An article in the New York Times suggests that exotic sexual behavior is growing more open in Iraq, as a result of conditions created by Western invasion. The authors of the article can’t call homosexuality “exotic,” but the view comes across anyways, in the quotations from Iraqis and their officials, and in the apparent effort by Iraqis themselves to brutally stamp out homosexual habits, even and especially among family members. The authors say that a spate of violence against openly gay men shows that “Iraq remains religious, conservative — and still violent.”
On that view it’s the regular, “heteronormative” habits and attitudes of Iraqis that are the problem and the source of violence and tension. A traditionalist might ask, why not the other way around? Why doesn’t the effort to normalize anti-traditional modes of behavior attract blame as being the root of the problem? It might be seen that way by evangelical Christians, but their handling of basic issues always seems amateurish and superficial to me—at least, that’s my unstudied view.
If traditional attitudes and prejudices are merely aberrant and arbitrary, then there shouldn’t be any fundamental difficulty with reconfiguring things to get rid of them and obtain satisfaction and social peace. That sort of project is now typical in the West. But that’s not what traditional attitudes are, and that’s not how dealing with them works.
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Prejudice versus exotica
An article in the New York Times suggests that exotic sexual behavior is growing more open in Iraq, as a result of conditions created by Western invasion. The authors of the … [Read More]
Posted by Evan McLaren on April 08, 2009
The Usual Suspects