Class, conservatism and sexuality

In 2004, the (now defunct) United Nations Human Rights Commission used its 60th session to debate a resolution that had been tabled the previous year by Brazil on "Human Rights and Sexual Orientation". This represented the first time that the world body had actively considered adopting a motion specifically aimed at ending discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Pakistan – along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Malaysia – proposed amendments to the resolution, demanding that the term sexual orientation be removed from the text entirely. As it had announced previously, the Pakistani delegation upheld the stance of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) by ultimately voting against the resolution.

While such a move was not entirely unexpected, what caught the world's attention was the insistence, by the head of the Pakistani group, that the issue of sexual orientation was 'not a concern' for the developing world. The rationale for such a statement was that homosexuality was, purportedly, an exclusively Western phenomenon. The subtext to this was that homosexuality did not exist in Muslim states due simply to the fact that Islam forbade such practices. Now fast-forward to October 2005, when Pakistan again hit international headlines with reports of the country's 'first-ever' gay marriage having taken place in Khyber Agency, between a 42-year-old Afghan refugee and a 16-year-old local boy.