Pakistan is one of the most homophobic countries in the world. As t he BBC's Mobeen Azhar reports in a fascinating investigation, the combination of the prevalence of gay mobile apps like Grindr and Scruff, plus the onus of arranged marriage, has made the Pakistani city of Karachi β the nation's biggest city, at nearly 24 million people β a hotbed of gay sex, even if actually maintaining a gay lifestyle is still incredibly difficult.
Pakistan as a gay paradise? We're not entirely convinced, especially since homosexual activity there is illegal and punishable by a prison sentence. Gay rights don't exist there, being openly gay is still looked down upon, gay relationships are hard to come by, and Karachi pretty much fails on every metric of gay life except for one: man-on-man sex. Karachi is home to a lot of it. Like any other country in the world despite Iran's claims to the contrary , Pakistan has a homosexual population.
Earlier this summer, for example, the Pew Research Center found that Pakistan was simultaneously one of the most intolerant countries in the world for gay people while at the same time being one of the world leaders in searching for gay porn. Smartphone technology has also helped gay men in Pakistan find relief from society's strictures. There are thousands of gay men online in Pakistan at any one time," Danyaal, a year-old businessman, told the BBC.
He's right: a simple search on Scruff, a gay dating mobile app turned up plenty of men whose faces we've obscured in Karachi looking to connect:. But it isn't all technological cruising, either. There's good old-fashioned cruising, too, which happens at some of Karachi's most touristy spots.
For example, the city's busiest shrine, Abdullah Shah-Ghazi. Azhar writes:. Every Thursday evening, as the sun sets, men from across the city gather there. A tightly packed circle is formed and those in the centre of the circle are groped by those on the periphery. To outsiders it looks like a writhing mass of men huddling around one another. Some even describe it as a "mysterious religious ceremony".
