(Michael Lucas' claim to fame includes coming up with "his own life-size dildo" [at <http://www.lavendermagazine.com/artman/publish/article_4299.php>].)
I don't know if queer Americans are as anti-Israel as Lucas claims, but it is probably true that GLBTQ Americans are still on the average more critical of US foreign policy than straight Americans. The peace contingent at the annual Pride parade in Columbus has been well received, especially by women.
<http://www.newyorkblade.com/2007/5-4/viewpoint/opinion/lucasfiles.cfm> How Can Gays Be Anti-Israel? By MICHAEL LUCAS Friday, May 04, 2007
I'm Jewish and gay and feel a strong sense of belonging to both groups. I certainly had to deal with a great deal of anti-Semitism and anti-gay bigotry while growing up in Russia. Lately, I'm disturbed that the world gay community is increasingly anti-Israel. It is more true in Europe than here, but even in New York, I have had heated arguments with gays about Israel.
How can gay people side with the Muslims who want to kill the Israelis? Conversely, how can gays so irrationally criticize a society that has done so much to accept LGBTers? Many of the anti-Israel arguments I've heard out of the mouths of gays are based on ignorance. Debunking that ignorance would fill another article. For now, I want to focus on gay rights in the Middle East. Israel is the only place there where they exist.
What can I say to get this through certain people's very thick skulls? To cite one example only: In 2004, a student at The American University in Cairo put a personals announcement on a gay dating site. For that, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, including 2 years of hard labor. He was accused of "offences to the public good, the honor of society, and contempt to moral principles and social tradition." Now there's something for a European or American gay to protest. It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims.
I'VE BEEN INVITED to Israel four times the past three years to perform in gay clubs. Gay life is actually more open in Israel than the United States. The Israeli military doesn't have our embarrassing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
Israel also has Donna International, a widely popular transsexual pop star. The Israeli people chose her to represent the country in Europe's largest singing competition; Eurovision. She brought home the title, too! In Tel Aviv, gay men walk hand in hand with each other. The very provocative posters announcing my sex shows were displayed up and down Ben Gurion Street, the equivalent of Madison Avenue.
I have traveled to other Middle Eastern countries including Jordan, Syria and the U.A.E., all historical enemies of Israel. Homosexuality is against the law in Syria. Article 354 of the Federal Penal Code of the UAE says: "Whoever commits rape on a female or sodomy with a male shall be punished by death." In Jordan, journalists work under a criminally enforceable duty to respect the "values of the Arab and Islamic nation." One of those "values" is to murder gay family members and call the murders "honor killings." Shariah Law actually says that if a married person engages in a homosexual act, he/she is to be stoned to death. This is true for all Muslim countries following Shariah Law.
So why does the gay community so often voice support for Muslims? Why does it forgive them for practically everything they do, but forgive Israel for nothing? Is it a lack of common sense, or perhaps of knowledge? Or is it pure anti-Semitism?
Is it anti-Semitism that does not allow many in the gay community to understand that it isn't Israelis blowing themselves up in busy restaurants, not Israelis who flew jets into the twin towers, not Israelis rioting over cartoons and not Israelis jailing or even beheading people for making love to whomever they want? It is not the Israelis; it is the sons of Allah who are behind almost every terrorist act in the world today.
By contrast, Israel's record on gay rights is commendable. Israel offers gay people the option of common-law marriages. In November, 2005, an Israeli court ruled that a lesbian spouse could adopt a child born to her partner by artificial insemination. If you as a gay person get married in Massachusetts, Israel will recognize your marriage if you go live there. Young people in Israel can seek exemption from the military by volunteering for a national service, among which is included The Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders in Israel. Gay partners of El Al employees are entitled to the same free ticket policies as heterosexual partners, not bad for a country that has only been in existence for 60 years and lives with the reality of ongoing terror. I can't imagine that any other nation that would maintain its civil liberties under such circumstances.
Nonetheless, you have European cicadas buzzing about Israel being a brutal country that always violates U.N. decisions. They do not buzz about Hezbollah's failure to disarm and most of these cicadas have never even been to Israel. Paradoxically, if they did go there with their unfounded hate speech, they would be at liberty to say whatever they pleased. But if they went to any Arab country and spoke in favor of gay rights … well, let's just say they would be slaughtered like animals.
THERE ARE SOME anti-gay religious extremists in Israel (just as in any country), but they don't have the law of the land on their side. In January of this year, Binyamin and Avi Rose were registered as a gay couple in the official record books of Jerusalem. They brought their case to an Israeli court after being disturbed by the anti-gay religious demonstrations of the previous summer; the court found in their favor.
Unfounded attacks against Israel are sometimes called "Israel bashing." My conclusion is that gays engaged in that bashing are doing it because of deeply-rooted anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust, anti-Semites felt they could no longer say "I hate Jews" in public. But they retained their anti-Semitism, and making ill-reasoned, unlimited attacks against Israel is the form that bigotry has taken. Gays, of all people—who understand what it is to be historically oppressed and unrecognized, not to mention bashed—should know better.
Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com.
<http://www.newyorkblade.com/2007/5-25/viewpoint/opinion/lucasfiles.cfm> The Worst Threat to Gay Rights? By MICHAEL LUCAS Friday, May 25, 2007
WE IGNORE ISLAMIC contempt for gay rights at our own peril. What are known as the Hadith are tools for determining the Muslim way of life. The Hadith relate to the words and deeds of Muhammad. All traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence incorporate the Hadith. One Hadith says that, in terms of male-on-male sexual activity, the "tops" are as bad as the "bottoms": "Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to."
That very thing happens regularly in Muslim majority societies. Counting the number of gay murder victims in that context is impossible. In many Muslim societies, murdering a gay relative is perceived as redeeming the family from a supposed dishonor brought upon it by the gay person.
So-called "honor killings" of gay people, as well as of women who supposedly offend their families' honor, are now taking place in Europe.
In case you were not aware, Muslim leaders in France, Britain, Denmark and Belgium have declared certain Muslim neighborhoods to be under Islamic jurisdiction. For a detailed account of such matters, I can not recommend highly enough out gay author Bruce Bawer's book "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within." He also maintains an informative web site at brucebawer.com.
It is incorrect to think that anti-gay Islamic bigots can be equated with anti-gay bigots of other religions. As Bawer says: Evangelical leader "Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me."
Here is another example of how anti-gay Muslims differ in their approach from anti-gay Christians and Jews. Muslims actually revere Jesus Christ as a prophet. So when Terrence McNally depicted Jesus as gay in his play "Corpus Christi," a judge of the Shari'ah Court of the U.K. signed a death order against him. A death order! Signed by a Muslim from within Great Britain. I ask you, Have you recently heard of a Christian or Jewish clergyman calling for Terrence McNally to be killed because he portrayed Jesus as gay in a stage work?
The Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain is so accepted in society that he is known as Sir Iqbal Sacranie. The man has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II! What irks me isn't his knighthood; rather, it's his failure to use his position of respectability to censure his fellow Muslims when they condemn Terrence McNally to death. Sir Iqbal, furthermore, in his capacity as leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, refuses all proposals to tackle homophobia within the Muslim community. That attitude is shared by Muslim leaders throughout Europe. What makes the attitude especially pernicious, of course, is that Hadith calling for gay people to be killed.
Meanwhile, who remembers the United Nation's gay rights resolution? Presented by Brazil in 2003 and 2004, it was twice defeated by a Muslim alliance including many countries that make homosexuality a capital offence. The Muslim population of the world stands at about more than 1 billion people. Typically, 10 percent of a given population is gay. So rounding things off now, about 100 million gay people in the Muslim world must stay deeply closeted or face death.
I know in advance that my writing about this question will bring idiots crawling out of the woodwork. They'll say things such as, "I visited Tunisia last year, had clandestine sex with a native man, and that proves that anti-gay Muslims are no worse than anti-gay Christians." Such idiots, unfortunately, assist the Muslims in spreading their anti-gay poison by denying the severity of the threat they represent to us.
Still other idiots will accuse me of painting Islam with a single brush stroke. Given what that Hadith says about gays, you'll admit that any practicing Muslim who doesn't denounce it is complicit in the deaths of those gays murdered because of it. Yet I do acknowledge that Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman from Minnesota, supports gay rights and wants to repeal the U.S.'s Don't Ask, Don't Tell ban on gays in the military.
Yet there are Islamic centers in every state, including North and South Dakota. It is not difficult to find statements from their leaders in favor of Shariah and the Hadith being made the basis of American law. They'll say they want it established by persuasion, not by violence. But consider what they hope to persuade people about—namely, that people who engage in gay sex should be killed. Should that opinion be forcefully denounced, or should it be allowed to go unremarked?
There is no philosophy more hostile to gay people in today's world than that of Islam. The subject has many aspects to be considered. Yet to any who think I exaggerate the dangers, the scales should fall from your eyes. Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi heads the Islamic Society of North America. He has said that homosexuality is "a moral disease, a sin and a corruption." Here is what Siddiqi has to say about Islam's place in the U.S. and all currently non-Muslim countries: "By participating in a non-Islamic system, one cannot rule by that which Allah has commanded. But things do not change overnight. Changes come through patience, wisdom and hard work. I believe that as Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change for the right cause, the cause of truth and justice. We must not forget that Allah's rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction."
One of what Siddiqi calls "Allah's laws" is: "Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to." That's something that we as gay people absolutely must not forget.
Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com. -- Yoshie