Meem

We live in the shadow, everyone knows that. In our Homo gatherings we take pride in talking about this or that celebrity who are one of us. I always compared this to how Lebanese people take pride in some celebrity as having at least some Lebanese blood in his/her veins, kind of like Lebanese people who love Shakira because she’s half Lebanese, though she speaks no word of Arabic and doesn’t think of her Lebanese heritage much… But we, as Lebanese, are small and we need to feel this kind of pride.
Our community is also small , it’s vibrant, energetic, but it’s also vulnerable and threatened. Sure we have people to cover our back but we still need to keep a low profile. Any celebrity that’s one of us would never dare to come out! Not even Bassem Feghali or Misbah… who are clearly not as straight as they should be. It’s still better when it’s only known but not confirmed.
Personally, I always believed that there is a chance, if our community in other countries achieved the right to live safely, if they have achieved civil unions, adoption and other forms of legal/social recognition… then we will do the same one day. What I also expect and have long been anticipating is the day when an openly out homosexual would enter the field of politics. Bas I think, the inevitable bitter cup we’d have to swallow would be the fact that this homo-politician would certainly be part of a political game, inno they’d get him/her sort of like to say:
Look at us we are open minded we have appointed a gay politician
I know this is just part of the game and that we have to live with the fact that people still see us as circus animals rather than normal human beings… This is a fire we have to be wise enough to know how to cross with the least damage possible. And I have faith inno one day there will be excellent politicians who just happen to be gay *ahem* let me fix that…. I have faith inno one day there will be excellent politicians that will just happen to be gay and out. And hopefully in the future, when heterosexual people will accept us (and when homosexuals in denial will stop being in denial ) then we can take it even a step further and who knows maybe we’d even be religiously tolerated and accepted… Nshalla!!
But here are two surprises I had in the last few months:

• Penny Wong, the first Openly Lesbian politician
  What’s even more interesting is that she has been in the political field ever since college, which suggests inno she is there because she is a politician!!!!

Reading about this reminded me of a piece of news I read a while back…

• Progressive Jews warm to same-sex unions

Yalla 3a2belna sabaya ?

Pazuzu