Surina Khan

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1967, Surina Khan moved with her family to the United States when she was 5. Her parents had both been born to Muslim families in what would become independent India, but moved to the new nation of Pakistan in 1947. She came out as a lesbian in 1989. She was an Associate Analyst at Political Research Associates a think tank and research center that monitors authoritarian and anti-democratic movements. She authored Calculated Compassion: How the Ex-Gay Movement Serves the Right's Attack on Democracy, an in-depth study of the ex-gay movement and the Christian right. She has contributed to The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, The Boston Phoenix, The Washington Blade, Deneuve, Girlfriends, Windy City Times, Southern Voice, and was the former co-publisher of Metroline.

Surina Khan is currently head of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the first South Asian to fill that position.

Newsclips & Links

Review of Deepa Mehta's Earth, by Surina Khan, in Sojourner. See the Sawnet cinema page for other reviews of this film, and more about the movie and director.

Khan thinks Coors beer should be boycotted because of the Coors family's right-wing politics. In i-out.

Going home. An article in which she talks about returning to Pakistan when her mother developed cancer, and how being lesbian has changed (and not changed) her relationship with her family. In the Boston Phoenix, Oct 99.

Deconstructingthe Christian right movement