There Is Hope In Mascara...

اطلاق كتيّب "احبهم...و لكن

قامت جمعية العناية الصحية وجمعية "حلم" بالتنسيق مع التحالف العالمي لمكافحة السيدا وفي إطار برنامج التوعية لفئة الرجال ذوي العلاقات الجنسية مع الرجال ...بإنتاج دليل "احبهم... ولكن

وقد تمّ اطلاق هذا الدليل، الذي يتوجه إلى الأهل الذين لديهم ابناء مثليين او مثليات الجنس ليزوّدهم بالمعلومات العلمية ويناقش المواقف الأفضل للتعامل مع هذا الواقع، خلال لقاء جمع ممثلين عن منظمات الأمم المتحدة ومن الوزرات المعنية ومن المؤسسات الاجتماعية والصحية التي تهتم بالشباب كما وجمع اللقاء أختصاصيين في مجال علم النفس والعمل الإجتماعي مع عدد من الاهل ومن المهتمين بموضوع المثلية الجنسية وذلك في فندق بادوفا سن الفيل صباح الثلاثاء 15 ايلول 2009

وتضمّن اللقاء نقاشات عن المثلية الجنسية، من حيث الواقع والتحديات، اضافةً الى التطرق للدليل من ناحية انتاجه ومحتوياته وكيفية استخدامه ووضع خطة مستقبلية بهدف ايصاله الى المعنيين

Beirut: City Of Projected Fantasies

By Diamond Walid

Diamond Walid is the pen-name of a Lebanese-Croatian TV producer and writer, based in Beirut

Beirut has been labelled the Paris, sometimes the Switzerland, of the Middle East. According to one recent New York Times article, it is now the region's Provincetown (the Cape Cod resort favoured by gay visitors). This ever-changing city seems to have become a mirror where people project their own fantasies.

Comparing Beirut with another city, whether Paris, Rome or Provincetown is a denial of its uniqueness. Beirut's gay culture is also unique and specific. As a gay man who has lived in the city for more than 30 years, I know that notions such as "gay", "straight", "public displays of affection" and "homophobia" can take on completely different forms and meanings in this part of the world. Yet there was no mention of these nuances in the New York Times article, obviously built on a series of denials.

"When I go out from Bardo [a gay-friendly restaurant] I always feel at ease hugging my friends – of course in a decent way – in front of the police. This is the kind of change I am talking about," Raed is quoted as saying. No mention of the fact that Lebanon, like all countries of the region, is a place where men often touch, kiss and hold each other's hands in public, whether gay, straight, policemen or not (whereas in New York, holding hands can apparently cost you your life). Or the fact that Lebanese heterosexual couples do not necessarily show more public affection than gay ones, also for reasons of "decency". If any "change" has recently occurred, it is only in the fantasies of some.

Reading this article, it seems as though gay culture in Lebanon was non-existent until the clubs it mentions opened or the Mr Bear Arabia election took place. In reality, one could go back to the Phoenicians to find same-sex relations an integral part of local culture. In more recent years, and even during the civil war (1975-90), gay men and women have gathered and partied in many public places, more or less visible but nonetheless vibrant.

The author not only denies local gay culture its history, but also its real space. Most of the venues cited in the article are hangouts for the Beiruti moneyed élite. In some, you will not be admitted if you don't come with an expensive car or wear certain fashion brands. Thankfully, the vast majority of the Lebanese don't belong to this obnoxious crowd. The less affluent gay population meets in different places, doesn't talk about its escapades in the Marais or Soho, doesn't always speak English or French or watch Sex and the City. In fact, it seems to have its own world, much larger and more open than the one described in the article.

The story of Paradise Beach is a telling example. This large public beach in the city of Byblos was very popular with working-class gay men from different cities and religions. A colourful place where gay men mingled and flirted more freely than elsewhere. Until the day the beach was privatised and turned into a luxury resort, with a strict admittance policy. However, a small strip of land was still left unsold and frequented by the working-class gays. The sight was amusing: the resort's stiff and bourgeois crowds – gay and straight alike – eyeing with utter shock their flamboyant neighbours. Today there are no more public gay beaches left in Lebanon.

The article also denies other Arab countries their own gay cultures. Many western journalists sum up Arab gay realities with sentences like: "Saudi Arabia: homosexuality punishable by death", "Iraq: gay men killed." Full stop. But gay men are also killed in "civilised" western countries. While homophobia is certainly a problem in Arab countries, like anywhere else, it never overshadows the thriving and lively local gay cultures. Yet no one talks about these cultures. "Cairo: bad", "Damascus: bad", we're told by Ricardo, the Spaniard in the article. Even Dubya and his "Axis of Evil" would envy such eloquence.

How ironic that many Lebanese gay men, including myself, actually feel more comfortable in places like Damascus or Amman and go there often in order to escape the Beiruti agitation. There might be no Kylie Minogue nights there, but on the other hand there is a lot less snobbery and less fuss about homosexuality. My friend Ali recently went to Jordan to be wedded to his boyfriend by a Muslim cleric and then spent his honeymoon in Damascus. The advantage of such trips also comes in finding an anonymity one is denied at home.

But even Amman seems to have its "globalised" gay crowd. Watching Ugly Betty and wearing D&G is what gay culture is about, these people seem to say, along with the NYT article and many gay men across the global village. I can still remember how discovering Steven, the gay character in Dynasty, during my childhood in the 1980s, opened a whole new perspective for me. It is another matter altogether to equate this mass consumption with gay culture, or even with gay rights advocacy. Just as Beirut's old neighbourhoods are being gentrified, its "superb architecture" (sic) being torn down to make way for soulless, surveillance-camera-equipped skyscrapers, its local gay culture is facing the challenge of McDonaldisation.

How long before writers start describing Beirut as a new Bangkok – rather than a Provincetown?Will sex tourism advance its population's gay rights or social wellbeing? In the meantime, Beirut is certainly turning back into the playground of multinational companies, regional interests and greedy entrepreneurs ("I can see a future for us here", one businessman says in the article).

The NYT article falls into the category of the infomercial, tailor-made for a certain clientele, and it has every right to. However, it is typical of much reporting about the Arab world, perpetuating tired stereotypes: Arabs are homophobes, except for the "westernised" ones, Arabs are "sexy savages". In doing so, not only is it extending the cultural gap further, but it is also exposing a much wider divide: the one between the haves and the have-nots.

Our Civilized "Allies"

Sixty-seven Filipino men working in Saudi Arabia face jail and lashes for "imitating women" after being arrested at a party in which a number were dressed in drag, a Philippines embassy official said on Saturday.

Riyadh police arrested all 67 men at a private party and drag show in a resort villa near Riyadh on June 13, Philippines embassy Vice Consul Roussel Reyes told the news agency AFP.

"They had alcohol and some were dressed up like women," he said.

Both drinking and cross-dressing are forbidden under Saudi Arabia's conservative Islam-based sharia laws, and both could bring up to six months in prison and lashes.

None were charged with homosexual acts, a much more serious charge under Saudi law, Reyes said.

The men have all been released to their employers while formal charges are drawn up, he added.

Some one million Filipinos work in Saudi Arabia.

Help... Censorship

Remember that scene in the wonderful "Cinema Paradiso" (Oscar for best foreign movie, 1990) where the village priest, a one-hand censorship committee, sits all alone in the darkened movie theater to do his dirty deed while Philippe Noiret's Alfredo plays him the latest flick? The one-handed deed being, of course, that every time the screen flashes anything approaching the hint of a kiss or a flash of flesh, up goes the priest's hand in the hysterical sign--not of a cross, exactly, but close: of scissors. It's the prelate's unspoken signal to Alfredo in the projection room to cut the offending bit of celluloid (often a cousin of unpriestly cellulite) and cast it to the dust-devils of Alfredo's cutting-room floor. So it was in 1950s Giancarlo, the tiny southern Italian town of Giuseppe Tornatore's lip-smacking imagination.

And so it is still, it seems, in 21st century Lebanon, where something else deserves a smack.

"Help" is a Lebanese film by director Marc Abi-Rached. It's the mostly platonic triangular story of a delinquent teenager called Ali who lives in an abandoned van in a junkyard, who befriends a prostitute called Soraya, who rooms with her gay friend Janot. The themes are more daring than the scenes (for Lebanon, anyway, where befriending a junkie can provoke all sorts of suspicions).

So far so cool. Abi-Rached got permission to distribute his movie in July 2008 from the ominously called Lebanese General Security board, which serves as the country's film licensing authority. The board asked Abi-Rached to tone down one image that purportedly flashed something Eve Ensler would have a monologue about, and to restrict the movie to adults. Abi-Rached complied and got himself a license--license number 1460, to be precise. The movie was shown to reviewers on Feb. 12, who gave it pretty good reviews, and it was scheduled to open on Feb. 19. And why not? There's a good bit of cursing and frank discussions about homosexuality, but this is Beirut, after all, the Christopher Street of the Middle East. On Feb. 16, the license was pulled. What gave?

Lebanon's clerics--Maronite Christian, Catholic, Sunni, Druze, Shiite in all their sect-ual denominations--can be a powerful bunch (put them together and they could probably field a hell of a team on soccer's senior circuit, if it existed). They control the film board, ensuring against immorality. But Lebanon isn't Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. It's not even Lebanon, if by recent re-definitions of Lebanon we mean what Hezbollah's turbaned Jansenists are doing to the country's relative liberalism: Hezbollah's influence would keep a movie like "Help" from playing in southern cities like Tyre or Sidon, but it couldn't keep it from playing in Beirut, Junieh or even Sunni Tripoli way up north. Besides, it's for movies like "Help" that the Arab world's hypocrites take their vacations in Lebanon. (They want their Beirut and eat it too.)

So what could have happened to the movie? It's Lebanon, therefore it's conspiracy time. The religious element is obvious, but too obvious. Too convenient. The homosexual element may be a bit more convincing. Lebanon isn't Iowa, after all (or Vermont or Massachusetts or California). It's more like the sort of place where Antonin Scalia and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could still feel comfortable--where homosexual acts are illegal.

So maybe that's what did it. Lebanon's moviemakers, from Nadine Labaki ("Caramel") to the emerging great Philipe Aractingi ("Bosta," "Under the Bombs") and the fitfully fabulous Ziad Doueiri ("West Beyrouth," "Lila dit ça") are an undiscovered country of force and wonders. But they tread on themes close to Lebanon's broken heart. In "Help," Marc Abi-Rached tries the Star Trek approach--going where no Lebanese moviemaker has gone before. Gay theme, full monty. A dare too far?

My theory is this: it has nothing to do with the gay theme, nothing to do with the cursing (the occasional Brooklyn Likudist aside, no one curses better than a Lebanese) or the glimpses of nudity. No. It's about Joanna Andraos. She's one of the stars of the movie. She's also the daughter of Antoine Andraos. Antoine Andraos is a member of Lebanon's Parliament. Not only that. He's a member or the ruling March 14 Alliance. He's running for reelection in June's parliamentary bash. And he, like the rest of the March 14 Alliance that represents Lebanon's alleged "Cedar Revolution" (and western outlook) is in a fight for the coalition's life as Hezbollah's coalition appears poised to make big gains, and perhaps demolish the March 14 coalition.

Antoine Andraos doesn't want to lose. He doesn't want his daughter's movie thrown up in his face every time he delivers a speech. If you know Lebanese families, if you know Lebanese fathers, you probably know the kind of anguished, top-of-the-lung screaming match that may have taken place in the Andraos living room. Spacious as it is, as all Lebanese living rooms are, it wouldn't have been spacious enough to contain the decibels of Father Andraos shouting his despair at his daughter's transformation into a prostitute, however fictional the transformation.

So Andraos did what any self-respecting despotic Lebanese father would do. He pulled strings. He had "Help"'s license revoked. End of story. That, anyway, is my theory. I doubt it's the end of the story, though now, for all my sympathies for the venal and corrupt and ineffectual March 14 coalition (for all its venality, the alternative is worse), I'm kind of rooting for Antoine Andraos to lose. If that's how he treats his daughter's freedom of expression.

By the way, at the end of "Cinema Paradiso" Toto got a special treat from Alfredo, from beyond the grave: all the scenes that had ever been cut (enough to make you fall in love with life all over again). There's hope yet, Marc Abi-Rached. You're the winner here, not the censors. I can't wait to see your movie, uncut and unturbaned.

From ForeignMoviesddl.com

Murders In Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Six gay men were shot dead by members of their tribe in two separate incidents in the past 10 days, an official with Iraq's Interior ministry said.

In the most recent attack, two men were killed Thursday in Sadr City area of Baghdad after they were disowned by relatives, the official said.

The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims.

On March 26, four additional men were fatally shot in the same city, the official said, adding that the victims had also been disowned by their relatives.

The official declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Witnesses told CNN that a Sadr City cafe, which was a popular gathering spot for gays, was also set on fire.

Protecting The Homeland?

Gay Protest In Beirut

In response to recent police brutality incidents, HELEM, the Lebanese LGBT organization organized a demonstration in Beirut yesterday...

this is the first ever protest of this kind in the region....

Check out the video:

Prop 8 - The Musical

Happy Halloween

Bears Are So In

Never mind the credit crunch: A 1,000 euro, or $1,400 at current exchange rates, Karl Lagerfeld teddy bear by German maker Steiff found willing buyers during its unveiling at Colette on Friday. “I bought two, ssssh,” whispered Camille McMillan, a Los Angeles-based design student, who got one of the bears signed by the man himself. “When I saw it I thought that’s the best Christmas present in the world,” said Gareth Pugh, though he won’t be indulging that whim. “Are you kidding us? Do you know how much they are?” he exclaimed while snapping a flock of eager Lagerfeld fans for his blog on Style.com. Lagerfeld, meanwhile, departed with number one of the 2,500 numbered bears, which wear his “uniform” jeans, jacket and tie from the K Karl Lagerfeld collection and his signature black shades from his eyewear line.