Reflections on LGBTQ+ rights as a Bangladeshi-American
On December 13, 2022, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, bringing into fruition decades of advocacy by LGBTQ+ communities all across the country to win the freedom to marry whoever we love. The Act repeals the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which only recognized marriages between heterosexual couples. While DOMA has been invalidated by the Supreme Court in 2013, this new Act officially gets DOMA off the books. It codifies the federal recognition of same-sex marriages and interracial marriages.
This is a historical occasion and a momentous victory. Amidst the wave of attacks facing LGBTQ+ communities around the country, from mass shootings to “don’t say gay” state laws, we needed this one win.
As a Bangladeshi immigrant who has lived in the United States for nearly fourteen years, the Respect for Marriage Act brings me both joy and sorrow. I am thrilled for my community here in the U.S. — our right to marry whoever we want is finally being accorded dignity and respect by the law. Yet I can’t help feeling sorrow for the LGBTQ+ communities in my home country of Bangladesh, where same-sex marriages remain illegal and where LGBTQ+ members are arrested and persecuted simply for existing. Same-sex intercourse is prohibited by law and carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
Social persecution and physical and sexual violence further compound institutional discrimination. Being beaten to “get the gay out” is a common experience faced by many who come out to their families. Forcibly being married to a person of the opposite sex is another perceived solution. Because of the harm having an LGBTQ+ family member can cause to the reputation of a family, many are threatened with violence and death if they disclose their sexuality to any members outside of the immediate family.
These, among a myriad of other forms of oppression and violence, unsurprisingly lead to LGBTQ+ Bangladeshis having severe mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and suicidal ideation.
Despite the anti-LGBTQ+ societal and legal landscape in Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi government has recognized a third gender, hijra, since 2014. Hijras are people who are designated male or intersex at birth and who adopt a feminine gender identity. Hijras have a long recorded history in South Asian society as being able to bless one’s house with prosperity and fertility. In modern Bangladesh, however, they have since lost their revered role. Growing up in Bangladesh, my only exposure to Hijra communities was their limited role in Bangladeshi movies, where they were reduced to playing caricatured and stereotyped versions of their identities, and seeing them collect money in the busy streets of Dhaka, the capital city. This continues to be true to this day; the hijra community is excluded from working in traditional jobs, owning property, and accessing legal counsel. While legal recognition is a step in the right direction, it means very little without tangible steps toward recognizing and protecting the rights of the hijra and the broader LGBTQ+ community.
The persecution of LGBTQ+ communities in Bangladesh has even gotten the U.S. government involved. In September 2015, Boys of Bangladesh (BoB), a non-governmental organization that supports LGBT rights, published Dhee, a comic about a Bangladeshi lesbian young woman exploring her sexuality. Dhee is part of a 14-month advocacy project funded by the U.S. Department of State. Dhee as a character and as a publication is extraordinary for several reasons: First, Dhee is the first narrative featuring a homosexual character punished in a graphic comic format in Bangladesh, which makes it accessible to the general public. Second, Dhee shines a critical light on female members of the LGBQT+ Bangladesh community, whose experiences are underlooked and oftentimes not acknowledged at all.
And the recent elections of transgender individuals into office are also encouraging. This year, Payal Khatun became the first trans person elected to the government council in the Kushtia district of Bangladesh. In January, Nazrul Islam, a transgender woman, was elected as the chairman of the Trilochanpur Union of Kaliganj in the Jhenaidah district. The slow but gradual inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities (or at the very least transgender communities) in civil society gives me hope that public perceptions are slowly shifting in the right direction.
As Bangladesh reckons with its understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity beyond the heteronormative status quo, I worry that extremist groups are hampering advocacy efforts.
In the aftermath of Dhee’s publication, for example, a hardline Islamist political party, Khilafat Andolan, commented to a Bangladeshi newspaper that “homosexuals are enemies of civilisation and enemies of Islam.” In October 2022, a 20-year-old trans woman was strangled to death, allegedly by the man whom she married in secret. Shahanur Islam, an LGBTQ rights activist and lawyer, stated that the killing was not an isolated incident, but part of the ongoing discrimination, murder, assault, and human rights violations against the LGBT community throughout Bangladesh. Islam, who is the General Secretary and Executive Director of the Bangladesh Institute for Human Rights (BIHR) and Founder of JusticeMakers Bangladesh, has also been the subject of death threats, physical attacks, and lawsuits due to his activism. On October 19, 2022, the president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents bars and law societies of 45 European countries, wrote to the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urging the government to protect Islam and his family from future attacks. The government did not respond.
The U.S. is not immune from this either. To be clear, acceptance and inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities look vastly different in the U.S. than it does in Bangladesh. Yet, hate crimes and laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities in the U.S. have been at an alarming high in recent years, in large parts due to conservative Christian groups and dangerous conspiracy theories such as those that equate non-heterosexual sexualities and non-cisgender gender identities with pedophilia.
The intense anti-LGBTQ+ climate that has taken hold around the world makes the work of LGBTQ+ activists both essential and dangerous. Activism takes different forms — it can look like comics like Dhee, which humanizes LGBTQ+ lives through a medium that’s accessible to children and adults alike. It can also look like projects like Call Me Heena by Bangladeshi artist Shahria Sharmin, which uses photography and interviews to amplify Hijra voices in Bangladesh. And it can look like the advocacy of Shahanur Islam, who has continued to remain outspoken about LGBTQ+ rights despite the threats he has continued to face.
