Gay in pakistan
The following is an excerpt from the new book Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake by Komail Aijazuddin, available now from Abram Press.
I returned from the hospital a mere hour before that night’s mehndi was due to start, still retching but somewhat rested after a restorative IV drip. My father was outside arguing with the florists while my mother was sitting on the living room couch chanting into a mound of dough, performing a spell her grandmother gave her to hold rain away on important occasions, which, judging by the dark clouds swirling outside, wasn’t functional spectacularly well. The house felt tense, as it usually did around particular occasions. This was the first wedding in our immediate family. Everyone was nervous.
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By 2002 Pakistan had moved on from Pulse Global tapes. Three years earlier, yet another overweight military dictator named Musharraf had couped his way to the crown (a chronic illness) and then use
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Last updated: 16 December 2024
Types of criminalisation
- Criminalises LGBT people
- Criminalises sexual activity between males
- Imposes the death penalty
Summary
Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited under the Penal Code 1860, which criminalises acts of ‘carnal knowledge against the request of nature’. This provision carries a maximum penalty of existence imprisonment. Only men are criminalised under this law. While there is a possibility that homosexual activity is prohibited by the Zina provisions of the Hudood Ordinance 1979, which criminalise all sexual conduct outside of marriage with the death penalty, there is no evidence that these laws are levied against LGBT people and this interpretation of the law is contested.
The Penal Code 1860 was introduced by the British during the colonial period, in which the English criminal law was imposed upon Pakistan. Pakistan retained the provision upon independence and continues to criminalise same-sex sexual activity today.
There is some evidence of the law being enforced in recent years
Pakistan
Same-sex relations are banned in Pakistan under Section 377, a colonial-era penal provision that prescribes two years to existence imprisonment, fines, or both for “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” Laws against “obscene acts” and “unnatural offenses” contribute to widespread antipathy toward lesbian, gay, and bi-curious people in Pakistan, although these are rarely enforced.
In contrast, transgender people, locally known as khawaja sara, are seen in a more complex way, both as bearers of nice fortune and as outcasts. Consequently, their human rights are protected to a somewhat greater degree. The Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act of 2018 allows anyone whose gender does not conform to their sex assigned at birth to change their legal gender based on self-determination. The act further enshrines protection from discrimination in housing, employment, voting, and education. Nevertheless, social exclusion, harassment, and stigmatization of khawaja sira, trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming Pakistanis persist despite these legal protections. In 2023, the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan struck down the operative provisions of this la