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(Lahore) A gay couple has been told to leave Pakistani or be killed after the two men exchanged vows in a traditional ceremony in a remote village.

The Times of India reports that the threats came from village elders in the conservative Islamic region near the famed Khyber Pass.

The paper says that a 42-year-old Afghan refugee fell in love with a 16 year old villager and offered his family a "dowry" of 40,000 rupees - about $650.

The family readily accepted. Arranged marriages of 16 year olds is not uncommon in Pakistan, but this is the first known instance where another male was involved.

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A tribal assembly, or jirga, in the remote area told the newlyweds on Wednesday to leave the area immediately or face death for "breaking all the religious and tribal values and ethics", according to Khan.

Sodomy is punishable by death in Pakistan.

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[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

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Fazal Amin, 30, a local shopkeeper, said 200 people attended the wedding last Monday, watching the "bride" arrive in costume on a white horse, as tradition demands.

"I didn't know that Liaquat was going to marry a boy. When we discovered, everyone was taken by surprise and many guests went back without eating the traditional walima [feast]," he said

Local reports said the boy's family, who are extremely poor, had agreed to the union after Liaquat, an Afghan refugee, paid a dowry of 40,000 Pakistani rupees (£380) - a huge sum.

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A tribal elder, Haji Namdar, recently returned from a year-long pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia to impose a Taliban-style morality law on the area, some of the wildest and least accessible territory in Pakistan.

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Local reports said the boy's family, who are extremely poor, had agreed to the union after Liaquat, an Afghan refugee, paid a dowry of 40,000 Pakistani rupees (£380) - a huge sum.

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Originally posted by Colville:

These guys could use a plane ticket to Canada.

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Also, this report comes from "The Times of India".

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Originally posted by Sanitary Engineer:

We shouldn't be too quick to judge another culture and society. They have their ways, we have ours.

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Also, this report comes from "The Times of India".

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[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: voice of the damned ]

I am a straight male, with a "live and let live" philosophy, with those of a different bent.

But, other cultures and countries, might not, for religious or cultural reasons agree with the tolerance that I am willing to show.

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I can't condemn them. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

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It's more like "live and not let live."

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It's more like "live and not let live."

In the face of the evil of executing men for engaging in homosexuality, you simply shrug and say it's a cultural thing?

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In Canada, I would absolutely condemn anti-homosexual incidents and behaviour.

I'm Canadian. I just don't feel comfortable telling other countries/cultures how to handle things.

Sort of like George Bush, telling all those A-rabs to embrace "democracy". I think he is a food to dictate American values to them.

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Originally posted by Sanitary Engineer:

I like the tolerance this country has, but we have to be "tolerant" of countries/cultures that may not agree with it.

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No, we don't. Human Rights violations are universal. Any violation, anywhere, should be roundly condemned, regardless of country or culture.

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Yes, of course condemn it. It might be counterproductive, and hurt the people, that you might want to help though.

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Spidey-sense tingling.

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The strategic rationales are not especially compelling, but it is the moral argument that is particularly troubling, because it suggests that some gay and lesbian leaders feel more allegiance to the relativism of the contemporary left than they do to the universality of their own cause. Activists are more than willing to condemn the homophobic leaders of the Christian right for campaigning against gay marriage; but they are weary of condemning Islamist regimes that execute citizens for being gay. Something has gone terribly awry.

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What has gone awry is exemplified by the stance of Sanitary Engineer. How dare we condemn others when we are not perfect ourselves?

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Foreman's and Alam's comparisons are specious. America and Iran may both have flawed systems of punishing criminals; and, to be sure, juvenile executions are an illiberal practice, whether carried out in Houston or Tehran. But only Iran convicts those criminals simply because of their sexual orientation. That's a pretty important distinction. Furthermore, U.S. gay rights organizations don't have an inherent responsibility to take up the crusade for the rights of juvenile criminals; they do, however, have a responsibility to speak up when gays are executed simply for being gay. There's nothing admirable about using one injustice as blinders for another.

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Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan, or Christian fundamentalists in the States might have a problem with the way things are here. It's really none of their business, though.

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By extension then, the murder of Muslim gays is not "our" business? Allrighty then, let's just mind "our" own business.

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Originally posted by Hephaestion:

A "dowry"?? Sounds uncomfortably like buying the kid, to me... (Or am I being culturally insensitive?)

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I think a bride price is the norm again in Afghanistan.

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Originally posted by Fidel:

But will the bride of them have to wear a head-to-toe veil in public and be barred from higher education and working outside of the home/hovel?

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A tribal assembly...told the newlyweds... to leave the area immediately or face death for "breaking all the religious and tribal values and ethics"...

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[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Although it remains a taboo subject, homosexuality is relatively common in Pakistan, says the BBC's correspondent Aamer Ahmed Khan in Islamabad.

Increasingly, gay couples are living together in some of the big cities such as Karachi and Islamabad, but gay marriages remain unheard of, he says.

Pakistani law punishes sodomy with imprisonment ranging from two years to life.

Some Islamic provisions prescribe 100 lashes for the act or even death by stoning.

A gay couple caught having sex were lashed publicly in the Khyber region in May.

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Originally posted by Sanitary Engineer:

Sort of like George Bush, telling all those A-rabs to embrace "democracy". I think he is a food to dictate American values to them.

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OK, cultural relativism going a bit far here--no way will I endorse cannibalism. George Bush is not a food. For that matter, even if I were a cannibal I think I'd consider him tainted meat . . .

Meanwhile, yeah, there's often this tension between rights questions and cultural imperialism questions. I generally end up on the "rights" side. I mean, I wouldn't advocate *invading* someone because I don't like their culture. Doesn't mean I have to say arranged marriages with dowries are *OK*, and it certainly doesn't mean I have to say stoning gays to death is *OK*. They're not OK, they're wrong. Such practices trample on people's rights and freedoms, and the latter one, hello, involves killing innocent people. That's a *bad thing*. I don't give a damn if it's traditional. We used to have plenty traditions like that in Canada. We got better, mostly. We still have some. They need to be fixed. They're *wrong*. And the ethical reasoning involved is not restricted to any particular culture.

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Originally posted by Hephaestion:

Fidel, WTF are you on about?

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But isn't the groom from Afghanistan ?. I mean, both nations' mullah clergies seem to be providing the backdrops to this human rights scenario.

Hmmm, militant Islamic nations stuck in a sixth century time warp, and where men are men and women know their places and not to read books or wear nail polish. I think their gay marriage rights agendas must rank right up there with the plan for redistribution of farmland from poppy-growing warlords to the peasantry. The transition from militant Islamic rule to democratic imperialism should go smoothly for both nations.

And Pakistan. Oh ya, gotta love that country for aiding and abetting terrorists in the 1980's and penchant for subtle threats to incinerate India every now and then. Gotta love our cold war era friends over there. They just have to be nation members of the "axes of good" by default.

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Originally posted by Sanitary Engineer:
Also, this report comes from "The Times of India".

Just guessing, but maybe a Indian newspaper is not the best possible source to get a story out of Pakistan?(Or vice-versa, for that matter).

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This story confirms the basic facts of the Times of India story, and says that they were confirmed by AFP and 'a local Urdu-language newspaper.'

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It has also been reported that the pair have been told to leave the area or be killed for breaking religious and ethics.

Gay sex and marriage are both illegal in Pakistan and can result in life imprisonment or a public torture.

A gay couple caught having sex were flogged in public in the Khyber region during May of this year.

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[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]

Daily Times:

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PESHAWAR: Town elders from Khyber Agency on Monday threatened a local Urdu newspaper with legal action if it did not apologise for its October 5 news reporting a gay marriage in Tirah Valley.

“If the newspaper does not carry a front page statement contradicting the fake story within the next two days an immediate ban will be imposed on the paper in the Khyber Agency,” said Maulana Abdul Aziz....
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Aziz said that journalistic ethics had not been observed in filing the ‘baseless’ report and demanded the expulsion of the reporter from the paper.

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Daily Times (Pakistan):

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We do not need science at all. Consider this widely circulated e-mail: “Has it occurred to you that the most severe earthquake in Pakistan’s history has struck just five days after the first gay marriage in the country?”
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Such pearls of wisdom, however, are not confined to our co-religionists, although they are far more prevalent among them. “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director, Michael Marcavage, referring to the devastation caused in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. “New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge.”
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The high-profile American preacher Pat Robertson has gone further, saying that “recent natural disasters around the globe point to the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.” Even so, he is no match for our very own Dr Israr Ahmad in terms of both frequency and stridency, when it comes to making dire doomsday predictions.
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If you ask the Jewish rabbis, God not merely punishes moral depravity but also bad foreign policy. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the “spiritual leader” of Israel’s Shas party declared: “The hurricane [Katrina] is God’s punishment on George Bush”. Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, explained why: “The US should have discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from implementing the Gaza evacuation rather than pushing for it and pressuring Israel into concessions”.
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Mankind, it would seem, is wasting its time and resources on geology, seismology, cosmology, meteorology and medical science, when all it needs are rabbis and monks, priests and pastors, mullahs and maulanas, dervishes and sadhus to show us the way.

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