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"where love is illegal"

Sally, Beirut, Lebanon. Feb. 14, 2015. Sally, a transgender woman, arrived in Lebanon last summer, fleeing her home in Syria when one of her family members joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). She says ISIS kidnapped, interrogated and likely killed her last partner. “They are worse than the Syrian investigation services. ISIS consider gays as a contagious disease, so that’s why they kill them,” she says. Sally says many of her gay friends have been captured and stoned to death, shot or pushed from the roof of buildings, even when there is no proof (which is required under Islamic law). Sally now has a short-term job in Beirut teaching literacy to survive and is waiting for resettlement. “I can never go back to Syria. If I went back, they would kill me," she says.