An official document from Iraq’s media regulator and a government spokeswoman both confirm that the regulator ordered all media and social media businesses operating in the Arab nation to stop using the term “homosexuality” and start using the phrase “sexual deviance.”
According to a document from the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC), the word “gender” is likewise forbidden. It forbade the phrases from being used in any mobile applications by any phone or internet firms that were granted licences by it.
Later, a government official claimed that the choice still needed to be approved in full.
In an Arabic-language statement, the regulator instructed media outlets to refer to sexual deviation instead of homosexuality.
According to a government official, the punishment for breaking the law has not yet been determined but may include a fine.
Although gay intercourse is not expressly illegal in Iraq, members of the LGBT community have been targeted under vaguely interpreted morality articles in the country’s penal code.
Major Iraqi political parties have increased their condemnation of LGBT rights in the last two months, and rainbow flags are routinely set ablaze in demonstrations by Shi’ite Muslim groups objecting to recent Koran burnings in Sweden and Denmark.
According to Our World in Data, homosexual actions are illegal in more than 60 countries while they are permitted in more than 130.