Yerevan gay love
Armenia and Azerbaijan:
Cross Views on Army and Homosexuality
Being Gay and in Military Service
“I was wondering how to hide it [homosexuality]. And the more I thought about that, the more I realized that I wouldn’t make it during the two-year stint. I even thought about suicide.” Hayk, a 21 year old student, sits on a bench in a park in the center of Yerevan (his name has been changed for this article). He’s lost in a fog of memories. He remembers what he felt weeks before leaving home for military service.
“I heard many things about the way they treat gays in the military. I was warned that they defeat people like me,” he said.
Hayk realized that he was gay at the age of 17. He never fully told the truth to his parents, although he made it clear to his mother.
“She still thinks it’s temporary and that one time I could be cured,” he said with a slight smile on his face.
For him, things got worse when he reached the age required to enlist in the Armenian armed forces. In 2016, he found himself among new soldiers, all 18 years old, who were drafted for two consecutive years.
Since 1992, military service has been obligatory for Armenian male citizens between the ages of 18
The story of a same-sex couple in Armenia: happy, but misunderstood by many
The story of a same-sex couple in Armenia
Romik
Romik is from a country where poets converse with God, and they talk with him about love. Romik is from a country where people sometimes even destroy for the sake of love. Iran is a country of boundless beauty, rich in culture and diversity. That’s where Romik Danial was born. He is a prominent exemplary of the Armenian collective in Iran, an active young man and an honorary graduate of a religious studies programme.
“I’ve felt different from others since childhood, since I was 10. I felt like a stranger among the other boys. I never engaged in their conversations and I didn’t share their interests. I felt more comfortable around girls, but I realized that I was a stranger to them too.
“Sometimes it seemed to me that I was on the wrong kind of planet, or I got here by mistake. For example, suddenly the skies opened and I fell down like an angel, one of a kind. I didn’t know what it was, but I realized that I was unlike from my fellow human beings,” says Romik.
It took him years to find people ‘of his own kind’. Romik
An Armenian Journalist's Notes
By Shushan Harutyunyan
20-year old Ruben is a bartender at the only lgbtq+ bar in Yerevan and also one of few ammoniums bloggers that actively campaign for same-sex attracted rights in Armenia. Ruben has not told his family about the character of his activities, only a rare of his friends know. And those few friends are also aware of the fact that Ruben is in love with a boy.
“My parents were suspicious of my sexual orientation during my last years of school, and we had many fights about it at home. Now we don’t chat about it anymore; they think I’ve changed”, said Ruben.
Ruben is a learner and future economist. He said his greatest problem has been to overcome the period of dispute with his parents and resigning himself to his current situation.
“When my parents found out, they isolated me. They wouldn’t chat to me, kept being hard on me and I was in a very bad mention psychologically. I was aggressive and behaved badly – conceive what you would do if the world you lived in did not accept you,” Ruben said.
Mistreatment and intolerance of homosexuals, which often then turns into animosity, are seem to be typical in Armenian society. Our retain survey we cond
What would happen if the people of Yerevan knew I was gay?
21 years old Karl Afrikian was born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, USA to an Armenian father and an American mother. He is a student at Sewanee: The University of the South studying Economics and Russian culture. He first came to Armenia in 2014 to study at the American University of Armenia for a semester, when he was introduced to PINK. He returned to Armenia for summer 2015 to intern with PINK Armenia to assist the fight for gay rights.
Karl start the first letter of his call in Armenia
This June I returned to Armenia excited to be back in my Homeland. Although born and raised in the outskirts of Boston, I still identify greatly with my Armenian heritage. I had studied there the prior Fall where I fell in love with the country, made many friends, and was introduced to Pink Armenia.
I remember my first week in the country in August last year, lost and muddled in the streets of Yerevan. I called the office attempting to detect it after previously emailing the collective to ask about any pertinent security information a queer man needs while in the nation. I came in to the office and remember bein
Armenia: a Young Gay Couple’s Tragic Fate
On the evening of October 20, two young men jumped to their deaths from a bridge in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan.
The couple - 16-year-old Arsen and 21-year-old Tigran - had recently posted photos on Instagram with the caption, “Happy end: decisions about sharing the photos and our future actions were made jointly by both of us.”
Although an investigation into their deaths is uninterrupted, with few details having yet emerged, the deaths led to an outpouring of hate speech on social media.
The reaction to the Instagram photos, representing the two young men kissing, applying face masks and displaying what appeared to be wedding bands, included some emotional tributes – but were largely expressions of jubilation that they were dead and calls for other queer people to kill themselves.
Although homosexuality was legalized in Armenia in 2003, widespread prejudice remains. The articulate is yet to let same sex marriage or adoption, and there is no dedicated anti-discrimination legislation to protect LGBTI people.
IGLA-Europe’s Rainbow Index ranks Armenia 47 out of 49 countries in Europe and Central Asia for LGBTI rights, and society remains overwhe