Iraq Vet Darren Manzella Talks About Coming Out, Military Gay Ban

Darren Manzella talks about his tours of Iraq, coming out, and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' in this new video interview from CNN.

Says Manzella: "After returning from my first deployment in Iraq, after seeing death and violence, losing friends and comrades, it really made me look over my life...I looked at some issues I had always had trouble with. I had debated, 'Am I gay?'"

You may remember Manzella's interview with 60 Minutes, after which he was discharged under DADT.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

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New York magazine takes a lengthy look at the danger faced by gays in Iraq.

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Islamist Militias Using Internet Chat Rooms to Target, Kill Gay Iraqis

Another really horrifying report of the brutality against gays going on in Iraq. Islamist militias are reportedly using internet chat rooms to locate and target their victims.

Said one 22-year-old militia member to the Guardian: "It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up. Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts. We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God's forgiveness before they are killed."

The paper also talks to a victim's mother about how she found out about her son's execution. She also provides a first-hand account of the anal glue torture that's been reported:

"He didn't follow what Islamic doctrine tells but he was a good son. Three days after his kidnapping, I found a note on my door with blood spread over it and a message saying it was my son's purified blood and telling me where to find his body. We found his body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals. I will carry this image with me until my dying day."

In some areas of Iraq "a list of names is posted at restaurants and food shops" in order to facilitate the location of victims.

Ali Hili, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT group in London, says the violence started following the 2003 U.S. invasion, and 680 gays have been executed in Iraq, at least 70 of those in the past five months.

CNN Reports on Torture and Executions of Gay Iraqis

In response to the report from Human Rights Watch that came out earlier this week, CNN talks to gay Iraqis about the atrocities being committed by militias in that country, and the hundreds of executions that have happened since 2004.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Gay Iraqi tells Guardian about attack by militia: "Four men came into the shop. They pulled out guns. They were the Mahdi army. The place they took me to was very close to a mosque or actually in the courtyard – I could hear the call to prayer very clearly. When they hauled me out of the car, they beat me unconscious. Late the next day, they came to me and said, 'We know you are gay.' They pulled out a list of names and started reading them ... I knew four who were still alive. One they had already killed. They interrogated me for three hours that night. They demanded I give them names of other gays. At night they got a broomstick. They used it to rape me."

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E. Lynn Harris' aunt Jesse Phillips talks about the late author: "Every time he wrote a book I'd go and buy 10 to 12 of them to support him I knew that he was gay before he told me because I could tell by his mannerisms but it didn't make me love him any less. When he was about 14 or 15, he confided in me that he was gay and it was just between the two of us. I kept his secret. I don't think he ever sat down with my sister and told her the way he did with me, but she accepted him just the same. He told me, 'I thought I could pray everything away even my sexuality but I can't.' Then he said that he knew I didn't' like the idea of him being gay but the fact was if he never had sex again in his life, he'd still be gay."

Human Rights Watch: Hundreds of Gays Executed in Iraq Since '04

A new report from Human Rights Watch demands that the Iraqi government crack down on the executions of gay men in the country, saying that hundreds have been killed since 2004:

"Although the scope of the problem remains unclear, hundreds of gay men may have been killed this year in predominantly Shiite Muslim areas, the report's authors said, basing their conclusion on interviews with gay Iraqi men, hospital officials and an unnamed United Nations official in Baghdad...Reports of slayings targeting gay men began circulating early this spring in Sadr City, a conservative Shiite district in eastern Baghdad. Gay men were also reportedly slain in Basra, Najaf and Diyala province, Human Rights Watch said. Gay activists said militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had target lists containing the names of men suspected of being gay. ... Sadr City residents opposed to homosexuality said in interviews that the presence of gay men became overt after the Iraqi army was allowed to move into the district in the spring of 2008, asserting control over a vast area formerly controlled by Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army. 'When the Iraqi army started coming here, this phenomenon started coming to our area,' said Ali Abu Kara, 23, a mechanic who identified himself as a member of the Mahdi Army. 'We felt very glad when those puppies were killed,' he added, using a pejorative term for gay men."

The "social cleansing" appears to have slowed in recent months, the group reports, because many gays have fled cities or gone underground to escape the brutality.