[LINK] "Being gay in Pakistan: Where anti-gay serial killers are applauded"

[rfmcdonald]

Via Towleroad I came across Naila Inayat's Global Post article talking about the issues facing non-heterosexuals in Pakistan. They're severe, existential even.

Sitting at a coffee shop in a posh Lahore neighborhood, two young men hold a heated debate over the serial killer caught killing gay men in their city last month.

“Gay rights are human rights,” says one, arguing that gays have the right to live openly here. This is Pakistan, the other countered. “It is best to let these things stay unsaid, and underground – it's not okay in this society.” It’s a debate so fundamental that it might, at this point, sound hackneyed to a Western audience — yet in Pakistan it’s rare to hear such openness even in a private discussion.

In late April, a young man named Muhammed Ejaz confessed to killing three gay men over the past two months because he wanted to send a warning about the “evils” of homosexuality.

The 28-year-old paramedic from Lahore said he had lured his victims through a gay social networking site manjam.com and killed them following a sexual encounter in their own homes.

Ejaz, a father of two, said his hatred against gays springs from his being abused by an older man when he was 10.

“I have hated them ever since that happened to me," he said in an interview from his prison cell aired on Samaa TV. "By killing these men, I wanted to warn them to stay away from this evil of homosexuality.”

In Pakistan, where homosexuality is illegal, these killings have set off panic in the already closeted gay community.

"I deactivated my account initially after the news of the killing broke on social media because I was scared that the killer Ejaz will be portrayed as a hero locally," says 31-year-old Amir Shah from Lahore, who belongs to the popular manjam.com site. "You’ll find many people who would buy into his philosophy that homosexuality is an evil.”

Gay people in Pakistan can’t go to gay clubs: They don’t exist. Many say the internet was the best thing that ever happened to the community — until now.