Inside the 'Double Closet'

By Sarah Klein, Detroit Metro Times. Posted May 11, 2006.

The italicized names in this story are pseudonyms, to protect those who requested anonymity.

The suffocatingly sweet scent of peach-flavored tobacco wafts through the Male Box, swirling around the disco lights that ricochet off mirrored walls. The aroma is rising from a series of hookah pipes perched on glitter-flecked tables -- a rather odd juxtaposition in a beer-and-shot gay bar that's located on a desolate stretch of Seven Mile Road in Detroit.

It's Saturday night and the place is slowly filling up with men of a variety of ages and races -- but this isn't any ordinary evening. Tonight, the bar is playing host to Arabian Nights, a series of monthly events designed to validate and unite one of the most closeted communities in the area, and in the nation:

Gay and lesbian Arabs.

Arabian Nights is orchestrated by AL-GAMEA, a group formed in 2004 by three gay Arab men dedicated to creating a forum for support, socialization, education and awareness, in an area that's home to the largest and most visible Arab-American community in the country.

Christiano Ayoub Ramazzotti, 31, is a small man with big aspirations. The full-time HIV counselor and former high school gymnastics coach zips through the bar, hugging friends, shaking hands, making introductions.

Bashar Makhay, 21, mans the DJ booth; as cultures collide and mesh, so does the music -- traditional Arabic rhythms are layered over staccato electronic beats common in dance clubs.

Sebastian, 39, has just finished applying makeup to Haifa, an Arabic female impersonator who'll be performing later tonight. Despite the darkened environ, Haifa sports rockstar shades on the tip of her nose. A sparkling rhinestone charm dangles and winks from her pierced navel as she works the room.

There's frolic and celebration in the air tonight, but the levity belies the challenges and difficult choices many of these people must face on a daily basis.

As immigrants, they must cope with melding two nationalities; as Arabs, they must deal with unbridled, post-9/11 racism in this country; and as gays, they must deal with jokes, harassment, discrimination, and sometimes, the threat of being attacked and beaten -- even by their own families.

Outing oneself as gay in this country can still lead to alienation of friends and family, pain, shame, humiliation and discrimination. But in the Middle East, where gender roles are extremely polarized, being gay can lead to imprisonment, flogging or death.

The 2004 Canadian TV documentary "Gloriously Free" chronicled the traumatic tale of one Middle Eastern man, the son of a powerful Jordan politician, who was thrown down a flight of stairs by his family when they discovered he was gay. As he recovered in the hospital, his younger brother shot him in the leg. The crime, considered "a family matter," was never prosecuted.

In November last year, the Associated Press reported a raid on a gay wedding in the United Arab Emirates, and that the two dozen men arrested faced a sentence of forced hormone treatments (the Interior Ministry later denied considering such a sentence after an international protest ensued). Just weeks ago, the UN confirmed that gay Iraqis are being targeted for kidnapping and murder by Shi'ite death squads in response to a death-to-gays fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

While the situation is less grim for Arab-Americans in this country, they still face personal, religious and familial hardships for their sexual orientation -- much like those tackled by the first wave of the gay rights movement in the '70s.

Eighteen-year-old Nick is originally from Syria. He's young, exuberant and impossibly pretty. His eyes are constantly roaming the Male Box, and he can't sit still for more than a moment.

Nick was kicked out of the house after informing his parents he was gay. With no stable job and nowhere to go, he had to lie to Mom and Dad -- assuring them his homosexuality was "a phase" -- in order to come back home. He even has a fake girlfriend now.

He says being openly gay is one of the "hardest things you can do as an Arab. It's extremely hard because of your culture, your parents. It's the biggest taboo. It's basically considered filth. Arabs don't understand that it's not a choice; they say, 'America made you that way.'"

"The Arabic community does not respect gay life," says Andy, 25, who was born in Lebanon and moved to the United States with his family when he was 5.

"They think you're a sick person, that you're not supposed to live. They think it's against God's rules.

"But God will always love me," he says. "I was born like this and it's nothing to be ashamed of."

These stories are far too common, and they're why Ramazzotti, Makhay and Sebastian decided to start AL-GAMEA (which means "the gathering"). The idea developed after a gay pride march in 2004, when the three men got together with friends to watch a documentary, "I Exist," about gays and lesbians in the Middle East.

"We watched it and thought, 'we do exist' and we need something like that here," Sebastian says. "Let's create a group that will help us be social, a safe place for people who may not feel safe coming out in our culture and community."

Sarah Klein is culture editor of the Detroit Metro Times.

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