homophobia

If you think gays don’t have rights in the US, I dare you to venture to the Middle East. A twelve hour flight later and you’ll think you somehow went back in time, but in fact it is 2011 and people still actually think like this. Not only is homosexuality feared, denied, and hated by most Middle Eastern countries, but it is often illegal. Although under law in Egypt your sexual life is deemed a personal issue, the government finagled its way into essentially banning homosexuality and cross-dressers in 2000. Yes, in Egypt you can be arrested and charged for being gay for crimes such as “violation of honor by threat” and “immoral and indecent behavior”. Yet after reading the above and walking down the street in Cairo, one may be confused. Images of men walking arm in arm and kissing each other on the cheek is a sight synonymous with Cairo society. So what exactly is going on here? Is it a silent protest in order to express freedom of sexual orientation? Au contraire. In fact, the close proximity of men to each other often with linked arms is simply cultural norm and has nothing to do with being gay. Alas, Egypt is an Islamic nation and as the eloquent Ahmadinejad said about his Iran, “We don’t have homosexuals”. It seems as Egypt is singing a similar tune.

Censorship in much of the non-Western world is much more extreme than at home. I have been able to witness this myself through different experiences abroad in China, Turkey, and Indonesia including excessive bleeping of swearwords, blurring out of inappropriate images to make nearly every program PG, and blocking websites. But nothing compared to what I witnessed here. Watching MTV Arabia the other day (actually in English) I quickly noticed that the words “gay” “homosexual” and anything related were bleeped out. Unbelievable. Censorship to a whole new level.