Rachel Evans
Homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon, but queers are organising to eradicate this discrimination. Chadi Sankary, an Australian-Lebanese communications student, told Green Left Weekly that Helem, an organisation of Lebanese lesbians, gay men, bi-sexuals and transgendered people, is campaigning to abolish Article 534 of the penal code which punishes "unnatural sexual intercourse" with a year in prison.
Sankary discovered Helem in 2004, when he spent three months in Lebanon. Helem was founded in 2000 and was registered as an NGO in Canada in 2004. Sankary said that Article 534 is deliberately vague, something that suits the prosecutors.
"The Lebanese media is very homophobic, as are the 17 different religious denominations", he said, adding that three decades of war gives rise to great instability and "people find refuge in religion in such times".
In early 2000 a number of Lebanese, who had lived in Canada and the US, decided to start organising to get Article 534 repealed. The activists had spent time in the West, but wanted queer empowerment to come from Lebanon, Sankary said.
Helem has a large house in Beirut as its office. It has books, magazines and weekly meetings to organise events and campaigns, to which activists from all over Lebanon come. Helem has also set up a help hotline, and it prints the first-ever queer magazine in the Arab world.
"I was impressed to see one activist sell it on the streets", Sankray said. "He was very up-front saying, 'I am gay, this is a gay magazine'. Discussion would erupt, and he found that many people didn't know what 'gay' meant."
Sankary said that there is "no data" in Lebanon about the problems queers face. "There is fear to make same-sex sexual interactions, hence there is no queer sub-culture. When I was young, I remember seeing men who had their heads shaved by police. They were men who slept with men, and they were being taught a lesson."
Helem is mostly led by men, but women are also involved. It held a queer film screening recently, attracting 400 people, and a lot of media coverage. Queer contingents are now becoming a staple of anti-war rallies, Sankary noted.
"Helem supports a variety of human rights' struggles", Sankary said. "During Israel's latest attacks, Helem converted its house into a refugee support centre."
Helem also organised against World Pride, which was held in occupied Jerusalem during the war, arguing there can be no pride under foreign occupation.