I am shocked and disgusted that the Egyptian government has put 5 men in jail for being gay!! That is horrible. I have been to Egypt to study bellydance, and I haven’t seen the homophobia clearly because all the men – gay and straight – walk in the street holding hands! They are all hanging all over each other, swinging arms linked by their pinkies! How could they tell who was gay and who was not? All the men act so physically affectionate with each other. They are way more demonstrative of their same sex love than they are here. It is crazy! I swear to God it looks like Gay Pride, or some kind of early 90s ACT UP protest, but they have it every day! What are they trying to say? Gay romance between straight men is fine, but against the law for actual gays?
This is pandering to religious extremists by the government. Whenever they are in trouble with the people of their country, the Egyptian dictatorship throws some queers in jail.
I could never for the life of me understand why some people hate on others just because of the color of their skin or who they prefer to be intimate with. In my honest opinion, I think that is a horrible violation by Egypt of their civil rights that should be dealt with by the UN. I am heterosexual and all of my adult life, I have known this. I have never had a homosexual fantasy. I am not repulsed if someone who is gay comes up and gives me a hug. I have had gay friends over the years, but they understood that I was straight. The homophobes of the world need to realize that most gay people are looking exclusively for other gay people to date. I have always felt that most people who have a problem with homosexuality are those who have secretly harbored gay fantasies, but mask it by acting like idiots. Sometimes, I think that they can’t or won’t even admit it to themselves. I hope that those Egyptian gentlemen are free soon, and weren’t sentenced to do prison time.
(Although, I could never understand why any government would sentence anybody to prison for being gay. Do the politicians really think that will “cure” them? If the idiots who make the laws really think that sending a person to prison will not expose them to further homosexual influences, then maybe we need a “Scared Straight” program for politicians. Send them into a prison for an overnight visit, have them bunk up with the inmates and slip Viagra into the inmates food secretly. I can just see them Monday morning on Capitol Hill, trying not to look each other in the eye “I didn’t do nothin’. How about you? We went straight to sleep. Honest!”)
Sorry for digressing. You’re beautiful, and have a good heart Margaret. Don’t ever stop trying to make the world laugh, or exposing the injustices in the world. Ya got bigger balls than me. lol
Take Care
I have been living in south central India for about couple of months or so. Now, I will try to explain my findings so far on the whole men holding hands situation. Marriage is the most important day on a Indian human’s life, with that said most couple’s that get married don’t really know who they are marrying since it is arranged by the parents (there is no courtship of dating before that…ever). In my office men hang out with each other in large groups of friends. Their pda is the affection that 6- 7 year olds show for each other…except they are 32. People kind of missed out on the whole flirting and getting you sexy on in high school…so they are sexually awkward. So when they see young people being sexually confident it’s usually threatening…and as a reminder that they missed out on things.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1872370,prtpage-1.cms
This article in the times of India is one of the million where even heterosexual couple’s get into trouble. It’s okay for Men and Men and Women with Women to show displays, except when the PDA’ are more sexual than age 7. I have met gay men here…but they will marry and keep on hanging out with their guy friends if you know what I mean.
I recently traveled to Goa, where foreign women are molested and groped by Indian men all the time and that list includes me! with my husband right next to me! I made sure to hurt him bad for even trying to grab me in the middle of the day in the ocean. Then my husband started another fight.
So basically is a whole set of problems in this side of India…I hope this helps yet it doesn’t really answer why and how the police found them to be gay…it’s practically impossible to do.
In a lot of Arab countries men hold hands with their best friends (if you’ve ever noticed George W hanging out with his Saudi buddies, they do it too) but yeah, it doesn’t extend to sexuality. Their laws are draconian and ridiculous. I never understood how it was even vaguely acceptable to legislate what who people sleep with.
It took them this long to figure it out or someone making a big fuss over nothing. Either way this shouldn’t be happening at all in any country. Just let everyone live free!
What really chaps me is that many countries where simply being gay is punishable by death are catching on that the Western World is not going to continue idly accepting that, so they are instead killing gay men but trumping up the charge by saying they were a child molester; they figure no one would ever argue that a child molester deserved punishment.
Margaret, have you heard much about gay refugees being deported from the US? LGBT people from countries in a state of chaos, like Iraq, or people from countries where the penalty for being gay is death (once they admit that a gay person actually exists in their country) like Iran and Nigeria, or countries where mob violence against gays is commonplace and the government looks the other way, like Jamaica, come here in the hopes of being able to live without fear, only to be deported back to a place where their lives are in immediate danger. It is absolutely shameful. Most other Western countries treat these refugees about the same way, with more or less sympathy, but few deport as many as we do.
this is really sad, where is the United Nations? yeah, they suck.
http://www.queersunited.blogspot.com/