Pope Francis says laws that criminalize homosexuality are a "sin" and an "injustice"
CBSAPR 2023
Iraq, among other Arab nations in recent months, has launched a campaign against the LGBTQ+ community in order to distract from the many crises and challenges that the country is facing domestically. Post-2003 Iraq has seen rampant corruption, economic neglect, and war, yet the country's political elite consider it necessary to attack a small defenseless community to obfuscate its own culpability in Iraq's decline.
One should always keep in mind that attitudes in the Middle East regarding the LGBTQ+ community are, in many cases, the product of European colonialism. Many of the penal codes used against the community originate from the colonial period, when occupying authorities — who viewed many non-Western societies as sexually deviant — brought in such codes to defend "moral purity."