Middle East: Everything

By my mate Brian.

Egypt: If

Brian Whitaker in The Guardian.

Brian is The Guardian's former Middle East correspondent, and author of Unspeakable Love: Gay and lesbian life in the Middle East.

His blog al-Bab.com makes a refreshing change from the usual ill-informed twaddle spoken about this subject.

PS Read also Scott Long's Cairo-based reporting of this disgusting media-frenzy farce on, A Paper Bird.

Egypt: "Gay Websites Spread Confusion"

Earlier this month several gay websites reported a rather puzzling story from Egypt. According to Gay Star News and Pink News, 14 men had been arrested for "homosexual acts" at a "medical centre" in El-Marg district of Cairo.

Neither story gave any details about the "medical centre" or any clues as to why gay sex was supposedly going on there. Meanwhile Pink News, apparently unaware that the military had taken over Egypt last July, warned:

"Activists and LGBT citizens also fear that the new government, lead [sic] by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, may soon ... crack down on LGBT Egyptians."

The reports from Pink News and Gay Star News were basically rehashed from an English-language report circulating in Egypt which in turn had been rehashed from a report in Arabic.

By describing the place as a "medical centre", these English reports gave the impression it was some sort of clinic run by people with stethoscopes and white coats – but it wasn't...

From Brain Whitaker's excellent blog about the Arab world al-bub.

PS Brian is the author of Unspeakable Love: Gay And Lesbian Life In The Middle East. 

Egypt: Less Than Human

'"The issue of human rights has become a global language," he said. "Although each country has its own particulars, respect of human rights is now a concern for all peoples" – though he specifically excluded gay rights.'

Muslim Brotherhood leader - and Class A religious nutter - Essam el-Erian interviewed in The Guardian by Jack Shenker and the great Brian Whitaker

• The photo is of a statue of Akhenaten, Egyptian pharoah and almost certainly gayer than you.

Iran: Human Rights Watch Report

We Are a Buried Generation Discrimination and Violence against Sexual Minorities in Iran
Based on testimony from more than 100 Iranians, this report documents discrimination and violence against LGBT people and others whose sexual practices and gender expression do not conform to government-endorsed socio-religious norms. Human Rights Watch analyzed these abuses within the context of the government's violations against its general population, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, invasions of privacy, mistreatment and torture of detainees, and the lack of due-process protections and fair-trial guarantees.

Read the Press Release - Read the Report

To paraphrase the late, great Palestinian scholar and activist Edward W Said, what people in the West know about homosexuality in Iran is a stupid cliche.
Human Rights Watch have bothered to try to find out what life is really like there.
Brian Whitaker, an editor at The Guardian's Comment Is Free and author of Unspeakable Love: Gay & Lesbian Life in the Middle East, has written a fairly neutral piece on the publication of this report.
Whitaker notes correctly;
"Unfortunately, the LGBT issue – epitomised by the notorious photograph of two male teenagers being hanged – has also been embraced unscrupulously by some, in the hope of bolstering support for a military attack which has entirely different goals and motives. This, in turn, leads to accusations from the other side that anyone who complains about the treatment of LGBT people is simply picking on Iran and trying to start a war.
"Regardless of motives, though, it's a fact that Iran's treatment of sexual minorities is bad and, by international standards, somewhere near the bottom of the league. It is one of only seven countries worldwide that retains the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts (the others are Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and some parts of Somalia and Nigeria).
"But disappointingly for those who like to keep things ultra-simple, the picture is not uniformly black. Small numbers of Iranians (mainly in the middle and upper classes) identify themselves as gay or lesbian, and some are surprisingly open about it. There are also embryonic LGBT communities in major cities, such as Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz, with well-known cafes, restaurants and parks that serve as meeting places..."
Of course for many - even enlightened Guardian readers - this is all unsayable, unthinkable.
Just read the hysterical comments beneath it.
George Orwell must be spinning in his urn.
For them, Iran is our enemy and so of course they kill gay men.
But there simply is no evidence Iran executes gay men "simply for being gay".
True, we can't be prove that they don't, in secret, just as Bertrand Russell would argue that you can't ultimately prove that there is no God, or that there isn't a tiny teapot, invisible to the human eye, endlessly circling around the Sun.