In the Middle East, homosexuals don't exist because there is a discernible lack of rainbow flag waving, show tune loving and Mimosa-sipping Gays. This, of course, is because homosexuality is a Western invention and Arab men - without the moral corruption of foreigners - have no capacity to fall in love with others of the same sex. These are the incoherent ramblings of Joseph Massad, a Columbia University professor and the author of, "Desiring Arabs", published this year by University of Chicago Press. In this week's New Republic magazine, James Kirchick discusses how this dangerous ideologue is part of a larger movement to justify the brutal repression and murder of Gay people in the Middle East. The idea is borrowed from the sometime intellectual wasteland of "Queer Theory" which says that homosexuality is a "social construction" and not inborn.
