“My virtual life is mostly outside Pakistan, but on Facebook people inside the country can see what I am doing and they don’t necessarily understand.”
“The generation growing up with the internet have more access to the outside world,” said Khalid, who lives in Lahore with his wife. The US supreme court decision has attracted little coverage in the mainstream media, but considerable scrutiny online.
“It is still extremely difficult to even talk about these issues, but it is getting a little better,” she said. In 2011 Sirmed was the object of furious denunciations, after she appeared on a television show to defend the US embassy in Islamabad for hosting a “Pride celebration” for Pakistani lesbian, gay and transgender activists. “It is a very, very pleasant surprise for me that so many people on social media are actually supporting it, because that was certainly not the case just five years ago,” she said. Surveys find the country’s huge population of young people tends to be conservative: one poll found nearly 40% wanted the country to be run according to Sharia law.īut Marvi Sirmed, an outspoken social activist, says some people are becoming more liberal, particularly on the subject of gay rights. Most observers say social intolerance has grown in Pakistan, a religiously conservative country that has seen radical groups working hard to spread a more militant version of the creed in recent decades.
The online debate has seen supporters of marriage equality accused of abandoning Islam, as well as claims that bestiality will be next to be legalised, and the widespread circulation of Qur’anic verses condemning homosexuality. “They could not accept that someone who is married is supporting something they say is away from our culture and our religion.” “The reaction was extremely negative with a lot of close friends, colleagues and ex-colleagues just completely unable to handle it,” said Khalid, an IT worker from Lahore.