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Sodomy is punishable by ath Sdi Arabia, but gay life flourish there. Why is “easier to be gay than straight” a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, liv the closet * saudi gay culture *

Why is “easier to be gay than straight” a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, liv the closetYasser, a 26-year-old artist, was takg me on an impromptu tour of his hometown of Jeddah, Sdi Arabia, on a swelterg September afternoon.

Yasser is homosexual, or so we would scribe him the Wt, and the barbershop we vised ters to gay men. He wasn’t worried about the gay-themed nature of his tour—he didn’t want to be ught alone wh a woman.

As long as gays and lbians mata a public ont of obeisance to Wahhabist norms, they are left to do what they want private. “You n be cised anywhere Sdi Arabia, any time of the day, ” said Radwan, a 42-year-old gay Sdi Amerin who grew up var Wtern ci and now liv Jeddah.

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A Sdi prce has been jailed for life for murrg his manservant, who was found a bed at a plh London hotel where he had been beaten to ath. The fendant spent most of the trial tryg to prove he was not gay. Why? * saudi gay culture *

But what seems more startlg, at least om a Wtern perspective, is that some of the men havg sex wh other men don’t nsir themselv gay. But as a more Wternized notn of gayns—a notn that strs orientatn over acts—tak hold the untry, will this lite balance survive? There’s an overwhelmg number of people who turn to lbianism, ” Yasm said, addg that the number of men the kgdom who turn to gay sex is even greater.

Francis, a 34-year-old bety queen om the Philipp ( 2003 he won a gay bety pageant held a private hoe Jeddah by a group of Filipos), reported that he’s had sex wh Sdi men whose wiv were pregnant or menstatg; when those circumstanc changed, most of the men stopped llg.

” John Bradley, the thor of Sdi Arabia Exposed: Insi a Kgdom Crisis (2005), says that most male Wtern expatriat here, gay or not, have been proposned by Sdi men drivg by “at any time of the day or night, que openly and ually very, very persistently. Jason, a South Ain tor who has lived Jeddah sce 2002, not that although South Ai allows gay marriage, “’s as though there are more gays here.

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* saudi gay culture *

JED-TO-HEART: I lie my work JED-TO-HEART: wh my fay JED-TO-HEART: but I’m gay JED-TO-HEART: I n’t say I’m gay jedbut: is that hard? “I’m worried the mutawwa' might e, ” Anajedtop said, and shed off to tch the eveng The History of Sexualy, a multivolume work published the 1970s and ’80s, Michel Fouult proposed his famo this that Wtern amic, medil, and polil disurse of the 18th and 19th centuri had produced the ia of the homosexual as a viant type: In Wtern society, homosexualy changed om beg a behavr (what you do) to an inty (who you are). “‘Sexualy’ is distguished not between ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ but between takg pleasure and submtg to someone (beg ed for pleasure), ” the soclogist Stephen O.

The Sdis jt look at this as, ‘He don’t like football, ’” Dave, a gay Amerin teacher who first moved to Sdi Arabia 1978, told me. However much this may seem like sophistry, is keepg wh a long-standg Mlim tradn of acmodatg homosexual impuls, if not homosexual inty.

A magaze edor Jeddah told me that many boys Mec, where he grew up, have sexual relatns wh men, but they don’t see themselv as gay. Abubaker Bagar, a human-rights activist based Jeddah, explaed that homosexualy n be viewed as a phase. ” This view of sexual behavr, batn wh the strict segregatn of the sex, serv to foster homosexual acts, shiftg the stigma onto bottoms and allowg olr men to exce their younger behavr—their time as bottoms—as mere youthful Islamic Homosexuali, the anthropologist Will Rose shows that this “stat-differentiated pattern”— whereby ’s OK to be a top but not a bottom—has s roots Gre-Roman culture, and he emphasiz that the top-bottom power dynamic is monly exprsed relatns between olr men and younger boys.

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’”Yet a paradox exists at the heart of Sdi nceptns of gay sex and sexual inty: Dpe their seemgly flexible view of sexualy, most of the Sdis I terviewed, cludg those men who intify themselv as gay, nsir sodomy a grave s.

” Zahar, a 41-year-old Sdi who has traveled wily throughout the world, urged me not to wre about Islam and homosexualy; to do so, he said, is to cut off bate, bee “’s always the relign that holds people back.

Rowson, a profsor at New York Universy who is workg on a book about homosexualy medieval Islamic society. For many centuri, Rowson says, the vers were wily thought to perta to za, but sce the early 20th century, they have been largely assumed to proscribe homosexual behavr. He and most other scholars the field believe that at about that time, Middle Eastern attus toward homosexualy fundamentally shifted.