Czechs Scorned for Making Gay Asylum Seekers Watch Porn as Test

Some asylum seekers claiming anti-gay persecution who turn to the Czech Republic are faced with a requirement to prove their claim--by viewing heterosexual pornography while a device monitors their state of arousal.

The so-called "phallometric test" operates on the assumption that genuinely gay asylum applicants will not experience an erection if viewing erotica intended for heterosexuals. The test has drawn criticism from the European Union's Fundamental Rights Agency, reported the BBC on Dec. 8.

A report from the FRA said that the phallometric test said that it might not lead to "sufficiently clear conclusions" upon which to deny an applicant's claim. Moreover, "since this procedure touches upon a most intimate part of an individual's private life," the report cautioned, the test could be in contravention to European Convention on Human Rights guidelines.

Czech officials claimed that only a few asylum claimants had been subjected to the test, and those who had consented to it in writing. A Dec. 8 Associated Press article reported that a spokesperson for the country's Interior Ministry said the tests were generally used only on "unreliable" asylum seekers who hail from anti-gay nations that punish homosexuality severely.

A Dec. 9 Boing Boing article identified the device used in the test as a "penile plethysmograph," and said that the instrument had been invented by a Czech psychologist named Kurt Freund who had relocated to Canada. Children in Canada as young as 13 have been tested using the device, an earlier Boing Boing article published on Aug. 16 said, in an effort to diagnose underage sexual offenders. The medical value of the tests is not universally accepted, and in Canada the results are not admissible as evidence in a court of law.

"Males in general and teenage boys in particular can get spontaneous erections for any number of reasons that may or may not be related to the stimulus presented," the Aug. 19 Boing Boing article noted. "They might even chub up just because of the test itself (the stress, touching, humiliation, etc.)." The Canadian program came to an end after one of the administrators of the test was charged with sexual assault.

The BBC reported that there was concern in EU nations about the procedure. Germany declined to send an Iranian who said he was gay to the Czech Republic because of concerns that he would be required to submit to the test.

Worldwide, a number of nations punish homosexuality with severe penalties, including, in some places, the death penalty. Even where there is no legal penalty of death, the social stigma against gays may be so strong that gays are routinely murdered--sometimes by their own families.

But gay asylum seekers sometimes face challenges when pleading their cases to nations they hope will prove to be safe havens. In the U.S. and in Britain there have been cases in which individuals have been unable to prove that they are homosexuals in grave danger of persecution or even execution and have been sent back to their nations of origin.

Some of the most homophobic nations in the world are Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and much of Africa, including Malawi and Uganda, where a bill to impose the death penalty on gays has been pending for a year.