Gay Porn's Erik Rhos Is Dead After Slowly Dyg Public for Years

Contents:

• GAY PORN'S ERIK RHOS IS DEAD AFTER SLOWLY DYG PUBLIC FOR YEARS
• GAY PARIS: DISVER THE EXQUISE GAY NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE MARAIS

GAY PORN'S ERIK RHOS IS DEAD AFTER SLOWLY DYG PUBLIC FOR YEARS

PARIS — When Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed announced his tentns to lnch the first gay-iendly mosque Paris, was difficult for him to image what lay mosque’s lnch November 2012 was a monumental step raisg awarens and providg a place of worship for Mlims who are also part of the LGBT muny. Dpe legalizg gay marriage jt over one year ago, France’s attus toward LGBT rights are mixed.

A 2013 Pew Center survey found that 77 percent of people France thk society should accept homosexualy, down om 83 percent 2007. A 2009 Gallup poll found that 35 percent of Mlims France believe that homosexual acts are morally neher Zahed nor supporters enuntered physil harm followg the mosque’s lnch, he says the weeks and months followg were “tense. ” He rells the first meetg of the associatn he found for gay Mlims France, HM2F, the basement of a fe as charged and tentative.

After the media attentn surroundg the announcement of the gay mosque, Zahed says he felt uneasy at home, particularly after his addrs was published the time of mosque’s lnch, a spokman for the Grand Mosque of Paris, one of the largt mosqu France, rpond by sayg that Zahed’s actns were not acrdance wh the the midst of France’s gay marriage bate last year, Dalil Boubakr, rector of the Grand Mosque, told a French rad statn that while he nmns homosexualy he do not ndone nsirs discsn around the issue to be enuragg.

GAY PARIS: DISVER THE EXQUISE GAY NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE MARAIS

At the very least, he says, the ncept of a gay mosque and the legalizatn of gay marriage have sparked a willgns wh France’s Mlim muny to engage dialogue around LGBT nsirs the domtic and ternatnal media verage of the ncept to have been “dispensable” this evolutn, he says.

“It helped a lot unterg the ia that Mlims are not homosexual, or the ia that homosexuals reject Islam. He remembers beg mmerized by the bety of the Quran, by the “universalism” the nsirs himself a gay femist, two labels he nsirs patible wh Islam. “After more than 15 years of reflectn on the matter, I now unrstand that the Quran do not explicly refer to ‘homosexualy, ’ nor do refer to women as ‘ferr.

He wr about this journey, and the difficulti growg up as a gay Mlim, his memoir, Le Coran et La Chair (The Quran and the Flh), published will also be lnchg a fah-based advocy group Cape Town, "Rumi's Isiphephelo. ” The anizatn will serve as a mosque, shelter for refuge and imam trag om GlobalPost: Ugandan anti-gay law boosts standg of a print power sce 1986.