Maysaloon - ميسلون

An excellent interview given by Joseph Massad:

What do you think of the gay organisations being formed directly in Arab countries, such as Helem in the Lebanon)?

Helem is an organization founded by a tiny minority of individuals who want to assimilate into the Western gay movement. They are often provided by Gay Internationalists as a local example of gayness. Aside from the influence and active participation of non-Lebanese in the founding of the organization, Helem represents only its own members and can only speak for them. According to Helem spokesman Sharbil Mayda’, the organization only has 40 members, only 30 of whom identify as homosexual in a country of four million people, in a region of 300 million Arabs. It is hardly a major development as far as changes in sexual conceptions of identity.