The British government’s Forced Marriage Unit (Um, they have one of those? Awesome) reports a spike in reports of male victims reportedly coerced into marriages with women, many because their families suspected they are gay. The unit received 65 percent more reports in 2009 (220) versus 2008 (134), with most involving families from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. [BBC]
A Surge of British Male Immigrants Reporting Forced Hetero Marriages
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EdWoody
Yep, that sounds about right. They’ve been trying to enact Islamic Sharia law there for a while too.
whatever
How is this a ‘gay’ story?
EdWoody
@whatever: umm… because it’s about gay men being forced to marry women by their families. As it says right there in the text.
counterpoll
I’ve seen a few cases like this in the US, although I don’t believe anyone is tracking them: Gay male “forced” to marry a woman and produce offspring and threatened with being disinherited, disowned and shunned by the Indo-Pak community.
Even amongst 2nd generation straight individuals, “arranged marriages” are not uncommon.
A “suitable” spouse is chosen based on family caste/status, educational level, and in some cases, a dowry is put on the table. No exception is made for gay/lesbian persons.
Pakistanis skew Moslem, Indians skew Hindu, but the pressure to conform to parental dictates can be rather heavy-handed in either instance.
Important to add that none of this illegal. It’s just nasty and repressive.
B
No. 1 · EdWoody wrote, “Yep, that sounds about right. They’ve been trying to enact Islamic Sharia law there for a while too.”
LOL. India has a mix of religions, with a lot of Hindus who would under no circumstances accept Sharia law. There would be little chance of getting Sharia law past parliament.
Pakistan, while mostly Muslim, bases its legal system on English common law with provisions to fit its status as an Islamic state (see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pk.html and note that the CIA does not tend to whitewash extremist governments). While Pakistan has quite a number of internal problems, if you have ever been there (I have) you’d hear average people distinguish themselves from “religious people”. I.e., they may go to a mosque on Fridays, but they don’t let religion dominate their lives. Some of the tribal areas, only loosely controlled by the national government, can be far more radical. Lots of people in the more cosmopolitan areas (e.g., Islamabad) say they are “family oriented” (and they means it literally – it is not a euphemism for religious extremism as the term is used in the U.S.) Some parts of the country are far more unstable than others (Karachi is a lot more dangerous than Islamabad or Lahore).
Both India and Pakistan are behind the U.S. and Western Europe on gay rights, but there is no “show stopper” that would prevent them from catching up – but it will take some time.
No comments about Bangladesh – haven’t been there.
EdWoody
@B: I was talking about Muslims in the UK trying to apply Sharia law to their communities there, as another example of the same thing that’s happening in the case described in the article. We weren’t actually talking about India/Pakistan etc themselves.
FanOfThat
EdWoody : From what I know, Indians (mostly Hindu) have foit quite well into British society. Their own culture remains, of course, but all’s basically okay. The Muslims are another story.
Robert in NYC
As a transplanted Brit living in New York, I can say unequivocally that Sharia law would never pass muster in the UK which is not a very religious society anyway and has one of the lowest church attendance rates in the western world. Even honour killings would not be tolerated in the UK, muslims would still be subject to British law. There is a popular myth in the U.S. media that British muslims, both native and immigrant don’t assimilate and end up becoming terrorists. I don’t know where this came from but it is entirely wrong. The majority of them do assimilate, work hard and some become entrepreneurs and they have freedom of choice not to. They’re in every walk of life and many of them reject the extremism found in the minority who get the media’s attention, not that I agree with anything that Islam represents. Personally, I don’t think its a peaceful religion as some western leaders like to portray for the sake of diplomacy and political expediency. Its where christianity was in the middle ages. In my view, most religious cults are nothing more than an exercise in mass hysteria, irrational thinkers, just look at the Roman and fundamentalist evangelical cults as parallels. I’m glad the British authorities are taking these forced marriages seriously, long overdue.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Those cultures are beyond comprehension……..They have such a regid interpertation of how one must live their life with zero room for any compromise. I work with two guys one from Pakistan other India. Both have arranged marriages. I asked one of them what it is like to be such a situation. He replied “it is like living with a stranger”. He said he and his wife are at best roomates who tolerate each other. I asked why doesn’t he leave. He replied he cannot becasue his family would disown him and he would not go against the teachings of Islam. They are currently trying to concieve a child……….
Tallskin
I used to work with the British Home Office, as a contractor not as a fully fledged civil servant.
This young native british white woman I used to work with, a very sweet girl, full of the joys and wonders of multi-culturalism and how wonderful immigration is, blah blah blah – and she’d never hear a word said against islam. She’d even been to pakistan and thought the religiosity there absolutely wonderful, despite being spat at on the streets for not wearing the full islamic head helmet required for women.
Anyway, she transfered over to the Forced Marriages section of the Home Office Immigration division. They’re sort of like a Mission Impossible/James Bond affair who go on rescue missions to hell holes like Pakistan to rescue British pakistani girls “sold” into arranged marriages – when the british embassy there gets a distress call from these girls. Often the girls have been beaten, passports confiscated, raped etc etc.
I met her a few years later and she had evolved into a ravening hater of all things islamic. Oh? I raised my eyebrows in disbelief, Why is that? And she told me of the horror stories she’d dealt with at first hand.
But I always suspected that young men were victims also, it’s just that we never heard of it before.
Not sure I really understand it fully though cos seems that whereas western families used to throw out their gay teens to fend for themselves, in muslims communities the kids are married off to straighten them out.
Tallskin
@whatever – you’re a fucking airheaded idiot if you cannot work out how this is a gay story