Pakistan has the highest volume of internet searches for gay porn despite being one of the least tolerant countries when it comes to homosexuality.
The most searches for terms related to same-sex acts came from a conservative stronghold, the city of Peshawar, rather than major cosmopolitan cities such as Lahore and Karachi, according to analysis of Google trends by Mother Jones.
Pakistan was given a rating of 100 by the search engine for having the highest search traffic for the pornography terms.
Gay sex is illegal in the Islamic country and carries a sentence of two to ten years in prison if caught.
This week, the Pew Research Center revealed figures for the places that are most intolerant of homosexuality from a survey of 39 countries.
Only two per cent of Pakistanis surveyed said ‘yes’ to the question: ‘Should society accept homosexuality?’
Other countries that showed a low tolerance for homosexuality included Nigeria, with 1 per cent approval, Tunisia at 2 per cent, while Ghana, Senegal, Egypt, Jordan and Indonesia showed only 3 per cent approval.
Spain showed the highest acceptance of homosexuality at 88 per cent, followed by Germany at 87 per cent, the Czech Republic and Canada at 80 per cent, Australia at 79 per cent, France at 77 per cent and Britain at 76 per cent.
One expert on Pakistani minorities told Mother Jones that highly observant Muslim men are known to have physical relationships with other men – but do not consider themselves gay.
‘The real love they can have that most of us find with a partner, they find with men,’ said former Pakistani politician Farahnaz Ispahani, now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
‘They mostly see their wives as the mother of their children.’
She said an increase in religious extremism could explain the popularity of gay porn.
‘Hindus are being forced to convert, Christians are being burned alive – there’s very little personal safety for those seen as “the other”. So what do [gay Pakistanis] do? They turn to pornography because they can’t live their lives openly.’
