Aug 03, 2007  |  By: JAMES KIRCHICK  | COMMENTS     

JUST MORE THAN TWO years ago, the British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell issued a warning to the public in the aftermath of the 7/7 London subway and bus bombings that took the lives of more than 50 innocent people.

“Gay venues could be bombed by Islamic terrorists,” he said. “All gay bars and clubs should introduce bag and body searches. Muslim fundamentalists have a violent hatred of lesbians and gay men. They believe we should be killed. Our community could be their next target. This is no time for complacency.”

In light of the more recent thwarted attacks — in which Islamist terrorists hoped to detonate massive bombs outside a London club featuring a “Ladies’ Night” — can anyone seriously doubt that a gay nightclub or bar is on the Islamofascists’ agenda? Indeed, London’s gay district, Soho, is just blocks from where police found the car bombs.

Before the United States liberated Afghanistan from Taliban rule, the only discussion there about homosexuality seemed to be whether or not gays should be thrown off the roofs of buildings, flattened by brick walls or buried alive. Today, the major debate in the Islamic world about gays is whether they should be hung (favored by Iran) or publicly beheaded (Saudi Arabia’s method of choice).

Gay people have a special role to play in the war against Islamic totalitarianism. We are not just random potential victims like anyone else in the West — we are special targets. As such, gays must speak out with special fervor about the threat this mortal enemy poses to Western freedoms.

IN THE WAKE of the recent foiled attack, gay clubs and bars would be stupid not to institute the tough security policies Tatchell recommended two years ago. That means working with local law enforcement officials and the FBI to take any and all appropriate measures to secure the physical establishment — installing security cameras outside and inside buildings to prevent the planting of bombs — as well as the “bag and body searches” suggested by Tatchell. Sure, such personal intrusions may inconvenience club-goers, but the minor annoyance of being patted up by a security guard (which, depending on the guard, might not be so much of an annoyance) pales in comparison to being blown to smithereens by radical Muslim thugs.

Some gay clubs already institute such policies, but current security measures seem aimed more at preventing the sort of violence that normally erupts at nightclubs — violence often perpetrated by club-goers themselves sparked by lovers’ quarrels and drunken misunderstandings. The sort of security now required must seek to thwart potential, premeditated terrorist attacks of the kind witnessed five years ago in Bali. There, an Islamist group bombed a bar frequented by Australian tourists, killing 202 people.

I JUST RETURNED from a three-week trip to Israel. Nearly every restaurant and bar has a security guard stationed outside who checks bags and monitors the premises for suspicious characters. Israel is a country that suffers a severe terrorism threat, surrounded as it is by regimes and terrorist organizations that seek its destruction and that view the killing of Jews as a godly act.

In Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, I asked a young, cosmopolitan Palestinian girl who follows Paris Hilton’s every move what would happen if a gay club were to open in the Palestinian Territories. “You’d see the flames in the states!” she laughed. The Palestinians, as we are frequently told, are the most secular and educated Arabs of the Middle East.

Gay people have fought long and hard against domestic political opponents in the battle for civic equality. We have not apologized about our way of life or equivocated about the continuing injustices we face. Likewise, the medieval adversary of Islamofascism is one that we must stare down with even greater fervor.