The issue of the case and the crimes it includes repeat what happened in the time of the Sodomites and the wrath that fell upon them. They created an unprecedented obscenity among human beings by having sexual intercourse with human and demon males, and ignoring the women God created.

—Judge Hassan al-Sayes¹

I was so scared that in the end I said, "I don't know anything about contempt of religion, I am just gay."

—Murad²

I.    Introduction

¶ 1         In April 2003, at the 59th Session of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva, Brazil unexpectedly introduced a resolution for consideration that called upon both the United Nations and state governments to incorporate protection from persecution and discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation" into their human rights practices and procedures.³ While this was not the first time that the relationship between human rights and protection from persecution and discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation" had been discussed at the UNCHR, it was indeed the first time that a resolution had been proposed with such wide ramifications for member states vis-a-vis the protection of (non-normative) sexual orientations.⁴ Earlier, while still controversial, the UNCHR had only considered, and passed, resolutions that worked to protect people from being extra-judicially, arbitrarily, and summarily executed based on their sexual orientation.⁵ This time, however, far more than the right to kill people based on their sexual orientation was at stake for UN member states.

¶ 2         Not surprisingly, the Brazilian resolution did not pass and, indeed, an international coalition of states worked strenuously to either delay consideration of the proposal or to kill it outright. Prominent in this somewhat-motley coalition were Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference), the Vatican, and Zimbabwe.⁶ While these states did not succeed in getting the resolution voted down, their opposition was instrumental in tabling full consideration of the Brazilian resolution until the UNCHR's 60th session in 2004.⁷ At this 2004 session, the Brazilian resolution was again confronted with vocal opposition and a vote on the resolution's substantive terms was put off for yet another year.⁸ At the 61st session in April 2005, the UNCHR again failed to discuss the resolution, and it has now completely fallen off of the UNCHR's agenda, unless some state is brave enough in the future to affirmatively re-introduce the resolution for discussion.⁹

¶ 3         In consideration of the formidable opposition to the Brazilian resolution, and the very real possibility that it will not be revived in the foreseeable future, some important and urgent questions about future strategy and aims must now be posed. Considerable resources and effort have been invested in the struggle for the Brazilian resolution by some of the leading international gay and lesbian human rights organizations, including the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International's Outfront project, and Human Rights Watch's Lesbian and Gay Rights project. While these resources and efforts have surely raised a great deal of international awareness of and collaboration on the problems that people with persecuted sexual orientations suffer, one must wonder if another course of action might generate these same benefits without the problems that come with the Brazilian resolution. Accordingly, now is the time to ask whether the Brazilian resolution (or any efforts like it) is the best way forward, and whether international human rights norms and practices (and resources) could be used more effectively to help protect the large numbers of those persons whose persecution is the ostensible target of the Brazilian resolution.

¶ 4         This article will argue that such an alternative way does indeed exist and, moreover, that one can find it by realizing the ways in which existing human rights guarantees protect persons from religious persecution and discrimination. In this respect, as this article will demonstrate, a great deal of the global persecution of gays, lesbians, homosexuals and other persons whose identities or practices somehow mark them as "dangerous" is steeped in claims of religiosity.¹⁰ Furthermore, as this article will also demonstrate, while it is certainly true that some homosexuals¹¹ (among others) want to identify as "gay," some do not wish to so identify. Moreover, some who do so identify do not necessarily understand "gay" as first and foremost a sexual identity at every point in time (if ever at all). For this latter set of persons, their gayness (or homosexuality) is deeply interwoven with personal experiences and understandings of religion. Accordingly, when such "homo-sectuals"—to use a neologism—are persecuted, they understand this persecution as "religious" persecution. Thus, as formulated and understood by many persons and states—but not by enough international human rights activists—persecution of the "sexual" can often actually be persecution of the "religious."

¶ 5         In response to this reality, this article will thus argue that existing human rights protections concerning religious persecution (and discrimination) provide sufficient means for countering most of the incidences of persecution that the Brazilian resolution seems to be trying to counter with its new formulations concerning "sexual orientation." Moreover, this article will also argue that these existing human rights guarantees are also necessary means of protection for the substantial and increasing number of people who are not willing to surrender their understandings of religion and religiosity to those who would use the same to persecute gays, lesbians, homosexuals, and others whose identities or practices somehow mark them as "blasphemous" or "heretical." However, this necessity will only be felt by international human rights actors if, in the process of countering such persecution, they simultaneously work to demonstrate respect for persons' diverse self-identifications and self-understandings. Accordingly, another goal of this article is to demonstrate how such respect should inform the international human rights effort.

¶ 6         Of course, it is important to remember that, ultimately, some people do need protections for their "sexual orientation."¹² Thus, the argument here is not that "sexual orientation" should never be protected under international human rights law. However, that being the case, it is also important to realize that for those people who see their gay identities or homosexual practices as first and foremost imbricated in much larger debates concerning religion—including tolerance and pluralism within religion—existing human rights guarantees provide less-personally-compromising, and thus more just, tools for countering their persecution. And, indeed, for these people, the Brazilian resolution provides very limited, if any, assistance, even while generally being unnecessary.

¶ 7         The politics of sexuality and religion, and the complex of legal and other issues that arise when they intersect, are intensely experienced in many places around the globe. However, perhaps nowhere have these politics and issues been on more public and international display than in Egypt over the last several years. Part II opens by discussing how an influential state like Egypt has recently engaged in a set of politics which challenges commonplace configurations of sexuality and religion, and sexual and religious identities. Importantly, as Part II explains, in the past few years the Egyptian state has actively worked to define "gayness" as "un-Islamic" in the Egyptian public's imagination, in the process of carrying out a well-publicized arrest and torture campaign against (allegedly) gay men. In this way, the Egyptian state has seriously undermined the possibility of discussions linking gayness to issues of sexuality and sexual rights and, instead, has contributed to a discourse in which people's Islamic religious credentials are brought into serious question by any affiliation with or sympathy for gayness.

¶ 8         While the Egyptian state's efforts to demonize gayness have been, unfortunately, all too effective, a number of people have begun to actively challenge commonplace discourses concerning Islam, homosexuality, and gayness which the Egyptian state's efforts both reflect and contribute to. Part III explains this "homo-sectual" challenge, outlining its arguments and also demonstrating the ways in which this challenge parallels other movements (e.g. feminist Muslim movements) which argue for more tolerance and legitimacy for heterodox voices and approaches within Islam.¹³ This Part concludes by arguing that international human right norms and practices which ignore or overlook such important movements, and which continue to structure an inherent opposition between religion and gayness or homosexuality, are as morally and legally problematic as the attempts by the Egyptian state to control what it means to be "sexual" or "religious," or "gay" or "Muslim."

¶ 9         Of course, Egypt is not the only contemporary state that attempts to actively control—and repress—certain sexual and religious identifications that it finds "blasphemous" or "heretical." And, indeed, such a mode of politics and governance has been present in India for much of its nearly sixty years of existence. Fortunately, the Indian state's attempts in this respect have gone far from unchallenged, and public debates concerning a tangle of issues related to family law, religion, gender, and sexuality have carried on in response for many years now. While these debates have often been fierce—implicating as they do a whole range of sensitive issues—they have occasionally been productive, and not just destructive. And, indeed, from the mass of law and policy proposals that these debates have generated, emerges real-world traction—and precedent—for the thorough reconsideration of common-place legal notions of the "sexual" and the "religious" that this article ultimately argues for.

¶ 10         Accordingly, Part IV of this article discusses the politics and law of sexuality and religion in contemporary India, concentrating on those areas of law—in particular, family law—where such politics have been most prominent. This discussion highlights both the Indian state's attempts to police the borders of religious and sexual identities, but also the refusal of a number of individuals in India to acquiesce to the conventional, orthodox identifications that the Indian state often endorses. In regard to these unorthodox identifications, and as Part IV also discusses, Indian public debates over family law have resulted in some very interesting proposals concerning family law reform—proposals that reflect the importance that many Indian citizens attach to their "religious" identities (e.g. Hindu, Muslim, Christian), but that also allow the possibility of more free-flowing, "bottom-up" understandings of those identities. Ultimately, like these Indian legal proposals—and unlike the Indian state's attempts to control the meaning of not only certain religious identifications, but also "religiosity" generally—this article's human rights proposals will argue that international human rights norms and practices must begin to understand not only specific identities (e.g. "gay," "Muslim"), but also the general categories of "sexuality" and "religion," in less essentialist ways.

¶ 11         Building upon the demonstrations in Parts II through IV of how complicated the global politics of sexuality and religion actually are, and also the difficulties that these complicated politics present for any neat legal attempt to universally define various sexual and religious identities—or sexual versus religious persecution as well—Part V is dedicated to demonstrating how international human rights norms and practices themselves might better respond to, and also demonstrate respect for, this human complexity. And, indeed, one way such norms and practices might demonstrate such respect is to acknowledge that the situation is far from hopeless if the Brazilian resolution never succeeds, and then work to make existing human rights protections more readily available to those who need them. Accordingly, Part V demonstrates how many states have justified their criminalization of certain forms of same-sex activity in religious terms, and then discusses how existing human rights protections concerning religious persecution and discrimination might be used to counter such criminalization. Relatedly, this part will also demonstrate how existing protections for asylum applicants who have experienced religious persecution can help large numbers of asylum applicants—homo-sectual and otherwise—who would otherwise have to (problematically) argue their cases on the basis of their supposed "membership in a particular social group."

¶ 12         Persecution of and discrimination against gays, lesbians, homosexuals, homo-sectuals, and others whose identities or practices somehow mark them as "blasphemous" or "heretical" is a prevalent, if usually ignored, aspect of much contemporary life around the globe. While much of the international human rights activism directed at this persecution was an outgrowth of social movements in both the U.S. and Europe, increasingly vibrant circles of gay and lesbian human rights activism are emerging in contexts as different as India, Taiwan, South Africa, and Brazil. Given these widening circles of activism, and the diverse contexts in which they are situated, there is clearly now a need to rethink what "gay" or "homosexual" mean—or might mean—and also how international human rights activism should adapt in response to potentially different interpretations and implementations of these and other identities and practices.¹⁴ This being the case, then, this article ultimately hopes that what has happened in Geneva with the Brazilian resolution will be viewed as less of a "setback" than a, perhaps ironic, opportunity for international human rights actors to rediscover important core values concerning respect for persons' diverse self-identifications and self-understandings.

II.    Egypt, the "Queen Boat 52," and the Potential Religiosity of Sexuality

¶ 13         On May 11, 2001, officers from both the local Cairo Vice Squad and Egypt's national State Security Investigations unit raided the Queen Boat nightclub in Cairo. Approximately three dozen men were arrested and taken into custody that evening from the Queen Boat.¹⁵ Eventually, thirty of these men—and twenty-two others rounded up from the streets, homes, and workplaces of Cairo in the several days before the raid on the Queen Boat itself¹⁶—would be tried before an Emergency State Security Court for Misdemeanors on charges stemming from their alleged "habitual practice of debauchery."¹⁷ Ultimately, twenty-three of these "Queen Boat 52" men were convicted by this security court,¹⁸ and subsequent appeals and retrials have not substantially altered these convictions.¹⁹

¶ 14         To this day, there remains a large degree of uncertainty—and thus only speculation—about what in particular drove Egypt's crackdown on "debauched" men. Examining the history of public and legal discourse in Egypt vis-a-vis "debauchery," the patterns in how "debauched" men were identified and picked up from the Queen Boat (and elsewhere in Egypt), and also the authorities' treatment, including torture, of the men they arrested, it is not easy to understand what the law or the authorities in Egypt understood "debauchery" to mean.²⁰ For example, examining the arrest patterns on the evening of May 11, 2001, it is unclear whether it was possible for non-Egyptian foreigners to be guilty of "debauchery," or whether this was a crime particular to the Egyptian male citizen. And, indeed, of the men picked up by the police from the Queen Boat nightclub that May evening, at least nine non-Egyptian men (of Arab ethnicity) were inexplicably released after reaching one of Cairo's police stations, along with some Egyptians whose social and political connections protected them from further harassment, detention, and abuse by the police.²¹

¶ 15         However, not only is it unclear how the Egyptian authorities understood "debauchery," but it is also unclear how they understood its relationship to "gayness," or even what "gayness" itself was. And, indeed, while the following exchange between the police and "Hossein," during his detention by the police, demonstrates that something "gay" was at stake in the Egyptian crackdown,²² it also suggests that what "gay" meant for the Egyptian authorities is not easily determinable:

We went out of the cell to the officer's desk. We were very happy, hoping we would leave. We found out it was the opposite. The officer shouted at us and humiliated us, and they beat us, and no one went home. It turned out to have been a game. . . . He told me to say that I was gay. He actually said the word "gay." He had the tape recorder on. I said, "What does 'gay' mean?" He hit me. "Just pronounce the word I told you to say." So I said that word.²³

Interestingly, as well, another man has recounted that Egyptian police officers "asked me who I knew who was gay. . . . I didn't give any names. . . . The man said, 'We're looking for members of this political organization. We believe you when you say you don't belong: if you sign this, you can prove it and we will let you go.' I didn't agree."²⁴

¶ 16         Finally, also demonstrating that the Egyptian authorities' understanding of "debauchery," "gayness," and their relation was—if not impossible to pinpoint—certainly "unconventional," it should be noted that the Egyptian authorities deployed a number of quite interesting indices to determine who was "gay" or "khawal."²⁵ Such indices included whether or not a man was wearing colored underwear²⁶ or had a shaved chest.²⁷ Apparently, as well, a man's muscles could provide a certain sort of immunity from intense suspicion and mistreatment.²⁸

¶ 17         Ultimately, then, such a confusing (and, for many people, bizarre) pattern of arrests and detentions by the Egyptian authorities makes it very difficult to give any uncomplicated answer to the question of what drove the authorities to arrest the "Queen Boat 52," or the large number of men rounded up both before and after this infamous event. In particular, it remains difficult to answer with any certainty that these men were specifically arrested for being "gay" or, even if they were, what this "gayness" (as understood by the authorities) was.²⁹

¶ 18         And, indeed, in regard to all these unanswered questions, it has often been overlooked that "debauchery" and "gayness" actually entered into the picture later than what is commonly understood: the original charges against the "Queen Boat 52" concerned not "debauchery," but "contempt of heavenly religion."³⁰ While these charges were mostly later amended, the investigation of a Sherif Farhat—one of the two men ultimately convicted of "contempt of heavenly religion"—by the Egyptian government's State Security Investigations unit, as well as the public aftermath of this investigation, is both revealing and suggestive.

¶ 19         For example, as a result of these investigations of Farhat, evidence was supposedly uncovered that Farhat had founded a "cult" that was committed to giving Muslim religious sanction to homosexuality. Evidence of the existence of this "cult" included a booklet supposedly in Farhat's possession called "Agency of God on Earth: Our religion is the religion of Lot's people, our prophet and guide is Abu Nawas."³¹ Passages from this booklet allegedly stated that "sex can make people love each other more than anything" and that "[h]omosexuality is a human right, and not an offence that angers God, because it does not leave any harm."³²

¶ 20         Given what was supposedly uncovered by Egypt's State Security Investigations unit, it is not surprising then that the public scandal which the Egyptian government subsequently orchestrated around Farhat and his co-accused had many "religious" overtones. For example, state-owned newspapers described these men as members of a "devil-worshipers organization," with one state-owned newspaper going so far as to publish a headline with the following "news": "Satanist Pervert Surprises: They Called Themselves God's Soldiers and Practice Group Sex in Private and Public... Meetings Every Thursday at Queen Boat."³³ Additionally, several Egyptian government officials who were involved with the (public) trials of the "Queen Boat 52" attempted to portray it as a matter of "religiosity" and "religious" morals. Thus, not only did Judge Hassan al-Sayes (whose epigraph opens this article) attempt to link the "Queen Boat 52" with violations of Islamic religious/moral norms, but so did an Egyptian prosecutor who was involved in the trial of a juvenile boy who was arrested during the May 2001 crackdown in Cairo.³⁴ Speaking to the court concerning this boy, the prosecutor submitted that there were "[a] number of those who submitted to vice, until they became its servants with no conscience, have hurried towards all that God has prohibited, ridding themselves of all morals. They strayed from the straight path that God has drawn for man and through which He organized his desires."³⁵ Finally, the Prosecutor General of Egypt himself, responding to international condemnation of Egypt's conduct in relation to the "Queen Boat 52," has emphasized that "[w]e are dedicated to protecting society against perversion, from a religious, social, and cultural point of view."³⁶

¶ 21         While perhaps shocking to the uninitiated, the Egyptian government's coordination of a religious scandal concerning the "Queen Boat 52" merely followed the readily-available model provided by other public scandals that the Egyptian government had orchestrated before. For example, in one of these scandals, in 1997, dozens of teenagers from middle-class and wealthy households were arrested in Cairo and Alexandria and detained for months (though never charged for a crime) based on accusations that they had been worshiping Satan in different nightclubs.³⁷ And, in another of these scandals, in 1996, large numbers of working-class Shias were accused of and persecuted for sympathies with Satan.³⁸

¶ 22         Apparently, then, with the "Queen Boat 52" scandal, not only was the Egyptian government interested in religiously defaming these men, but so was it interested in flaunting its own Muslim religious credentials.³⁹ While it is probably the case that not every person involved in the persecution of the "Queen Boat 52" saw their mission as one ordained by God, or understood these men first and foremost as religious heretics, certainly some people in Egypt—and highly-placed ones at that—did understand their campaign against "debauched" men as deriving from religious obligation. And, indeed, because of such persons, a significant portion of the public debate of this and related cases and events has been influenced in a way in which religious considerations now figure prominently - and in a way that they did not necessarily have to. In this way, the Egyptian government has been able to alchemize controversies and debates that might be sexual ones, into religious ones.

III.    Homo-sectuals and Respect

He looked me up and down and said, "Do you pray?" I really didn't know what to say. . . . The thing is . . . I know that I have more values and more honesty than him. And I know my relationship with God is more than he knows. But to him I am just an accused person - worse than an accused person, an animal - because I am gay.

—Amgad⁴⁰

¶ 23         While the Egyptian government has, generally-speaking, been able to successfully configure its mistreatment of the men it rounded up on the Queen Boat and elsewhere as a matter of enforcing religious norms, increasingly large numbers of people have begun to vocally challenge this and similar incidences of repression. Moreover, such people have not only worked to demonstrate the pure inhumanity of this repression, but they have also worked to contest this repression within the paradigm in which this repression has and continues to be committed, i.e. an ostensibly "religious" paradigm. While it is true that such persons have had to work in response to a set of political and social exigencies (and occasionally crises), they are far from being totally subsumed by a merely desperate or reactionary sort of politics—religious or otherwise. Instead, these individuals (and the organizations that they have subsequently established) have helped formulate a number of ground-breaking re-thinkings of religion and religious identities, exhibiting a great deal of creativity in their endeavors. And, indeed, it is these people who see their gay identities or homosexual practices as deeply imbricated in much larger debates concerning tolerance and pluralism within religion that this article means when it uses the neologism "homo-sectual."

¶ 24         In many ways, homo-sectuals might very well be considered part of a larger on-going movement within human rights activism that legal scholar Madhavi Sunder has extensively discussed—a movement in which once-sacrosanct boundaries surrounding religion have increasingly been assailed by activists troubled by what often occurs behind the closed doors of family, community, and religion.

¶ 25         Thus, in her work on this type of human rights activism,⁴¹ Sunder has argued against what she perceives to be a tendency in contemporary international human rights practice to accept (what she terms) a "New Sovereignty" manner of thinking. According to Sunder, this "New Sovereignty" manner of thinking has worked to either shore up or re-institute an Enlightenment-era set of practices by which the world was divided into public and private spheres, with the former to be governed by public "rationality" and the latter left to the devices of religious and other "irrational" or sentimental institutions (e.g. the nuclear family).⁴² As Sunder sees it, contemporary reactionary religious and cultural organizations have been most responsible for the development of the "New Sovereignty" manner-of-thinking,⁴³ and human rights organizations have too blindly followed along with these organizations' troublesome agendas. Writes Sunder:

[R]eligion qua religion is less the problem than is our traditional legal construction of this category. Premised on a centuries-old, Enlightenment compromise that justified reason in the public sphere by allowing deference to religious despotism in the private, human rights law continues to define religion in the twenty-first century as a sovereign, extralegal jurisdiction in which inequality is not only accepted, but expected. Law views religion as natural, irrational, incontestable, and imposed - in contrast to the public sphere, the only viable space for freedom and reason. Simply put, religion is the "other" of international law.⁴⁴

¶ 26         In her work, not only does Sunder assail the continuing deployment and international acceptance of this "New Sovereignty," but so does she also work to publicize and support those persons and activists who are helping shape (again, to use Sunder's terms) the "New Enlightenment." In this "New Enlightenment," women and other disadvantaged members of religious and cultural groups are insisting on the right to participate in and shape these groups' self-understandings and practices. Increasingly restless, and no longer content to just leave religious and cultural groups with which they disagree,

[i]ndividuals in the modern world [are] increasingly demand[ing] change within their religious communities in order to bring their faith in line with democratic norms and practices. Call this the New Enlightenment: Today, individuals [are] seek[ing] reason, equality, and liberty not just in the public sphere, but also in the private spheres of religion, culture, and family.⁴⁵

¶ 27         As an example of this "New Enlightenment" mode of politics and contestation, Sunder discusses the work of the London-based organization Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). As part of its mission, WLUML "aims to strengthen women's individual and collective struggles for equality and their rights, especially in Muslim contexts."⁴⁶ And, according to Sunder, WLUML's work is a good example of the ground-breaking human rights work being done as part of the "New Enlightenment" because it is

confronting injustice within the contexts of religion and culture. . . . Rather than simply acquiescing to the claims of fundamentalists, or pursuing women's human rights purely through secular strategies, as formal human rights law would require, WLUML [has] forged an alternate course. . . . These strategies [have] enabled [] women to pursue greater freedom and equality, but without conceding their right to religion.⁴⁷

¶ 28         In addition to WLUML, a number of other organizations also have recently broken ground vis-a-vis Islam and human rights, but this time by specifically working to challenge "conventional" Islamic norms concerning sexuality—and homosexuality, in particular. Such "conventional"⁴⁸ norms, while differing in their enforcement across time, place, and school of Islamic legal thought, generally frown upon, and sometimes call for the gruesome punishment of men and women who are found engaging in same-sex intimacy. In challenging such norms, these homo-sectual organizations (and individuals as well) are not only engaging in the type of "anti-essentialist critique"⁴⁹ that organizations like WLUML have used to "highlight[] the political and historical contingency of practices thought to be essential to Islam,"⁵⁰ but they also work to challenge the essentialist and commonplace assumptions that popular and human rights discourses often make about what constitutes religion (and sexuality) generally.

¶ 29         For example, the high-profile organization Al-Fatiha has been working since 1998 to "[s]upport Muslims who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning, [or] those exploring their sexual orientation or gender identity [i.e. LGBTIQ Muslims],... [and to p]rovide a supportive and understanding environment for LGBTIQ Muslims who seek to reconcile their sexual orientation or gender identity with Islam."⁵¹ Moreover, concerning Islam specifically, Al-Fatiha's mission statement goes on to state that "Al-Fatiha promotes the progressive Islamic notions of peace, equality and justice. We envision a world that is free from prejudice, injustice and discrimination, where all people are fully embraced and accepted into their faith, their families and their communities."⁵²

¶ 30         Among its many activities, Al-Fatiha has organised several conferences/gatherings of LGBITQ Muslims, with the first one taking place in 1998 in Boston. While these conferences have attracted quite a variety of people, with many different viewpoints about both religion and sexuality, it is clear that a number of participants have been emboldened by these gatherings to articulate and give voice to rather unorthodox interpretations of Islamic religious norms, especially in relation to homosexuality and/or gayness. For example, one of the participants at the 1998 Al-Fatiha conference wrote the following concerning his experience there:

Like many of the people who had gathered for the Boston event, I had long struggled with some of the inherent problems that arise when one tries to combine Islam and homosexuality-especially the Islam of the mullahs and the gay constructs of the "West." For me, those difficulties were twofold. Firstly to find a personal space where my faith and my sexual identity could peaceably co-exist, and perhaps even re-enforce one another. And secondly to explore ways and means to resolve the tension and despair that knowledge of my sexual orientation has caused within my very traditionally Muslim family.

Over the course of the weekend, we spoke of many things-what are the challenges and problems faced by GLBT Muslims? Does Muslim and gay constitute an oxymoron? What does Islam "really" say about homosexuality? What space have Muslim societies given to expressions of "other" sexualities?

. . .

We certainly did not address every thorny issue that challenges GLBT Muslims, but for the first time in my life, the clamor of my internal conflict fell silent. I realized that we had been drawn together by love, and that rather than being separate, schizophrenic, mutually exclusive aspects of my personality-my Faith and my Queerness sprang from the same source of Love. Love for Allah, love for Islam, love for humanity, love for my family, love for my friends, love for my partner-all of these are the same.

. . .

Messages of hate and intolerance have come to dominate the pronouncements of Muslim clergy and so-called Islamic governments. Homosexuality is routinely decried as a Western import when same-sex love has existed since the beginning of human civilization, and is widespread in many Muslim societies. The Quranic passages which refer to the destruction of the people of Lut are typically cited as evidence of God's rage against 'The Homosexuals' when in fact, I would humbly suggest that they teach us more about the importance of kindness to strangers, and the sins of lust and rape, rather than about homosexual love.

Nowhere in The Qur'an is the death penalty prescribed for homosexuality, yet in Iran and Afghanistan for example, Allah's name is invoked as teenage boys, accused of homosexuality, are executed by the state. This process alarms me, not only because it infringes upon the lives and liberties of individuals, but also because it brutalizes Muslim societies and inures people to accept this sort of summary justice as acceptable. Islam enjoins its practitioners to fight oppression, and to defend the faith. One could argue therefore, that it is our Muslim duty to secure the protection of GLBT Muslims and to challenge the ullema's interpretations and encourage them to preach the love of God, and the love of humanity rather than the fear of God and the hatred of anyone who is different to the mainstream.

. . .

We need to open a dialogue around these issues here in the West. We need to look for voices of support both within the mainstream Muslim community and amongst the religious scholars. We need to study The Qur'an (those of us that can) and search within the sacred text for evidence (which must surely exist) to support the contention that homosexual love is as pure and God-given as any other. Most of all, we must ourselves strive to become better Queer Muslims.⁵³

¶ 31         And another attendee at this conference described his experiences at the Boston conference, and his views on Islam, as follows:

I am gay. I am a Pakistani-Canadian. I am a Muslim. For as long as I can recall, these three elements of my identity have either been on a mission to break away and assert themselves as distinct entities, or in a constant struggle for dominance.

. . .

Although I was born Muslim, I don't presently practice the religion. Neither does anyone in my immediate family. I was born in Lahore, Pakistan and lived in Rawalpindi with my phuppie [paternal aunt] until the age of ten, at which point I immigrated to Canada to come live with my parents. While living in Pakistan, I had learned how to perform namaz, and to recite the Holy Quran, and all of the kalmas; however, I gradually forgot it all in Canada.

It wasn't until the age of 17, while I was struggling with my sexuality, that I decided to revisit the Quran, in order to find out what Allah had to say about homosexuals. I vividly recall reading the Quranic verses and feeling my chest close in on me. How could Allah be so cruel, so heartless as to punish people like myself? All I ever wanted to do was to love someone, and to receive that love in return. But it was hopeless; nothing I read allowed me to be who I am.

At that point, I put the book away and decided to abandon Islam. In fact, I started learning about other faiths, including Hinduism, and Christianity.

. . .

So there I was, in Boston, Massachusetts, on a rainy weekend in a room full of the most diverse people you could imagine. There were folks coming in from the Netherlands, South Africa, and Belgium. Others were from Arizona, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., and N.Y. City. Unfortunately, I was the only Canadian there. There were approximately five lesbian-identified women, one woman who refused to be classified, one female-to-male transgender and about 23 gay-identified men. They represented various class, age and cultural backgrounds. We had African-Americans, South Asians, Europeans, and Middle-Eastern folks, just to name a few. . . .

We participated in intense debates and discussions focused on various topics including: Islam and LGBT identity, what Islam really says about homosexuality, as well as the obstacles and challenges faced by LGBT Muslims around the world. In addition, we undertook cross-cultural comparisons of gender and sexuality in Islamic societies (both present and historic).

. . .

For me, the most significant part of this retreat was witnessing that there were LGBT Muslims out there who had managed to develop and maintain a positive LGBT identity, while still following Islam. I also learned to separate the widely accepted interpretations of the mullahs, which are riddled with heterosexist bias, from the truest form of Islam, which stresses the fundamental principles of equality and justice. I have to admit that at some level I was hoping to find some theological accommodation for homosexuality in the Holy Quran. I never found that. Time simply did not permit an exhaustive theological examination. However, what I did find was affirmation, affirmation for myself as an individual. I am gay, by nature, and I refuse to believe that Allah created people who are sinful by their very nature.⁵⁴

¶ 32         Other organizations as well have facilitated both theological exploration and personal affirmation, and not just by men either. In 2004, the United Kingdom-based Safra Project organized a conference in London for "lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning women who identify as Muslim religiously and/or culturally, and their female friends, partners and family members as well as other women who identify with the topics addressed."⁵⁵ This conference began with a discussion of the history and future of Islamic legal and theological discussions concerning same-sex (and, in particular, female-female) relationships, with the facilitator of this part of the conference explaining that:

[t]he work that I have focused on comes from the Progressive Islam movement which seeks to challenge traditional ideas relating to women's role and sexuality in classical Muslim laws. These ideas include the notion that men are superior to women and that therefore women and men are not equal but have different (set) roles in society. . . . [T]he techniques used by progressive Muslim scholars have been used and extended to uncover not only the male bias that favours men over women but also the heterosexual bias that ignores and denies any sexuality other than a heterosexual one. [For example, t]he supposed references to male same-sex relationships in the Quran occur in the story of Lut. These verses have also been used to extend the prohibition on same-sex relationships to women. The story of Lut has however been reinterpreted as being ambiguous at best and certainly not referring to same-sex relationships as we understand them in our lives today.⁵⁶

¶ 33         Finally, it is worth noting that it is not just organizations located in the U.S. and the U.K. which have been involved in the interrogation of commonplace configurations concerning Islam and homosexuality. And, indeed, Salaam in Canada,⁵⁷ The Inner Circle in South Africa,⁵⁸ and Women for Women's Human Rights in Turkey⁵⁹ specifically work to destabilize these configurations, as do numerous other organizations around the world whose work depends on or results in challenging commonplace and/or stereotyped understandings of Muslim sexuality.

¶ 34         Furthermore, a large number of courageous individuals all over the world are challenging—on their own, and in their own way—all sorts of norms and expectations concerning what it means to be Muslim. And, indeed, in this respect, the following personal statement of facts made on behalf of a Saudi lesbian woman ("Ms. A.B.N.") in her application for asylum in the U.S. provides a very vivid example of what these challenges can look like, and how global they have become:

Ms. A.B.N. is proud to be Muslim. Her religious beliefs are an integral part of her identity. However, she believes that there should be a way to combine modern views about the role of women in Islamic societies with traditional Islamic beliefs. Ms. A.B.N. believes she should not be forced to marry, dress as a "proper" woman is expected to dress, forgo a higher education, or adhere to a heterosexual lifestyle simply because her government and her family dictate.

. . .

Ms. A.B.N.'s belief in her right to live freely and openly, as a lesbian is not only a political opinion, but is also an integral part of her identity as a Muslim. Ms. A.B.N. believes that she is a lesbian because that is how God made her. She believes that her sexuality is "between her and her God" and thus she must live according to the sexual identity she believes God endowed her with.⁶⁰

¶ 35         Given the ways in which organizations and individuals involved in the "New Enlightenment" have begun to vigorously challenge conventional Islamic religious norms concerning gender and sexuality, international human rights norms and practices that choose to ignore or overlook these significant movements ultimately replicate some of the same abuses that the Indian and Egyptian states commit when they (among others) attempt to control what it means to be "sexual" or "religious," or "gay" or "Muslim." While it is true that "abusive" human rights norms and practices (i.e., those that choose to structure an inherent opposition between religion and gayness and/or homosexuality) do not directly physically persecute individuals—unlike the way more-muscular state practices often do—these international norms and practices nonetheless parallel (non-violent) state norms and practices that work to control personal identity. Indeed, both types of norms and practices inflict a certain sort of moral harm upon individuals.

¶ 36         Philosopher Charles Taylor describes such a moral harm in his essay, "The Politics of Recognition."⁶¹ In this essay, Taylor argues that modern states must respond, in some shape or form, to a "powerful moral ideal that has come down to us. [Such ideal] accords moral importance to a kind of contact with myself, with my own inner nature, which it sees as in danger of being lost, partly through the pressures toward outward conformity."⁶² Like Taylor, one might describe this moral ideal as one concerning the importance, for states and societies, of giving due recognition to the various and diverse ways in which their constituents identify.⁶³

¶ 37         Given that this ideal is one which people generally feel to be morally important, it is then not surprising that "a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being."⁶⁴ Or, in other words, the non-recognition, or misrecognition, by a state or society of people within its borders can cause these people to feel as if they have suffered a moral violation or moral harm.

¶ 38         Of course, "recognition" itself—if not attuned to individuals' often quixotic and unstable self-identifications and self-understandings—can also work a certain kind of harm as well. Thus, Anthony Appiah, in response to Taylor's essay, expresses worry about a kind of multiculturalist politics that demands respect for identities qua identities—and not persons. As Appiah sees it, "[c]ollective identities [such as being 'black' or 'gay']... provide what we might call scripts: narratives that people can use in shaping their life plans and in telling their life stories."⁶⁵ However, there can also be a darker side to such scripts, and their political uses. For example,

[d]emanding respect for people as blacks and as gays requires that there are some scripts that go with being an African-American or having same-sex desires. There will be proper ways of being black and gay, there will be expectations to be met, demands will be made. It is at this point that someone who takes autonomy seriously will ask whether we have not replaced one kind of tyranny with another. . . [A] boundary . . . is crossed by someone who demands that I recognize my life around my 'race' or my sexuality.⁶⁶

¶ 39         Elaborating upon Appiah's worries, Patchen Markell, as well, has expressed concern with certain aspects of Taylor's essay. In particular, Markell worries that Taylor's "recognition" actually represents a "misrecognition" of the uncertainty, contingency, and dynamic nature of human language and, hence, human professions of identity. Writes Markell:

[Taylor's] understanding of injustice as misrecognition is only intelligible if recognition itself is a matter of the respectful cognition of an identity that is in some sense independent of the vicissitudes of human interaction . . . for if identities were not independent in this way, they could not serve as reliable benchmarks by which to judge the adequacy of particular recognitive acts or structures. . . .

The politics of recognition, then, is at odds with itself. Rooted in an admirable awareness of [human] vulnerability and finitude, it nevertheless advances an understanding of justice and injustice that ultimately denies those phenomena in the name of an attractive but impossible vision of [human] sovereign agency.⁶⁷

¶ 40         As Parts IV and V demonstrate, this article does not endorse the kind of multiculturalist politics that both Appiah and Markell describe and, rightfully, fear. While arguing for changes in the ways international human rights norms and practices "recognize" sexuality and religion (and sexual and religious identities) this article, like the works of Appiah and Markell,⁶⁸ rejects all forms of politics and law—whether international or domestic—that actively work to restrict and control personal self-identifications and self-understandings. Its recommendations that international human rights norms and practices recognize the variety of ways people self-identify and unpredictably understand their identities are, thus, exactly that: a recommendation that the diversity and malleability⁶⁹ of human identity be acknowledged and recognized,⁷⁰ and not the conventional "scripts" that both states and traditions⁷¹ often author and enforce.

¶ 41         Such scripts can be racial, ethnic, national, lingual, and sexual—and religious, as well. In this latter respect, Talal Asad's work is instructive, and especially to the extent that it brings into serious question an all-too-common disconnect between philosophical and political discussions concerning religion, and related discussions (like Taylor's and Appiah's) concerning race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and other significant personal and social demarcations. And, indeed, in his work, Asad discusses how this disconnect has been, at least partially, the result of a common "script" concerning religion itself, one that has—in a questionable universalistic project—emphasized religion's essential autonomy from the social or, even more broadly, the worldly: "the insistence that religion has an autonomous essence—not to be confused with the essence of science, or of politics, or of common sense—invites us to define religion (like any essence) as a transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon."⁷² Yet, as Asad argues, "this separation of religion from power is a modern Western norm, the product of a unique post-Reformation history" that, quite usefully, coincides with the contemporary "liberal demand... that [religion] be kept quite separate from politics, law, and science."⁷³

¶ 42         Building upon the moral-philosophical and political points that Taylor, Appiah, Markell, and Asad develop in their important works, as well as the lived experiences of increasingly large numbers of persons from around the globe, Part V demonstrates how the best international human rights norms and practices can begin to more deeply and thoroughly respect persons' diverse self-identifications and self-understandings. In particular, such norms and practices can demonstrate this respect by working to recognize—and work with the reality of—that while some homosexuals (among others) want to identify as "gay," others do not wish to so identify. Moreover, some who do so identify don't necessarily understand "gay" as first and foremost a sexual identity at every point in time (if ever at all). For this latter set of persons, their gayness or homosexuality is deeply interwoven with personal experiences and understandings of religion. Accordingly, when such persons are persecuted, they understand this persecution as "religious" persecution. Thus, as formulated and understood by many persons—and governments—but not by enough international human rights activists, persecution of the "sexual" can often actually be persecution of the "religious."

¶ 43         Taking into account this complicated reality, Part V demonstrates how international human rights norms and practices can avoid complicity with attempts to control what it means to be "sexual" or "religious." Such attempts come from states, certainly, but also from hegemonic notions of "common sense" about the nature of the world and the human beings, identities, and practices that fill it. Working to buttress Part V's conclusions, then, one goal of this Part has been to demonstrate the difficulties of instituting any universal or a priori valuation of situations where human rights are being abused—especially, any valuation that "sexual orientation" discrimination is generally what is at stake in these situations.

¶ 44         Part IV will continue this Part's goal of dismantling state repression, and also those "common-sense" norms concerning religion and sexuality in which too many international human rights norms and practices are premised. In particular, this next Part will work to do so by discussing a set of politics concerning religion and sexuality in India that is important for this article's ultimate recommendations concerning international human rights norms and practices. In particular, Part IV will discuss those complicated political and legal debates concerning family law, religion, gender, and sexuality that have been a regular feature of Indian public life for the past several decades. Such debates, in all their long-lividness, have generated a mass of law and policy proposals which can provide real-world traction—and precedent—for the thorough reconsideration of common-place international legal notions of the "sexual" and the "religious" that this article argues for. It is to this often-surprising tangle of Indian politics, law, and policy that I thus now turn.

IV.    Indian Family Law Debates Concerning Religious and Sexual Identities

¶ 45         For many years now, Indian politics has been consumed by a complex mass of religious and sexual disputes, with family law and its reform prominently situated in a number of the debates which make up this complicated politics. While this politics has always been fierce, and has also occasionally spilled over into gruesome violence,⁷⁴ it has also generated a set of incredibly interesting family law reform proposals that work to undermine the Indian state's attempts to essentialize religion and religious identity and, conversely, to protect and respect persons' diverse self-identifications and self-understandings in India. This Part will explore this complicated family law system, and its associated politics, in the process working to demonstrate not only the need for, but also how international human rights activism might engage in, the thorough reconsideration of common-place international legal notions of the "sexual" and the "religious" that this article argues for.

¶ 46         In this Part, then, I will first give a very short, general introduction to how family law is organized in India. After this introduction, I will then outline the Indian jurisprudence concerning the right to religiously convert. This line of jurisprudence has both historically and (more so) recently intersected with and impacted upon family law and politics in India in important ways. Moreover, this jurisprudence provides a vivid demonstration of the means by which Indian law and politics often work to try to control not only the various religious identities which exist in India, but also the meaning of "religiosity" itself.

¶ 47         Fortunately, such attempts at control have not gone uncontested and, accordingly, after discussing the restrictive ambitions which Indian law and politics often manifest, this Part next outlines and explains how recently-proposed Indian family law reforms are attempting to counteract these ambitions, in the process demonstrating how international human rights norms and practices might conceivably de-essentialize established notions of what "religion" and "religious identity," and also "sexuality" and "sexual identity," are. Such de-essentialization is not only possible, but necessary, if international human rights norms and practices are going to respect persons and also "work" in the diverse contexts in which people develop their self-identifications and self-understandings. In this respect, in closing this Part, I will discuss how the same Indian law and politics which work to control all-things-religious in Indian society, also suggest the sexual quality of much of this law and politics. Such a reality, in turn, demonstrates how unpredictably identities, and persecution, can circulate in different contexts, and the problems—both moral and practical—that are created by assuming, as the Brazilian resolution and many of its supporters do, that the "sexual" is easily and always locatable.⁷⁵

¶ 48         As an inheritance from its British colonial past, India's system of family law (or, "personal law") is organized such that people of different "religious" identifications are governed by different marriage, divorce, and inheritance laws.⁷⁶ Thus, for example, a Muslim marital couple in India will be governed by a different set of divorce laws than a Hindu marital couple will be. Likewise, the laws that govern the inheritance that Christian Indian children receive from their parents are different than those laws that govern the inheritance that Muslim Indian children receive from their parents. Furthermore, not only does India's system of family law discriminate between members of different "religious" communities in India, but so does it work to perpetuate discrimination—either formally or informally—against women within each specific set of family laws.⁷⁷

¶ 49         While this organization of family law in India has a long history, within the past twenty-five years, intense controversies concerning it have erupted in conjunction with the renewal of a number of longstanding debates concerning the meaning and place of secularism in Indian society and politics. And, indeed, perhaps the most fierce of these national controversies erupted in 1985 as a result of the Indian Supreme Court's decision in the Shah Bano case.⁷⁸

¶ 50         The basic question presented by this controversial case was whether the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure's requirement that a man indefinitely financially maintain his ex-wife after a divorce—if she is "unable to maintain herself"⁷⁹—was applicable to Muslim men, who supposedly have more limited responsibilities⁸⁰ towards their ex-wives under classical Muslim family law and, hence, Indian Muslim personal law.⁸¹ Shah Bano was a seventy-three-year-old Muslim woman who had been divorced after forty-six years of marriage by her husband's pronouncement of talaq. Her ex-husband was appealing an order by the Madhya Pradesh High Court that he pay a "princely sum" of twenty-five rupees a month in maintenance to his ex-wife.⁸²

¶ 51         Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided against Shah Bano's husband, holding/finding that 1) the Code of Criminal Procedure's requirements superseded any contradictory Muslim personal law rules and requirements,⁸³ and 2) that nothing in Muslim personal law forbade indefinite maintenance to a divorced wife "who is unable to maintain herself."⁸⁴

¶ 52         Arguably, the first holding was sufficient to have settled the dispute in the case at hand and, thus, it was gratuitous and unnecessarily provocative to have attempted an interpretation and definition of the Muslim community's personal law. This seems especially the case given that other portions of the Court's opinion took a patronizing tone in regard to the content of such personal law,⁸⁵ as well as (the lack of) efforts by the Muslim community to reform it⁸⁶—and all this by a judiciary in a state which has not been particularly well-known for good treatment of its Muslim citizens.⁸⁷

¶ 53         Provocative as it was, then, this opinion ended up igniting large protests by conservative Muslims across India. Counter-protests by a number of dissident Muslim women and their allies ensued, adding fuel to the fire.⁸⁸ Eventually, then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his government acquiesced to conservative Muslim demands to pass a law whose goal was the elimination of Muslim—and only Muslim—women's rights to petition for and receive indefinite post-divorce maintenance from their ex-husbands.⁸⁹ In response, cries of "appeasement" were effectively raised by Hindu nationalist quarters, which eventually helped lead to the national electoral successes of the Hindu-nationalist BJP political party. These successes, in turn, led to a polarization in Hindu-Muslim relations in India, and also a number of political and legal dilemmas for Indian feminists who previously had been such active proponents of a role for the Indian state in the reform of the Indian family law system.⁹⁰ And, ultimately, throughout this entire political storm, the Indian family law system survived relatively intact, yet again.

¶ 54         In many ways, the BJP's Hindu-nationalist—and anti-Muslim—political program is just the latest chapter in a long story of Hindu-Muslim communitarian conflict in contemporary India. Tragically, this conflict has consumed many lives by not only constantly stirring its own maelstrom but, also, continually spewing its misfortune into many other aspects of contemporary Indian life. And, indeed, the generally-heightened sense of communalism which this conflict has contributed to has only exacerbated a number of other longstanding communal tensions and disagreements (and occasionally violence) between Hindus and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and other communal groups in India.

¶ 55         In an attempt to control such tensions and disagreements,⁹¹ a number of states in India have tried to regulate and restrict religious conversions, with such conversions having often been a source of much controversy and conflict between communities in India.⁹² However, in doing so, these states have only contributed to the more fundamental problem of essentialism vis-a-vis "religious" identity, and the inflexibilities and intolerances that this essentialism ultimately gives rise to.

¶ 56         As an example of the heights to which some Indian states have been willing to go to control self-identification in India, one only has to examine the facts behind the landmark 1977 Indian Supreme Court opinion in Rev. Stainislaus v. Madhya Pradesh.⁹³ This case concerned the Article 25(1) constitutionality of a 1968 Madhya Pradesh Act, entitled the "Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam."⁹⁴ Article 25(1) states that "[s]ubject to public order, morality and health... all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion."⁹⁵

¶ 57         While ostensibly pertaining to "religious freedom,"⁹⁶ the Madhya Pradesh Act actually strenuously worked to bureaucratically regulate conversion (and thus self-identification) in Madhya Pradesh. For example, this Act required that a "Form A" be filed with a District Magistrate within seven days of any conversion ceremony, after being filled out by the (religious) person (e.g. priest) who oversaw the conversion ceremony.⁹⁷ Among other things, Form A required such person to declare the occupation, income, and marital status of the person who was converting.⁹⁸ Such information was relevant, in the wider context of the Act, as this Act's penalties included imprisonment for a period of up to two years for any person who was found to have used "allurement," "force," or "fraud" to convert another person.⁹⁹

¶ 58         In its 1977 Rev. Stainislaus opinion, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Madhya Pradesh Act¹⁰⁰ arguing, among other things, that this Act was a legitimate expression of Madhya Pradesh's Article 25(1) constitutional powers to regulate religious liberty so as to preserve "public order, morality and health."¹⁰¹ In this respect, the Court wrote: "Thus if an attempt is made to raise communal passions, e.g. on the ground that some one has been 'forcibly' converted to another religion, it would, in all probability, give rise to an apprehension of a breach of the public order, affecting the community at large."¹⁰²

¶ 59         Given the violence that has too frequently broken out in India as a result of public controversies concerning conversion,¹⁰³ it is—in some heavily-qualified sense— "understandable" that the Supreme Court of India endorsed the argument that there needs to be some sort of regulation of "abuses" of the right to proselytize. However, that being said, the decision in Stainislaus does work, intentionally or not, to maintain a dominant social and political role for Hinduism in India by creating hurdles for people who wish to exit out of Hinduism and enter into another "religion." Furthermore, this result is worryingly replicated in a number of other important judicial decisions as well. Such decisions extend from the 1975 Supreme Court decision in Ganpat v. Presiding Officer¹⁰⁴ to the very recent 2005 Supreme Court decision in Bal Patil v. Union of India.¹⁰⁵

¶ 60         The decisions in the prominent cases of Sarla Mudgal v. Union of India¹⁰⁶ and Lily Thomas v. Union of India¹⁰⁷ have produced a similar result as well. These latter two cases have drawn so much attention in India because they concern the legal implication of Hindu men's conversions to Islam in order to avail themselves of Muslim family law provisions permitting polygamy—a volatile mix of explosive issues if there ever was one. Not only, then, do these cases demonstrate how Indian jurisprudence concerning conversion has impacted family law and politics in India but, moreover, they show the ways in which Indian law and politics have often worked to control not only the various "religious" identities that exist in India, but also the meaning of "religiosity" itself.

¶ 61         The first of these cases, Sarla Mudgal, jointly resolved petitions brought by a women's organization and three different women, all of whose husbands had converted to Islam with the (alleged) intent to marry second wives¹⁰⁸—polygamy being permitted (at least under certain circumstances) under classical interpretations of Islamic law¹⁰⁹ and, moreover, Indian Muslim personal law.¹¹⁰ The questions presented by this case concerned:

1) "[W]hether a Hindu husband, married under Hindu law, by embracing Islam, can solemnise second marriage?"

2) "Whether such a marriage without having the first marriage dissolved under law, would be a valid marriage qua the first wife who continue [sic] to be a Hindu?"

3) "Whether the apostate husband would be guilty of the offence under Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) [criminalising bigamy]."¹¹¹

Ultimately, citing and discussing an extensive body of case-law precedent on this issue, the Court held that the Hindu men implicated in this case would be guilty under Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code if the factual allegations against them were proven in a trial.¹¹²

¶ 62         In response to the Court's holding in Sarla Mudgal, the Muslim organization Jamiat-Ulema Hind¹¹³ brought suit at the Supreme Court, arguing in Lily Thomas v. Union of India that the Court's holding in Sarla Mudgal violated the Article 25 constitutional right to religious freedom, as "making a convert Hindu liable for prosecution under the Penal Code would be against Islam, the religion adopted by such person upon conversion."¹¹⁴

¶ 63         Ultimately, in Lily Thomas, the Court decided that constitutional religious liberty rights were not violated by the outcome in Sarla Mudgal.¹¹⁵ However, as interesting as this constitutional outcome is, the opinions in Lily Thomas make a number of even more general, and more interesting, comments concerning what they take the nature of "true" Islam—and, more generally, "true" religiosity—to be. These comments arose as a result of the Court's apparent disgust with the polygamous conduct of men who convert from Hinduism to Islam, as well as an apparently irresistible urge to comment on not only the nature of the "Islam" that the Jamiat-Ulema Hind was trying to protect, but also a key question raised in Sarla Mudgal itself,¹¹⁶ namely: "[W]here a non-Muslim gets converted to the 'Muslim' faith without any real change or [sic] belief and merely with a view to avoid an earlier marriage or to enter into a second marriage, whether the marriage entered into by him after conversion would be void?"¹¹⁷

¶ 64         In regards the nature of Islam, the lead opinion in Lily Thomas comments that the

plea [by the Jamiat-Ulema Hind] demonstrates . . . ignorance . . . about the tenets of Islam and its teachings. . . . The violators of law who have contracted the second marriage cannot be permitted to urge that such marriage should not be made subject-matter of prosecution under the general Penal Law prevalent in the country. The progressive outlook and wider approach of Islamic law cannot be permitted to be squeezed and narrowed by unscrupulous litigants, apparently indulging in sensual lust sought to be quenched by illegal means.¹¹⁸

¶ 65         Echoing these concerns on "sensual lust," and responding to the issue of "feigned"¹¹⁹ conversions that was raised in Sarla Mudgal, the concurring opinion opines that

[r]eligion is a matter of faith stemming from the depth of the heart and mind. Religion is a belief which binds the spiritual nature of man to a supernatural being; it is an object of conscientious devotion, faith and pietism. Devotion in its fullest sense is a consecration and denotes an act of worship. Faith in the strict sense constitutes firm reliance on the truth of religious doctrines in every system of religion. Religion, faith or devotion are not easily interchangeable. If the person feigns to have adopted another religion just for some worldly gain or benefit, it would be religious bigotry. Looked at from this angle, a person who mockingly adopts another religion where plurality of marriage is permitted so as to renounce the previous marriage and desert the wife, he cannot be permitted to take advantage of his exploitation as religion is not a commodity to be exploited. The institution of marriage under every personal law is a sacred institution.¹²⁰

¶ 66         While the Court here clearly had a great deal of respect for what it conceives as "religion," even the briefest survey of contemporary religious thought around the world (or even just in India) would demonstrate that the Court's observations in this case about the universally sacred nature of marriage—and also the general nature of "religion"—are actually deeply controversial.¹²¹ In particular, the Court's attempt to detach both religion and marriage from "worldly gain or benefit"¹²² articulates a "sanctification" of both marriage and religion that many persons and systems of belief simply do not embrace.¹²³

¶ 67         Moreover, such sanctification also clearly attempts to draw a sharp and firm line between the "religious" and an all-too-worldly (and base) "sexual." In this way, then, this Indian jurisprudence concerning conversion ends up attempting to control not only the various religious identities which exist in India, but also the meaning of both the "religious" and the "sexual."

¶ 68         Fortunately, recently proposed Indian family law reforms have attempted to undermine such restrictive and essentializing Indian law and politics. Moreover, in the process of doing so, these proposed reforms have provided real-world examples of how human rights-oriented law can better respect persons and their diverse self-identifications and self-understandings. Thus, it is to a discussion of these reform proposals, and their history, that I now turn.

¶ 69         Lily Thomas, Sarla Mudgal, and Rev. Stainislaus force a spotlight on the questions of what exactly religion is, what its relationship to worldly concerns—such as sex and marriage—is, and who should get to answer these questions. Regarding the "who" question, this article argues that individuals themselves should get to answer these questions, and that international human rights norms and practices should work more strenuously to encourage states to demonstrate a deeper and more thorough respect for persons' self-identifications and self-understandings—whether those understandings are orthodox or not. Thus, to the extent that the discussions in Lily Thomas do not demonstrate such respect, they are very misguided ones.¹²⁴

¶ 70         Fortunately, criticism of and opposition to the Indian courts' jurisprudence on family law, and the way in which these courts (and the state to which they belong) have attempted to control self-identification and self-understanding, has a rich tradition in Indian intellectual and non-governmental circles. Indeed, since the Shah Bano controversy and the BJP's electoral successes, Indian feminists in particular have engaged in serious and intense debates about how best to go about reforming India's family law system, and the obstacles to gender equality and religious liberty that this system poses.

¶ 71         Such debates are not just recent ones, however, and, indeed, before the rise of the BJP in the early 1990s, Indian feminists (generally speaking) actively advocated for the eradication of India's differentiated family law system and, in its place, the legislation of a "uniform civil code" of family law. Importantly, such a strategy had the support of the Constitution of India itself, with Article 44 of this constitution declaring that "[t]he State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil [including family law] code throughout the territory of India."¹²⁵

¶ 72         Events of the late 1980s and 1990s, however, shattered the considerable consensus that had existed in Indian feminist circles concerning the need for and desirability of a uniform civil code. Suddenly, with the empowerment in national politics of the extremist BJP-led Hindu-nationalist movement, many of these feminists became concerned that any uniform civil code that was legislated by a BJP (or BJP-led) government would not be a code representative of and fair to all of India's different communities. Instead, these feminists feared, such a uniform code would only serve to enshrine a particular set of Hindu family law norms, in spite of that uniform code's applicability to all of India's citizens—Hindu or not.

¶ 73         One might say, then, that after the Shah Bano controversy and the rise of the BJP, an impasse set in within India's feminist community. In particular, for many feminists, working within the (now-BJP-dominated) Indian political system for a gender-just uniform civil code suddenly seemed much less palatable. Complicating things further during this time, some prominent feminists charged the Indian judiciary itself with complicity with the Hindu nationalist agenda,¹²⁶ thereby raising another set of questions concerning the advisability of approaching courts to ask for changes to the family law system.

¶ 74         Given these political and legal dilemmas, one approach that gained some considerable degree of support among Indian feminists during this time was to work on changing attitudes concerning family and family law within each of the different (religious) communities in India. By doing so, the thinking was, Indian feminists could help build "progressive" religion-specific constituencies. These constituencies could then be used to rally for changes to each separate community's family laws, thereby obviating the need for a pan-community, uniform civil code.

¶ 75         In hindsight, however, this "internal reform" option never really had much prospect of widespread success considering, among other factors, the size and diversity of India's religious communities and the relatively meager financial resources of Indian feminists and their allies. And, indeed, this approach achieved very little legislatively.¹²⁷

¶ 76         Unhappy with this impasse, then, a number of Indian feminists have recently worked to formulate new diagnoses of the current legal and political situation, in order to devise new strategies—legal and otherwise—to counter the extant family law system and the serious problems that it continues to create for people of all stripes and persuasions. In this respect, the discussions and proposals that recently came out of a large conference in New Delhi are illustrative.¹²⁸

¶ 77         Among the many issues discussed at this conference, one of the most intriguing and spirited discussions concerned a proposal for feminists to begin working to implement an optional, gender-just code of family law. One might call this the "choice" proposal. At its most general level, advocates of this proposal suggested that they could accept the current (ostensibly) religion-based family law system (at least for the time being), as long as comprehensive, gender-just, and non-explicitly-religiously-based family laws were also available for those persons who would prefer to be governed by such laws.¹²⁹ One key advantage that advocates of this proposal discussed was that it could provide a fruitful (perhaps temporary) compromise between proponents of a uniform civil code and those who feared the implications of such a code for minority religious communities.

¶ 78         Other persons at this conference felt that, as part of any legal reform process, the "religious" credentials of the various extant family laws must be challenged. Such persons noted the often complex political and legislative histories behind these family laws, including the political give-and-takes between the state and religious leaders that explain the particular (and sometimes surprising) formulations that these laws possess.¹³⁰ One might call this the "de-essentialization" proposal. Ultimately, then, the purpose of this proposal/challenge was to unpack the extant, politically-laden notion of what passes as "religion" and "religious" family law in South Asia, in order to have another discussion about what is "really" at stake in these debates over family law. Or, as Kumkum Sangiri has artfully put it:

It may be more productive, though less popular, to speak of [religious] communities not as "given" on religious lines but to speak of the political, economic and electoral processes that are producing and privileging this particular sort of 'community' and facilitating specific types of ideological investment in it. It would then follow that secular feminist interventions could be directed at these processes, and not confined to finding just means of arbitration between "given," pre-formed religious communities.¹³¹

¶ 79         Both the proposal to allow people to choose whether they will live according to either "religious" or "non-religious" family laws, as well as the proposal that there must be a de-linking of "religion" from the extant family laws, are very interesting proposals in what they potentially suggest vis-a-vis self-identification and self-understanding in India. And, indeed, these proposals strive to undermine the notion that to be a member of a given religion requires one to adhere to that religion's family law norms or, alternatively, that adherence to Indian personal law is necessarily equivalent to being "religious." Ultimately, then, these proposals can work to buttress respect for persons' self-identifications and self-understandings—whether orthodox or not.

¶ 80         While each of these proposals is very interesting in itself, considering how both proposals might function together if the philosophical and legal trajectories in which each is situated were to merge, is also worth careful consideration. And, indeed, if one were to combine the "choice" and "de-essentialisation" proposals, one would have to consider the possibility that members of a given religion might want to follow the family law of "their religion" in some aspects of their lives but not in others.¹³² In these other areas of life, then, people might want to follow a non-religious law, or perhaps even the family law of a religion "different" than their own. Ultimately, then, persons would be allowed the legal opportunity to live not only completely outside the family law of "their religion" and under the terms of a non-religious family law system but, also, the real opportunity to live according to several different religious and non-religious family laws simultaneously. For example, if such a combination-proposal were to be actually adopted in India, the law would allow any Indian woman to choose to marry under Muslim law, yet also respect her desire to be governed by Hindu divorce law, and also permit her children to inherit from her according to the terms of a non-religious family law code. Moreover, the law would allow this without considering that woman's religious identity—or, importantly, her religiosity itself—suspect or subject to challenge.¹³³

¶ 81         Of course, such a system of law is only a hypothetical one, and many political and social obstacles lay between its conceptualization and its reality. Nonetheless, the discussion of such a system—one that is anticipated and suggested by a consideration of both the "choice" and "de-essentialization" proposals—is important in the way that it acknowledges the plural (and complicated) ways in which many individuals identify. Importantly as well, such a system of law acknowledges that religiosity may not be for everyone at all times "a matter of faith stemming from the depth of the heart and mind[,] a belief which binds the spiritual nature of man to a supernatural being[, and] an object of conscientious devotion, faith and pietism."¹³⁴

¶ 82         Ultimately, then, Indian discussions of family law reform recognize that religious identity may be complicated even if religiosity is mundane. Moreover, in recognizing that religiosity is not necessarily distinct from people's daily, mundane concerns about their position in the world, Indian discussions of family law reform suggest the serious problems (moral, practical, legal) which come with any attempt to partition off the "religious" from the "worldly." In turn, and to the extent that sex is part of this world, such Indian discussions suggest that the law should not attempt to draw any hard and permanent line between the "religious" and the "sexual."

¶ 83         In regard to this latter point, it is important to note that it is not only Indian feminists who have suggested the difficulty of distinguishing the "religious" and the "sexual," but also the Indian courts themselves. And, indeed, the decision in Lily Thomas itself suggests the difficulty in legally establishing the boundaries between the "religious" and the "sexual."

¶ 84         To understand this aspect of the Lily Thomas decision, it is worth remembering that the dispute in Lily Thomas was framed by the Court as one concerning religious liberty, with the Lily Thomas Court suggesting that Hindu men who convert to Islam to enjoy polygamy fall outside of the pale of religion and may not use religion to justify and defend the legal legitimacy of that choice.¹³⁵ If that is the case, however, one question which then arises - but which was never addressed by the Court—is: If these men were not religious, were they at least sexual? Or, in other words, if these men did not suffer from a limitation on their actions because of religious discrimination, might they then have experienced sexual discrimination?

¶ 85         Interestingly, then, the more the Indian state (whether through its courts or otherwise) emphatically attributes an ascetic, non-sexual meaning to religiosity, the more the Indian system of "religious" family law begins to look like an attempt to govern "sexuality" and not—as the Indian Supreme Court would have it—"religion." And, indeed, taking the Indian Supreme Court's words in Lily Thomas at face value, it seems that the Indian family law system's use of "Hindu" and "Muslim" might have far less to do with regulating "religions" than regulating—and officially-constituting—different "sexualities," or even "sexual orientations."¹³⁶ In particular, under such a system, polygamy has become the sole domain of Islam, and to be "Muslim" means that one at least entertains the possibility of engaging in polygamy.¹³⁷

¶ 86         Ultimately, then, the Lily Thomas decision seems to have confirmed sexual aspects to the Indian family law system that this decision strenuously worked to religiously sanctify. Or, as Kumkum Sangiri describes this system, and the politics surrounding it:

Beneath the opposition between a state-imposed uniform civil code and personal laws that are sought to be reformed from 'within' a community . . . lies an unresolved but entirely patriarchal concern: who will control and regulate women? . . . In the debates on the Hindu Code Bill [which ultimately outlawed polygamy for Hindus], Hindus had . . . also administered a warning to the effect that if polygamy became illegal Hindu men would have to convert to Islam to marry more than one woman or would be forced to keep concubines. The confusion between spiritual benefit and male promiscuity must have been amazing.¹³⁸

¶ 87         In sum, the consequences of the judicial reasoning in Lily Thomas provide a vivid example of the unpredictable quality of many common identities—whether "Hindu," "Muslim," "religious," or "sexual." Furthermore, the overall situation in India provides a vivid example (in addition to that provided by Egypt) of why—and how—international human rights norms and practices must begin to pay much closer attention to the particular ways in which identities and persecution circulate in different contexts if these human rights norms and practices are ever to demonstrate thorough respect for persons and their diverse self-identifications and self-understandings, or otherwise be effective.

¶ 88         Part V builds upon these Indian discussions, exploring how their suggestions that law not attempt to a priori define the meaning and content of "religious identifications" or, indeed, the content of the "religious" and the "sexual" more generally, might be applied to two key areas of international human rights norms and practices. In particular, Part V discusses means to improve the international human rights system's response to persecutory anti-sodomy laws and, also, the refugees who result from these laws (and other forms of persecution). By discussing these two key areas of concern in international law, Part V provides concrete examples of how this article's proposals would work in practice, and also how this article's proposals would help re-acquaint the international system of human rights with those moral-philosophical values concerning respect for persons (see Part III supra) that have historically informed the international human rights effort. In doing so, this Part also demonstrates why the Brazilian resolution is both unnecessary and insufficient.

V.    Implications for International Human Rights

¶ 89         States use anti-sodomy laws both to justify their own persecutory actions, as well as to delegate to non-state actors the (seeming) responsibility to persecute the "blasphemous" and "heretical."¹³⁹ Thus, attacked by both the state and by their families and communities, it is no surprise that many homo-sectuals decide to flee to safer environs, whether that be another city, or another country altogether. Unfortunately, such refugees often do not face the warmest welcome (to say the least), with many states expecting conformity (or confinement) in exchange for whatever limited assistance they extend to these refugees.

¶ 90         This Part outlines how this article's discussions concerning sexual and religious self-identifications and self-understandings can be used to better counter this state of affairs, namely by introducing changes into 1) how international human rights law conceptualizes and works to eradicate state persecution of homo-sectuals, as specifically accomplished through the legislation and enforcement by states of anti-sodomy laws; and 2) how international refugee law recognizes homo-sectuals when state persecution, however accomplished, causes people to flee their home countries. Ultimately, then, the hope is that the recommendations discussed in this Part will help better mitigate against abuse—both corporal and moral, and both at home and abroad.

¶ 91         As with Egypt, many states choose to pursue gays, lesbians, homosexuals, homo-sectuals, and others whose practices or identities somehow mark them as "dangerous," by enforcing laws written to penalize "debauchery," "public lewdness," and other such things.¹⁴⁰ That being said, many influential states have historically chosen to pursue their adversaries with laws criminalizing "sodomy,"¹⁴¹ with South Africa and the United States being two prominent examples of this approach.

¶ 92         As this article's discussions have suggested, whatever the particular choice of legal terminology or approach, the motivation—or, to use a legal term, the "intent"—behind such laws is often paradigmatically "religious" in nature.¹⁴² This section will first demonstrate this point using the laws and jurisprudence of South Africa and the United States to confirm the hegemonic religious motivation that very often is explicitly articulated as justification for their criminalization of sodomy, yet which is rarely appropriately acknowledged by the law. After this demonstration, and based on this article's discussions, I will then suggest changes to the international human rights system's reaction to these state practices, using a well-known decision of the United Nations' Human Rights Committee to ground these recommendations in the real world.

¶ 93         One important caveat must be made at the outset of this discussion, however. It may seem that by critiquing the failure of legal institutions (whether international or domestic) to acknowledge the religious liberty interests at stake in the cases they adjudicate, I am trying to impose a religion-premised paradigm on victims of persecution who themselves have not articulated the issues in these cases using such a paradigm. However, what is important to remember here is that targets of persecution do not have to be religious themselves in order to claim religious persecution or discrimination—non-religious people as well can suffer from attempts at religious hegemony.¹⁴³ This being the case, in situations where it would seem that any and all possibly viable legal arguments would be used to try to counter persecution and discrimination, the fact that religious liberty arguments are hardly ever raised by either religious or non-religious victims of persecution seems to say a lot about how ordinary people perceive human rights institutions and their (un)willingness to listen to diverse lives, self-identifications, and self-understandings.

¶ 94         In 1998, in the case of National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v. Minister of Justice, the Constitutional Court of South Africa overturned several South African common-law and statutory provisions criminalizing same-sex sodomy and other same-sex activities.¹⁴⁴ This decision was important and widely-anticipated, seeing that it gave the Constitutional Court a vital opportunity to determine the meaning and reach of the groundbreaking Section 9 of South Africa's 1996 post-apartheid constitution. Section 9 declared that the state may not "unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including... sexual orientation."¹⁴⁵

¶ 95         Ultimately, the Constitutional Court declared that the challenged common-law and statutory provisions were in contravention of Section 9's protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.¹⁴⁶ In addition, the Constitutional Court also determined that the challenged common-law provisions, in particular, violated Sections 10 and 14 of the 1996 South African constitution, protecting (respectively) human dignity and privacy.¹⁴⁷

¶ 96         Clearly, the Constitutional Court, in its wide-ranging opinion in National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, decisively invalidated the common-law and statutory provisions at issue in this case. However, the question remains why certain constitutional provisions were invoked to invalidate these laws, but not other ones. For example, in the Witwatersand High Court opinion which led to the Constitutional Court's decision in this case, the High Court found that one of the challenged statutory provisions was discriminatory on the basis of "sex" or "gender," because the statute only criminalized certain male-male interactions, and not (arguably) similar female-female or female-male interactions.¹⁴⁸ However, the Constitutional Court, in its own opinion, did not pursue this particular line of constitutional argumentation, instead relying on the constitution's specific provision outlawing "sexual orientation" discrimination.¹⁴⁹

¶ 97         In addition, despite referring to the "gay erotic self-expression"¹⁵⁰ at issue in the case, as well as how "[t]he criminali[z]ation of sodomy in private between consenting males... hits at one of the ways in which gays give expression to their sexual orientation,"¹⁵¹ the Constitutional Court did not discuss at any length how the challenged laws impinged upon constitutional freedom of expression in South Africa.¹⁵²

¶ 98         Even more interestingly, the Constitutional Court ignored any possible problems that the challenged laws present for religious liberty in South Africa. This omission is quite surprising, considering the Constitutional Court's observations that the comm