Luxor Temple
The Great Court of Ramesses II with the Colonnade of Amenhotep III located behind statue of Ramesses II in the Luxor Temple.
Meanwhile, if you listen to the types of stories that dominate Western media, you’d think that the biggest issues facing LGBT people in the Middle East are based purely on their identity as queer. Many people in the West have ideas about how queer people in the region should come out or live their lives. Some non-Middle Eastern LGBT activists are so eager to “save” queers in the Middle East that they’ll speak over Middle Eastern queers themselves.
Here’s the problem: when queers and other vulnerable communities are painted as simply needing to be saved, the logical conclusion is that the West should come in and do the saving. Many of the narratives around LGBTQ issues in the region implicitly or explicitly support Western imperialism and foreign occupation, or only talk about queer issues by painting the rest of the Middle East as backwards or stuck in time. This often creates more harmful prejudice, rather than helping to alleviate the problem.
