the Wtern import, they claim, troduced by puranil Europeans. “Ban the lonial law, ” cried mpaigners Tunisia December, referrg to a law crimalisg gay sex wrten by the French more than a century ago. “All the homophobic laws the Middle East were brought by lonialism to unrme Islam’s permissive civilisatn, ” says Ramy Khouili, a Tunisian to this story.
They relate how the Caliph Am nth-century Baghdad had a male lover and feted gay poets. And they rell that the Ottoman Turks, who led most of the Middle East the 19th century, crimalised homosexualy a century before Ameri and Bra. Back then, “you uld be wh a man or a woman, ” says the transgenr founr of north Ai’s first gay movement, the Abu Nawas Associatn, named after a great Arab poet, who was gay.