A Façade of a Mirrored Reality
A man in Amsterdam reading the Sunday news paper that views a gay scandal story from Jordan.
by: M.J. Rahahleh
The media is the voice of each and every nation, what speaks up for its inspirations and its mind, what speaks up for its dreams and hopes. But sometimes the media is misguided or mislead by some social sects in order to use it against another. Here in Jordan, although there's absolutely no law against homosexuality in the Jordanian constitution (unlike most Arab states), even gay marriage is constitutionally legal, because the definition of marriage in the Jordanian civil law is "a bond between two people" not specified if male and male, male and female or female and female, yet some political powers in the Jordanian political view try to use the gay "issue" as a way to gather more votes, as well as more fame and a wider political base, since its naturally rejected by most of the Jordanian Society.
Despite of all of what's mentioned earlier, some parts of the Jordanian press try to show the gay community in Jordan as a sect that tries to "corrupt the peace and harmony of the Jordanian society" and "attempt to alter the conservative Muslim values of the Jordanian society"…
One example of those attempts is what happened last November-2007- by a newspaper called "fact Jo" or"الحقيقة الدولية" which made an alleged interview with a gay guy who goes by the name "Ramez", but anyone who reads that interview knows that its fake and just made up by the article reporter to serve his own purposes, calling us psychopaths and against the laws of the nature and all religions, and usually linked to what happened to the people of the prophet Lot in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and a way to spread diseases such as AIDS and Gonorrhea . (We’ve attached link about the issue in the “Press Stress page”).
Now although all of this happened here in Jordan, its still relatively good compared to what happens in other Arab countries, death penalty in the Gulf States, imprisonment in Syria and Lebanon, prosecution in Egypt and Morocco, and so on. A common thought has spread in the past years, since the Western World has many gay liberties and rights, and since Western Countries such as France, Denmark, Belgium, the United States and The U.K. are trying to make things "better" for the gay communities in the Arab States, gays are looked upon as a tool of colonization and domination and destruction of the values of the society, they're looked upon as clients or tools used to press over the Arab governments whenever a Western Country doesn't like the policies of this Arab state, (we’ve attached links-in Arabic-regarding this issue), yet all of us know that this is untrue, we are just human beings with different needs and aspirations than other people, and we won't let our sexuality get into the way of our way of living.
Always be proud, and live proud.
Showing History what it's made of!
Amman-Jordan, on the 31st of October 2007, Jordan made history to have a group who were about to launch the fist gay magazine in Jordan "M.K.magazine". Even though the magazine didn't exactly launch-(which was suppose to launch on the 2nd of November) - from the media pressure on the subject and the major spot light of attention the issue got, the only thing that got launched was the cover that featured a teenage Arab model, and the magazine website, that was erased by the group itself shortly after the magazine made headlines. The magazine was rumored to have some sort of a connection to an unknown of gay convention that no one heard of, the rumor was outed by an un-famous local tabloid newspaper (we hold on speaking its name). The magazine made headlines at the local and Middle Eastern media, even Helem.net covered the story. However M.K.magazine made history, opening a huge taboo door for the human rights to talk about, and especially the media, now Jordan's most papers and magazines cover many gay-related issues, articles, stories plus news, and you have no idea how continuously the news are! So M.K.magazine did in fact make history.
related link (Helem's coverage on the story):
http://www.helem.net/news.zn?id=65