A Taliban judge pronounced last month that the penalty for homosexuality would be death under its rule. "There are only two penalties for gays: Either stoning or he has to stand behind a wall that falls on him. The wall must be 2.5 to 3 metres high," the judge told German newspaper Bild.
The many niceties of Sharia law.
Over the past 20 years, a small and closeted LGBTQ+ community has emerged in Afghanistan. Fewer still are those who are in any way publicly out. Even under the deposed regime, the legal penalties for same-sex relations were severe. But a small number of brave people had worked for change.
A few years ago, Nemat Sadat was, most likely, the first Afghan gay man to come out publicly. He was living in the U.S., but he received death threats and was disowned by his family. Since then, he now describes himself as ex-Muslim — which is apostasy according to the Taliban. As a gay apostate, he would receive two death sentences.
Sadat is relatively safe in the West — relatively, because he continues to receive death threats. But for those LGBTQ+ people still trapped in Afghanistan, they face almost certain death if discovered. No one should delude themselves about what the Taliban might or might not do to gay people.
A question: I wonder how the world might react if some benighted judge in a remote region were to say, “The only two penalties for Jews: Either a bullet or the gas chamber.” Certainly that is what Nazi officials did during WWII, often with the help of the French, Croatian, or Latvian police. Jews were mercilessly hunted down. And gay people will be in Afghanistan, too.
There has been much talk about the fate of women in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is back in control. It certainly will not be good. Young women in cities recently captured by the Taliban are reported to be searching for burqas to wear or risk being flogged. Education and career opportunities for women will be drastically reduced.
In President Biden’s speech on Afghanistan today, he reiterated support for the basic rights of women and girls under Taliban rule, but he didn’t mention gay people. The Irish ambassador to the U.N. and Senators Shaheen and Rosen demanded that women in Afghanistan be protected. But a woman in Taliban Afghanistan can survive under the burqa. Not so for LGBTQ+ people. They are marked for execution.
Who will ever speak out for my people, Queer people?
We continue to be humiliated, beated, raped, imprisoned, and murdered.
And the response is silence.
(** The details of the Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni case remain in dispute as to whether they were executed because they were gay or for rape of an adolescent male.)