Relationship Between Homosexuality in America and in the Middle East

Today we watched a Middle Eastern documentary in class called, "The Road to Love." We were asked to compare or contrast to our own personal views or the current views in the United States. This film was out of my realm of likes for even me and I occasional venture into foreign or specialty films. I was very impressed, given the content of this film, that Andrew felt confident bringing this film into our class. But I also think it shows how confident he is in our class that we could handle the subject matter with maturity and be insightful. I think in many ways this film parallels the views in the U.S. about homosexuality, but at the same time there are some differences. Last Friday I went to see the film "Milk." "Milk" takes a look at homosexuality in the U.S. in the 1970's and follows the adult life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office. I noticed between the documentary, "Milk," and current societal views, one of the parallels was how there are places that are very accepting of the gay community. In the documentary, it was Morocco. In "Milk" and currently, San Fransisco is seen as the best example of an accepting community. "Milk" also showed how difficult it can be to come out, people telling you constantly that you're evil, that they want to fix you. Harvey explains how several of his lovers have committed or attempted to commit suicide. In the documentary, one of the interviewee's similarly talked about his identity issues and how his parents did not take his coming out well at all. One of the things that's different between the documentary and the United States was the view that society can accept homosexual interaction on the part of the "active" man during sex. Middle Eastern culture seemed to accept them as "real" men. The "passive" man is ridiculed and not accepted. In our culture, I don't think that generally people make the distinction. I do hear of the more macho men justifying it in the same way here, but I don't think ordinarily there is a distinction. I think this film was definitely an interesting perspective and topic to bring up in discussion. It also opened us up to foreign films which many people do not normally or even occasionally watch which was a good cultural experience.