Gay bar in basra, iraq

Mike's on the far left. This was posted to Facebook Dec. Last night, I was drinking at Pony when I got a text from my youngest brother saying, simply, "Mike is on facebook. Mike is a first lieutenant in the Army, stationed in Basra right now.

Sign up for Democracy Now! Back in the United States, one of the men left injured in an attack on a Massachusetts gay bar has filed a complaint alleging paramedics gave him poor treatment because of his sexual orientation. Robert Perry was hit in the head and shot in the back when year-old Jacob Robida attacked him and two others earlier this month. Robida later killed himself during a police chase.

this month. Photo courtesy of Ayaz Shalal. Shalal, 24, is from Sulaymaniyah, a city in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He is the deputy director of programs for the Rasan Organization, which advocates on behalf of LGBT people and women and young people.

My parents moved from Bombay to Kuwait when I was six weeks old. We moved because the money was good, the living was easy, and it had none of the grime of India, the clamorous crowds in the cities we left behind. Their kids, my parents told themselves, would have better opportunities in the Gulf. Not that any of us had it all that hard in India.