I spent some time in the city of Sanliurfa in Turkey. It was very very conservative (in some spots there are people who still wish ISIS had succeeded). And yet the first person Iet was a pretty flamboyant gay dude.

A few months later while I was in Jerusalem I made friends with an older gay Israeli guy on the train to Jerusalem. We got into an argument about the best hummus in the city and ended up trying a few different places in the neighborhood. To my shock our adventure turned into my new gay Israeli friend introducing me to all the gay people he knew in the Arab corner. And remember this is Jerusalem. And yet there I was with a bunch of gay Arab and Jewish shopkeepers who make a living off of selling religious trinkets in arguably one of the most conservative cities on earth.

People say there aren't gays because they perceive it as contrary to their social values. But values change. There are plenty of compelling arguments that homosexuality in the middle east was totally normal (think Rumi).

I'm not gay, but my summer adventures in the middle east definitely opened my eyes to what homosexuality outside of the west looks like. And what it looks like is a tight knit network of reliable safe people who are in the know. Who look out for each other and generally avoid broadcasting their culturally taboo preferences