It was May 23, a hot day in the city of Solo, when a group of buff bodybuilders hit the streets, sweat glistening atop their rippling muscles, to speak out against the threat of homosexuality in Indonesia and its gyms.
The five fearsomely masculine men bore two protest signs expressing their very pressing concerns as they struck powerful poses for the media.
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One sign reads, “Do not let Indonesia become Sodom and Gomorrah”, referring to the Biblical and Quranic tale of two cities destroyed for their massive moral degradation.
The second reads, “Act decisively against LGBT, destroyer of the nation’s morals. Gyms are not a place of sin”.
Standing sculpted shoulder to sculpted shoulder, all with delicate purple flowers tucked behind their ears, the five men from the “Nirwana Club Solo” fitness community explained to reporters that their protest was in reaction to the arrest of 141 men at the Atlantis Gym and Sauna in Jakarta, which had taken place two days previously. Police raided the men’s-only venue in Kelapa Gading while it was supposedly hosting a “gay sex party”.
“What has happened in Jakarta (recently) is very damaging to the nation, the young generation,” said Partika Subagyo Lelono, the mustachioed member of the group and a former member of the military police, as quoted by Tribun Solo.
Reiterating the statement on their sign, Bagyo said that gyms were a place for people to become healthier, not to look for vice.
“Do not make gyms into a place of sinners,” he said.
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Many Indonesians share the bodybuilders’ concerns about a growing LGBT threat to the country’s morality. But human rights activists and observers inside and outside the country are concerned that dangerous levels of discrimination are now being experienced by the stigmatized minority group, as evidenced most recently by the police raid on Atlantis and the caning of two men for gay sex in Aceh, the only region of Indonesia in which sharia law is followed and homosexual relations are officially outlawed.
