Polis Makes Progress on Iraqi LGBT Rights

Rep. Jared Polis has received a letter from Iraqi officials regarding reports of LGBT executions in the country, and he has sent a letter calling on the new U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the charges.

By Kerry Eleveld

After meeting with Iraqi officials earlier this month regarding the persecution of gays in Iraq, U.S. representative Jared Polis of Colorado has received a response letter from the Iraqi chargé d'affaires and has also initiated a new letter to the recently confirmed U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, that is cosigned by representatives Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin.

The letter from Iraqi chargé d'affaires Patricia Butenis denies any official government involvement in LGBT executions that have taken place but suggests some extra-governmental militias may have engaged in such violence.

"We have seen the international media report that, according to Amnesty International, as many as 25 men and boys were killed over the past few weeks by militia or relatives influenced by religious leaders who have publicly condemned homosexuality," Butenis wrote in a letter dated April 22, 2009. "Reports from Embassy contacts familiar with the areas where some of the bodies were found suggest the killings are the work of militias who believe homosexuality is a form of Western deviance that cannot be tolerated."

Brian Branton, Polis's chief of staff, said the information was a step forward after the Iraqi ministry had originally called the militia charges "unfounded." "We were glad to hear that acknowledgment in her letter because in earlier conversations with the state department they had not owned up to that," Branton said of Iraqi officials.

Eleveld is Washington correspondent for The Advocate. You can follow her Twitter feeds at Twitter.com/KerryEleveld .

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Name: Daniel S
Date posted: 5/1/2009 10:24:00 AM
Hometown: New Hope, PA

Comment:
Probably one of the things that offends me most about Bush's whole Iraqi adventurism, and which many Americans would be offended by as well if they realized it, is that we have spent thousands of lives and billions of dollars to install a government that is pro-Islam, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-LGBT, and increasingly anti-Western as a whole. The truth is that these kinds of human rights violations can happen there because the Iraqi government doesn't really want to see them stopped.

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