Although they have many inhibitions and fears
Babken Grigoryan, a resident of Yerevan, who is 27 years old and a homosexual, does not conceal his non-traditional orientation, is not ashamed of that, doesn’t fear anything. He always makes comments by his name under the articles of “Aravot”, which concern the LGBT community. During a conversation with “Aravot”, in response to a question what problems LGBT people have, Babken noted that they had a lot of problems that prevented them from defending the LGBT community, then added, “They are very weak, they don’t unite, in order to be a common team, they are afraid and it is very bad, they don’t establish a place where it is possible to gather and be together, to think in a friendly atmosphere how to improve this life, to establish a normal LGBT community and not only sex clubs or gardens. One should be braver and be able to defend and not allow anyone to impede my mentioned work.”
In response to questions whether he had homosexual friends, with whom he had met without any inhibition, fear in public places, whether there had been cases when people had “noticed” that he was different in cafes or other places, Babken said, “Yes, I have many homosexual friends… there were many cases when people noticed that we are of non-traditional orientation, but, fortunately, we were not treated aggressively and if anything like that happens, I will certainly apply to the law to defend and if they refuse to defend, I will apply to international organizations in Armenia.”
In Armenia homosexuality is often perceived as a disease or a result of wrong upbringing, even police officers don’t tolerate homosexuals and if someone insults a homosexual in front of a police officer and uses force against him, police officers will certainly take the homosexual to the police station. My interlocutor responded to this as follows, “Man is not born sick, except for the diseases that are proved by medicine, for example, disability, blindness, dumbness etc. There are two kinds of homosexuality, inborn and acquired. Inborn homosexuality is when, for example, a boy feels a necessity for sexual intercourse and realizes that he likes not girls, but boys. And the acquired type is when a boy has always had sexual intercourses with girls, but one day, for example, at the age of 24 he wants to have sex with a guy, i.e. he acquires homosexuality. As for assessing homosexuality as a disease, I must say it is a lie and it is wrong.”
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Our interlocutor noted that he had homosexual friends who were not from Armenia, but from Russia and Armenians from the US. What differences has he noticed between them and those from Armenia, “Guys from Russia differ from those from Armenia greatly, first of all they don’t have inhibitions, they are more open and free. They are masters of their lives and Armenian guys have inhibitions, they are afraid to defend themselves… they say ‘what my mom would say, what my brother would say, what my friends would say?’ But loving man would both love himself and respect others’ privacy. A guy abroad who has traditional orientation would never say ‘who is this fag, queer’, they respect each other and the rights of homosexuals are protected there. I have watched a movie recently and was very surprised. The scenario was the following – a guy meets another young man, falls in love, but unrequitedly. They regularly meet, spend time together and one day it so happens that those guys have a sexual intercourse and after that the one who didn’t love the other, also falls in love. And tells his partner, ‘I liked your heart that was very friendly and brotherly, my heart wished to be filled with that heart…’ Do you know what the message of that movie is? It is that there is also love between guys.”
Babken wished the Armenian public that perceives itself European that there was always love, respect for each other, there was no aggression and no one tried to rule over another.
EVA HAKOBYAN
