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Somewhat titillating yet exceedingly tragic, the story of Shumail Raj and Shahzina Tariq – the couple who have brought the gay marriage debate to Pakistan – has already made headlines and generated endless blog posts across the world. On Monday, the Lahore High Court sentenced the forlorn couple to three years’ imprisonment and fined them ten thousand rupees for perjury.
The sentence was passed after the courts ruled that the husband Shumail was, in fact, a woman, despite two sex-change surgeries to remove breasts and uterus. As such, Shumail and Shahzina’s was a same-sex marriage and thus un-Islamic. Affidavits, the couple’s marriage certificate, and Shumail’s medical records were all examined before it was ruled that the couple had made false statements about their sex and marital status to the courts. Although this is the first case of its kind in Pakistan, Judge Khawaja Mohammad Sharif chose to be lenient when issuing his sentence because he believed that the couple was remorseful about being deceitful. Moreover, in a throwback to centuries past, the court recommended that a team of psychiatrists tend to Shumail to address any trauma that the situation might have provoked.
As it currently stands, Shumail and Shahzina’s case is remarkable for several reasons. Firstly, the open acknowledgement by Pakistan’s judiciary and media that a same-sex liaison can exist is a step in the right direction towards acknowledging that human sexuality is a complicated issue.
No doubt, our culture has always made accommodations for transvestites, but their treatment by society and representations within the media reek of ignorance, disgust, fear, fetish, and supernatural elements. Their psyche and biological make-up are rarely discussed in a thoughtful or scientific manner. Instead, transvestites are merely glamorized through film and photography and exoticized through folklore and ritual. On the other hand, considering a trans-gendered person and same-sex couple’s predicament in the nation’s high courts lends the sexuality debate in Pakistan some gravitas and deference.
It is also remarkable that the courts have jailed Shumail and Shahzina for perjury, rather than ‘unnatural offences’. Even if that was not the intention, the court’s decision has emphasised the technicalities and fine print of the couple’s marriage rather than the implications of their sexuality. During court proceedings, the couple has had to explain that their marriage was motivated by a desire to save Shahzina from an unfavourable arranged marriage. The bride’s father believes a marriage between two women should be annulled. The couple’s lawyer, on the other hand, describes the union as a bond of friendship and affection, an attachment forged under the guise of a marriage owing to societal pressures.
These tangled definitions of marriage imply an acknowledgement that human sexuality and its expression exist across a diverse spectrum that cannot neatly fit under categories such as ‘marriage’. Since their sentencing, Shumail and Shahzina have asserted that they are not homosexuals, yet have openly and repeatedly professed their love for each other.
More interestingly, they have appealed to President Musharraf to intervene in their case so as to bolster his own doctrine of enlightened moderation. That Shumail and Shahzina believe some enlightenment is required to feel empathy for their situation suggests that their relationship is a tad more intricate than a close friendship. In any case, the contradictory, dramatic, jargon-filled vocabulary being used to describe the couple’s relationship indicates the beginnings of a difficult conversation about human sexuality and desire.
Yet another aspect of Shumail and Shahzina’s same-sex marriage is how contemporary the issue is. After all, gay marriage is one of the hot issues that will make or break the fates of candidates during the US presidential election in 2008. Just earlier this month, the state of Oregon passed a domestic partnership act providing same-sex couples the same state-granted privileges, rights, and benefits that married couples enjoy. With the act, Oregon became the tenth American state to provide significant protections to homosexual couples and so renewed the conversation about gay marriage in Washington.
Interestingly, American presidential candidates resort to the same vague, circular, contradictory language used by the legal officials involved in Shumail and Shahzina’s case when quizzed about their stance on the issue. Democrat Senator Barack Obama, for example, has stated that while marriage is not a human right, non-discrimination is. For his part, Democrat campaigner John Edwards insists that marriage is a contract exclusively between men and women, but is in favor of gay and lesbian ‘partnerships’ and aims to treat them much like heterosexual marriages. Republican Governor George Pataki, on the other hand, opposes same-sex marriage, but champions gay rights. Meanwhile, Senator Hilary Clinton is in favor of domestic partnership benefits, whatever those might be. Inadvertently, then, Shumail and Shahzina have thrust Pakistani legislature into the midst of a global conversation that is complicated, embarrassing, and interrupted with much humming and hawing.
The fact is, there is a ‘first things first’ mentality in Pakistan that falsely believes that we should deal with fundamental issues – democracy, terrorism, poverty, literacy, Kashmir, nukes, and land reforms – before getting embroiled in the grubby details of civil rights, social issues, culture and lifestyle trends. No doubt, the building blocks of a democratic nation must be in place before a society can function properly. But Pakistan must learn how to tackle its political, economic, and social issues simultaneously if it hopes to participate in the global village of the new millennium. In today’s media environment, it is unrealistic to set aside an issue until a government is ready to deal with it. If the world is worrying about gay marriage, Pakistan should be thinking through the issue as well, albeit in a way that conforms with the nation’s particular culture and political maturity.
Interest groups in Pakistan can also learn how best to leverage a case such as Shumail’s and Shahzina’s by observing American politics. Touchy as the subject is, gay marriage circuitously allows politicians to address issues such as equality, racial discrimination, states’ rights versus federal control, the separation of church and state, and the increased partisanship evident in American public debate.
Similarly, feminist politicians and women’s rights groups in Pakistan could seize on Shahzina’s narrative about needing to escape from an arranged marriage to advocate for more freedom for women. Similarly, doctors’ lobbies and medical universities could use Shumail’s botched sex-change operations as an excuse to seek funding for medical research. And someone should certainly point out how sexuality – much like almost everything else in Pakistan – is a privilege afforded to the elite classes, and no one else. In a turbulent country like ours, any opportunity to engender debate or highlight an oft-neglected issue should be availed of.
Interestingly, at the exact same time that Shumail and Shahzina were clinging to each other and awaiting their verdict in the Lahore High Court, “Nigah QueerFest ‘07”, India’s first gay arts festival, was kicking off with a film screening in New Delhi. The festival organisers see QueerFest as a venue where closeted Indians can celebrate their sexuality. More importantly, the festival is a platform from which to campaign against India’s anti-gay law, enshrined in the infamous Section 377. Although QueerFest did not have the same verve, bombast, and audacity as a pride parade in the western world, it did foster an opportunity for debate about equal rights in the world’s largest democracy. If that conversation is unfolding next door, perhaps it is time for us to start eavesdropping. Shumail and Shahzina may yet find that their plight is not as unusual as it seems.
