Society
Lebanese society is very modern and similar to certain cultures of Mediterranean Europe as the country is "linked ideologically and culturally to Europe through France, and its uniquely diverse ethnic and religious composition a rare environment that at once Arab and European. It is often considered as Europe's gateway to Western Asia as well as Asia's gateway to the Western World.
By comparison to most other Arab capitals, Beirut is more westernized and more socially liberal. Compared to Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad, and especially in contrast to such cities as Riyadh, Beirut is more tolerant with regard to relations between men and women, and also with regard to homosexuality.
Notwithstanding the persistence of traditional attitudes regarding the role of women, Lebanese women enjoy equal civil rights and attend institutions of higher education in large numbers (for example, women constituted 41 percent of the student body at the American University of Beirut in 1983). Although women in Lebanon have their own organizations, most exist as subordinate branches of the political parties.
While gay sex is technically illegal, Beirut has a number of gay bars and nightclubs, in addition to two LGBT rights organizations, namely Helem and Meem.
Read more about this topic: Lebanese Art
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the loser.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You cannot have one well-bred man without a whole society of such. They keep each other up to any high point. Especially women;Mit requires a great many cultivated women,—saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant society, in order that you have one Madame de Staël.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)