Living in a Moslem Country
I am a US Citizen from North Carolina. I had never traveled far from my home State, until I met my partner who happened to be a Chinese-Indonesian. I met him when I went to a barber school in 2000 and we have been together since. He tried to get a political asylum in 2002 on the ground of being gay in the most populous Moslem country. We hired a lawyer to represent us. We spent thousands of dollars and finally got interviewed in DC in 2003 but they could not decide whether to give him or not. They let the court to decide. We asked our lawyer what our chance was if we want to proceed with the court. Our lawyer said that our chance to get it in court probably just 3%. Since we only had 3% chance and the lawyer also asked for another $10,000 if we proceed. We decided not to proceed and my partner left the country voluntarily. We just had our Holy Union in our Church. We were devastated.
He left The US in October 2003. We tried to move to Canada but since we did not have any relatives or job offers, it would be difficult. We were separated almost 2 years but in between I had a chance to visit him in Indonesia and tried to find a job there. Finally I found a job and moved to Indonesia in 2005 until now. I cannot believe that we have been together for 9 years now. We are still looking to move to another country. A year ago we start the process immigrating to Canada.
It is not easy to be a gay couple here in Indonesia but we manage to do it until now. We do not want to be separated anymore. Those 2 years being separated were horrible years for us. We need help but we do not know who can help us. Even my own country cannot help me. We are thankful that God still let us to be together until now and our Hope is just in Him.

Rick, thank you so much for posting this! I’m very sorry it took me so long to make it live — The notification emails got caught in my Spam filter, and I didn’t notice that I had 2 posts pending in my admin dashboard until today. I didn’t realize that I had to “approve” it in order for it to go live.
Your story is very moving, and I’m so glad you contributed it. My hope is that the more that our stories get heard, the more likely it is that UAFA will pass, and we will be able to live with our partners in our own country, just like any other couple.