A 40-year retrospective of gay photographer DUANE MICHALS’ work is one of the special features of this year's Equality Forum in Philadelphia. (Photos copyright Duane Michals, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York)
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KATHERINE VOLIN
Friday, April 25, 2008
At a time when the Middle East is at the center of the world stage, this year’s Equality Forum theme of gays in the Muslim world is a perfect fit.
Next week’s Equality Forum, an international gay civil rights conference held in Philadelphia, also features its ninth annual art exhibit, including the work of world-renowned gay photographer Duane Michals. Michals will be at the conference and participating in a lecture on April 30, a reception on May 1 and a tour of the exhibit on May 2. All the events are free.
“He is a photographer of international stature in the major museums around the world,” says Equality Forum Executive Director Malcolm Lazin. “[He] was out back in the 1980s — early in the movement — so among his friends whom he photographed were Andy Warhol [and] Keith Haring, among others.”
Michals’ work can be found in the permanent collections of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Japan’s National Museum of Art, among many others.
The exhibit, titled “The Facts of Life,” is a 40-year retrospective of his work, including new pieces from his books “The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy” and “Ten Poems by Cavafy.”
FOR GAY ACTIVISTS, though, the real meat of the week-long conference lies in this year’s theme, which is partially addressed on May 4 by a talk from Irshad Manji, the best-selling author of “The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.”
There will also be a panel on May 1 at 7 p.m. featuring Afdhere Jama, editor of queer Muslim magazine Huriyah, Parvez Sharma, director of the documentary “A Jihad for Love,” John Scagliotti, creator and executive producer of PBS series “In the Life,” and Arsham Parsi, whose sexual orientation changed his life in more ways than just romance. If Parsi was going to lead a free existence, he had to flee his notoriously anti-gay homeland of Iran.
“Iran is not the same as other countries, including other Muslim countries. Iran is totally different,” Parsi says. “We’re born as Muslims and we know many things about the Islamic culture and homosexuality is illegal.”
Once Parsi realized he was gay in his late teens, he had to contend with the guilt he experienced because his feelings didn’t conform to Islamic law.
“I felt I am a sinner and I have something totally wrong and I’m against God,” he says.
“All of Islam fasts for one month [during Ramadan] and I fasted for three months because I decided I have to practice because I have something wrong.”
Eventually, Parsi explored sexual orientation on the Internet and discovered that being gay wasn’t illegal and sinful everywhere.
“I read many articles and I accepted my sexual orientation as a normal thing,” he says.
But he took his newfound self-acceptance a step further in 2001 after two of his close gay friends committed suicide. Parsi created a gay Iranian support and information web site, now known as Iranian Queer Organization, www.irqo.net, that year.
“Because of my activities, the police were going to arrest me and I decided to leave Iran. I call it escape. I identify myself as living in exile,” says Parsi, now 27. He fled to Turkey on March 4, 2005. There he pleaded for and eventually received refugee status from the United Nations based on the sexual orientation discrimination he experienced in Iran, and he then immigrated to Canada on May 10, 2006.
GIVEN HIS EXPERIENCES, it’s important to Parsi that gay rights are viewed as a separate issue from spirituality.
“Religion is your beliefs. You can change your religion. Maybe today you like the red color and maybe the next day you can say I don’t like anymore the red color, I’m going to the blue color. Everything is changeable,” Parsi says. “But the sexual orientation is not in your hands. The sexual orientation is not your choice.”
Parsi’s upcoming trip, which will include stops in half a dozen other U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles, will be his first visit to the United States.
“It is very important for me because I’m Iranian, and as you know the U.S. and Iran, they have an especially sticky political situation,” he says. “I have a message that for American people that we can accept and we can respect human rights for all people regardless of political activities. Maybe the United States and Iran have many problems, but we are all human beings and we can all respect each other.”
For Parsi, giving his message is particularly important because of the rarity of a gay Iranian perspective.
“I’m so happy and I’m honored that I can talk on behalf of my LGBT Iranian friends, [because] they cannot speak out,” Parsi says.
Parsi’s panel is moderated by Michael Luongo, an international journalist and the editor of “Gay Travels in the Muslim World”, a collection of essays.
“It’s really kind of bringing a depth to the discussion beyond headlines,” Luongo says about the panel discussion, which is free, as are most Equality Forum events. The conference has no registration fee and last year drew 75,000 participants.
“If we’re going to talk about war, if we’re going to talk about the Middle East, one of the notions that gets lost in most of the media coverage is the people that are living there,” he says.
Subtlety is also lost in the western world’s image of Islamic sexuality, according to Luongo.
“Everything is very nuanced,” he says about gay life in the Muslim world. “It’s not just headlines and people being decapitated. There’s so many different ways in which sexuality is expressed and in the Middle East, it’s far more nebulous and far more fluid than anything that we’re used to.”
Luongo says one of his main messages to audiences is the importance of visiting countries, even if they seem unsafe.
(Photos copyright Duane Michals, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York) |
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“You really need to see places directly for yourself if possible and push your own envelope to go to see quote-unquote dangerous places,” he says. “That’s something that I really encourage people to do — to really go beyond their own fears and see places for what they are. And the process of traveling changes both you and the places that you visit.”
THE DECISION TO focus on gay life in the Muslim world was made last July, says Equality Forum’s Lazin. Two months later, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to the U.S. and made memorable comments about queer life in Iran while speaking at Columbia University.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country,” Ahmadinejad said to laughter and boos from the audience.
“President Ahmadinejad certainly assisted in bringing focus to that issue when he declared at Columbia University that there were no gays in his country,” Lazin says.
Lazin also hopes the focus on the Muslim world will help connect participants at the forum.
“I think … it helps to bring attention to the fact that ours is not only a national, but an international civil rights movement,” he says. “It helps to make the statement that we feel a sense of responsibility to our brothers and sisters around the world.”
Although the focus is on gays in the Muslim world, the weeklong event will include plenty of other topics. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will be honored at the International Equality Dinner on May 3, “Hairspray” will be performed on May 2 and Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, whom Lazin calls a “profile in courage,” will be offering an interfaith service on May 4.
“Spong who is straight, was the first bishop to ordain an openly gay man…knowing that he faced a heresy trial,” Lazin says. “Fortunately, he won. Here’s a man who put his theology degree and career accomplishments and pension on the line for principal. Literally every out gay clergy stands on his shoulders.”
For those wanting a break from heavy topics, Philadelphia’s Blue Ball party is held in conjunction with the conference, April 30-May 4. Featuring well-known DJs, including New York’s Joe Gauthreaux and L.A.’s Manny Lehman, the event raises money for a host of local beneficiaries. For more info, visit blueball.sapphirefund.org.
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