The points you raise about resisting the rise of the radical right are absolutely critical.

If the radical right come to power, there is no question that they will eventually target all queer people, including LGB people, ruthlessly suppressing our rights and liberty.

Just look at Italy, where the rise of the far right has corresponded with a plunge in freedom and liiberty for LGB people. Italy is now rated by international LGBTQ organizations as the worst place in Europe for LGB people to live, excluding former Soviet bloc countries.

But while resisting the rise of the radical right, it would behoove us to be clear-eyed about the intense homophobia in the Muslim world. Because many things can be true at the same time.

Islam is implacably opposed to freedom for any queer people, including LGB people.

I have a cautionary tale to tell. I used to be a part owner of a plastics recycling plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. As a business owner, I was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and several other civic organizations. I sometimes attended city council meetings to represent my business partners.

Hamtramck was at that time slowly becoming a majority Muslim city. Many of my peers in the Chamber of Commerce, and many city council members I knew well, were Muslims.

The city, with a traditionally Polish-immigrant population, was at the time embroiled in several controversies as certain old-school community leaders attempted to suppress the growing Muslim population, for example objecting to calls for prayer over loud speakers.

I wrote letters to the editor calling freedom for all elements of Hamtramck society, asking people to respect Muslim religious freedom.

I stood up in front of the chamber of commerce and made a speech to the same effect.

The Muslim civic leaders I knew understood that I was gay, because I was very open about it. They assured me that they had nothing but respect for individual difference, and that all they wanted was a chance to thrive. They insisted they had no will will against queer people and that they had no desire to politically repress queer people.

Now here comes the really important part.

They lied to me. Blatantly.

Several years later, after I had left the Detroit area, and when anti-queer book banning and other anti-queer repressive measures started becoming popular in the United States, many of these exact same Muslim civic leaders who shook my hand and told me that they supported queer equality began to push for, support, and vote for anti-LGBTQ measures.

For the Hamtramck school system, they passed something very similar to Florida's Don't Say Gay law. They began to call for and support anti-queer book bans in Hamtramck's school systems and municipal libraries. They pushed those measures through successfully. All of their arguments were centered on the idea that people needed to respect the Muslim faith. Meaning respect homophobia for religious reasons. Just heinous.

Queer students in Hamtramck schools went from attending a progressive school system where they had support, to a school system where queer identity is ruthlessly suppressed and targeted. GSA clubs were closed using clever tactics to get around First Amendment prohibitions of closing them.

And these measures were implemented by the exact same Muslim civic leaders who assured me in-person, face to face, while shaking my hand, that they stood for individual liberty.

So we need to be clear-eyed. Islam really is an intensely homophobic, queerphobic religion. And Muslim leaders have a track record of using their religion to hurt queer people.

The leaders I'm referring to, who I know on a first-name basis, made no bones about the fact that they were using their religious beliefs to impose restrictions on queer people in Hamtramck — following an evangelical Christian political playbook, allied with right wing Christians.

That happened. I was there, and it's scary.

Like I said, we need to be clear-eyed. We need to resist falling for traps set by the religious right or the far right in general. They do not have our interests at heart, regardless of their efforts to seduce LGB people into believing otherwise.

However, that should not lead us to be complacent about the threat that political Islam represents to queer people. That threat is very serious.

In Hamtramck, Muslim political leaders are doing exactly what Catholic political leaders are doing in Italy.

And it's horrible.