I walk these streets as if I were made of glass, as if the secret that lives inside me is betrayed by my façade, as if every pair of lurking eyes sees only me and the diseased disgrace they believe I am. This beautiful and diverse country of medieval marketplaces, majestic mosques, and gregarious, generous denizens is also home to some of the most discriminatory and archaic laws on Earth. Sexual relations between two people of the same gender is strictly forbidden in the legal code, with violators facing anywhere from six months to three years in prison. As if a direct ban on sodomy did not suffice, sexual relations outside of marriage have also been outlawed, and as same-sex marriages are obviously outlawed as well, adultery laws indirectly reserve love and sex for heterosexual couples. Despite having agreed to the UN Charter and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Morocco has failed and ignored its obligation and duty to treat the LGBT community with decency and equality.

And these laws terrify me, a 19 year old teenage male who came out to his family in one act of liberation, and confined his identity to secrecy and shame in Morocco in one other act of suppression. My religion, Islam, is not inherently homophobic. Religious texts condemn sodomy and lustful acts between anyone but do not condemn what I consciously know must exist- homosexual love, the same love that my heterosexual counterparts know well. It is of my opinion that homophobia in Morocco is a direct result of a culture that offers gays no clemency. I have been told here that I have a disease, that Satan has possessed my very being and deviated my orientation, that I could be cured if I would only visit the religious experts who claim so diligently that there is a cure for something they know so little about. I have been laughed at for arguing that love between two men or two women exists, and I have seen the word ‘gay’ used as a bully’s go-to-
weapon, with a connotation of ‘fake man,’ a man who sits in the caste system alongside the donkeys and prostitutes.

They are taught in schools that the scientific understanding that homosexuality is natural and not an illness is simply Western propaganda and another example of scientists trying to gnaw at the holiness and sanctity and integrity of the Holy Quran. My host brother in Rabat informed me that science in this case is misguided and that homosexuality is “disgusting.” Little did he know that the same brother he took to get ice cream everyday, that he prayed with, that he spoke with, that he laughed with and shared memories with, that he uneventfully shared a room with, was a disgusting sodomite bound to go to Hell under his definition. Yet few here know my secret. I go nightly to the mosque to join the ranks of other Muslims humbly bowing in worship to their Creator, in ranks of men of all ages, all heights, all languages and cultures, in ranks of men that defy differences. And I am among them- a silent gay who prays in those ranks with the same dignity, the same reverence, and the same piety- because that’s what I am among those hushed rows of people and to God Himself- equal.