Hezbollah and homophobia: the truth
Among the many media lies being peddled about Hezbollah, you may have heard them described as violently homophobic. It’s not true...
Eamonn McCann, 30 Oct 2007
What struck me most in the Helem Centre in Beirut was the polished wood of the narrow staircase directly off the hallway, the right-angled red sofa along two walls of the main space, the scrawled message above the sink: “Please wash cups after use.”
“This is identical with the Rainbow Centre in Queen Street in Derry,” I accused the gay liberationists. “It’s a global gay design, isn’t it?
The only difference I noticed was that the wash-up plea was in Arabic and French as well as English. I silently resolved to urge Sean Morrin when I got home to be a tad more cosmopolitan with the kitchen signage.
The Helem Centre came back to mind when I read Jim Cusack in the Sunday Independent (October 7) describing Hezbollah as “an organisation that advocates the killing of homosexuals... and has been accused of murdering a number of gay men.”
How do you get on with Hezbollah, I’d cautiously asked the gay activists in Beirut?
The first time they’d had close contact was during the invasion last year, when the centre had opened its doors to refugees fleeing the besieged villages of the South. “Hezbollah people were in and out every day, checking how many more we could accommodate or whether they needed somewhere else, and so on.”
Did they realise this was a gay centre? “Of course. It’s obvious when you come in.”
The posters and bookshelves alone would have left no doubt.
I phoned Beirut the day after the Indo piece. Just to be sure.
Ghassan, one of the founders of the Halem Centre: “I can say categorically there is no truth in those claims. Since the aggression of last year, we’ve been working with Hezbollah’s health committee on projects, including AIDS projects. What you’ve read out is completely false.”
I called Ibrahim, whose mobile number had been given to me by a Hezbollah official as a useful contact if we got ourselves into trouble in south Beirut. Which we did, slightly.
I wasn’t sure that he’d remembered me. But I asked him, anyway: what did he think of homosexuals? There was a long pause. I asked again. “It depends,” he said slowly, “on whether they support Zionist aggression.”
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