Qatar: Death Sentence

According to Amnesty, the death penalty is no longer used in Qatar - for anything.

So stop being silly.

Homosexuals: Death

HACKERS have risked the lives of homosexuals living in countries where it is illegal to be gay — by potentially outing them online.

Secret affair site Ashley Madison is believed to have been used by gay people living in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality still carries the death penalty.

And since cyber criminals uploaded the details of 37million members on Tuesday evening, gay account holders face brutal punishments if outed.

There are 50 members of the site, predominately used by adulterers but also thought to have been used by gay singles hoping to avoid detection, registered in Qatar...

The Sun.

An hysterical gay, pictured recently.

'Homosexuals' are not sentenced to death just for being gay in any country in the world - and even arrests are so rare that they make the western news - but thanks for being hysterical.

PS Your chances of overdosing on GHB - or whatever we're supposed to be scared about this year - are insignificant.

Peter Tatchell: If So...

#Qatar to test foreign workers & ban #trans? If so, @FIFAcom must move 2022 World Cup: http://t.co/SMCaHhP2jH @PFA @kickitout @FA #FA
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) October 11, 2013

Does this mean Peter Tatchell is now saying this story he wrote for Pink News and elsewhere - which he'd done so much to spread - is actually not true?

If so, I'm sure he will apologise, and offer a public retraction.

PS Odd story on Pink News, Gulf countries propose ‘mandatory examination to determine gender’ for migrant workers. It includes statements from Peter Tatchell, but does not mention that he wrote a story about a "gay test" for tourists etc. 

I'm sure Peter would have mentioned this, so hope PN will amend their story.

I have contacted Tatchell several times, but he has not had time to reply yet.

Update: There appears to be a serious editing error in the Guardian article, Gulf countries consider medical checks to bar transgender expats, which also overlooks how Tatchell was promoting the fiction that Gulf states were proposing a "gay test" on visitors.

It also doesn't acknowledge Scott Long, who researched this and told Peter about his embarrassing error.  

Still no reply from Peter - fair enough, there's no law saying he has to reply to me. 

He's been very busy on Twitter, I see.

Immigration: Us V Them

While they wait, some for up to 16 years, asylum seekers languish in housing condemned by the committee as, in some cases, "appalling". Not just a shambles, degrading also. The committee was rightly outraged by testimony from gay and lesbian asylum seekers, some of whom were required to go to extraordinary lengths to establish sexuality. Having exhausted all reasonable ways of making a case, a few resorted to handing over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity". Is this a system we can be proud of? The anti-war slogan comes to mind: not in my name...

Hugh Muir in The Guardian, after the Tories announced they were "getting tough" on immigration and asylum, yet again.

Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to 'detect' gay people and stop them from entering the country

Daily Mail, October 7th.

The Mail story was widely reported as above (their own has since been updated).

It is a gross distortion.

As Scott Long has reported, no-one in Kuwait - or Qatar - has proposed some new "gay test" for tourists.

Rather; "The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

The "gay test" fiction was reported in the international LGBT media and elsewhere.

Please let Fagburn know of any you see who have published a correction or an update on the story, ie one that is actually accurate.

At the time of typing, despite polite requests from many individuals, I know of none.

[Edit: Towleroad gave the earliest and most transparent correction I saw. More usually, where the real story was printed, they were mendacious, and the fact that they had published a garbled version before disappeared down an Orwellian Memory Hole].

Thanks to @undersided

Qatar: What's (Really) Going On (In Kuwait)?

I first noticed it yesterday on Pink News, the UK’s G-and-sometimes-LBT news website: a new horror from the Persian Gulf. “It was revealed that Gulf Cooperative Countries introduced new rules to ‘detect’ and ban gay people from entering the country.” 

It doesn’t take long for any story about Arabs and sex to go viral. In this case, given that Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup, the headlines hitched a ride with anxieties over the Sochi Olympics, and turned into warnings about threats to sports. 

Peter Tatchell leapt in headfirst, proclaiming that “FIFA now has no option but to cancel the world cup,” because “gay players and spectators will be banned from attending.” The story was soon in the Daily Mail: “Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to ‘detect’ gay people.” Russia Today picked it up (probably hoping that they could lure Jamie Kirchick to move his strip show to Al Jazeera). Of course it spread all over Twitter...

Scott Long, Kuwait’s “medical screening for gays”: Truth, fiction, and why it’s not a “gay” issue.

Things are once again a bit more complicated and very different from the usual screaming from certain queer quarters.
Forgive my clumsy summary, but in fine; there is no new law, someone from the Kuwait health department mentioned in an interview the already existing medical screenings of new foreign workers, and proposed these could also check for "the third sex" - this is about ongoing moral panics about migrant labour, and transphobia (it is unclear what, if anything, he proposes doing about "tests" for homosexuality, if that were possible).
This story's distortion and over-excitable transmission, as ever, says much about our own Islamophobia and Orientalism.

"So let’s be clear: this is a matter of employment screening – of people coming into the Gulf to live and work, people who already have to undergo medical testing on arrival. It’s not a screening for every arrival at the airport. It does not mean, as Tatchell claimed, “that gay players and spectators will be banned from attending the football world cup.” Whatever Dr. Mindkar has in mind, the sacred anuses of fans and footballers will be exempt, unless they plan to settle down and get jobs as gardeners or drivers in the Gulf after the games are through..."

The idea that the bottom inspectors will be examining every man entering the Gulf states is a ludicrous fiction.

Update: Scott Long updates this story...

"The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

Winter Olympics: None More Gay!

Back in 1976 when I edited the magazine Sportsworld, then the official publication of the British Olympic Association, I received a telephone call from a Melbourne radio station in the middle of the night following the British figure skater John Curry’s breathtakingly artistic gold medal-winning performance in the Innsbruck Winter games.

“Hi,” said an Aussie voice. “We’ve all been watching your guy John Curry win the Olympics. Isn’t he something? Understand you know him quite well.” I concurred that indeed I did.

“Great. Look, mate, would you mind telling us a bit more about him – we’re all keen to know. Can we go live with an interview now?” “No problem,” I replied.

“OK... We’ve got Alan Hubbard, editor of Sportsworld magazine live from London, who knows this Pommie skater John Curry we’re all talking about... Tell me Alan, is he a poofter?”

I recall I quickly mumbled something about his sexual orientation being his own business. “Well,” came the response, “he sure looks a poofter from here!”

Thankfully, things have moved on since then – even in Australia. But not, apparently, in Russia and, significantly, certain other discriminatory outposts, including Qatar, which follows Russia as World Cup hosts in 2022, and where being gay, as the late Curry eventually revealed he was, is still tantamount to being a pariah...

Alan Hubbard writing in The Independent leading into talking about you-know-what.
Illustrated with the above photo of the "flamboyant" American figure skater, Johnny Weir.

The article is quite accurately titled; For Sochi the future is gay, whether Vladimir Putin likes it or not One certainty is there will be no boycott neither will the games be shifted

Got that?

Regardless of how daft and counter-productive these "demands" were in the first place, they were objectively not going to happen.

It would make a nice change if, just for once, one person calling for people to "do something" about homophobia in Russia had stopped for four seconds and thought things through.

Not that I'm suggesting for one moment that this "debate" has been dominated by a load of idiotic gay hysterics waving their pink pitchforks, you understand.*
It's encouraging that some sane and rational voices are starting to be heard in this thoroughly depressing episode - here's Alice Arnold; Britain's homophobia needs to be tackled before we turn to Russia's.
Quite.

*Check out the usual avalanche of stupidity on Huff Post Gay, and remind yourself why the LGBT movement's fucked.
They've even run an article that asks; Imagine if they'd say that about race.
AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
Such sophisticated, original and radical political debate, HuffPo!

World Cup 2022: The Problem Is Qatar, Not Blatter

Everyone is UP IN ARMS!!! about some bloke from FIFA making a light-hearted quip about how gay men should behave when the World Cup is held in Qatar.
'When asked if he foresaw any cultural problems, [Sepp] Blatter, apparently joking, said: "I'd say they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activities," BBC reports - you can watch a video report on their site.
Cue boorish laughter from some reactionary bores.
He did immediately qualify this with a more serious and thoughtful comment;
"You see in the Middle East the opening of this culture, it's another culture because it's another religion, but in football we have no boundaries.
"We open everything to everybody and I think there shall not be any discrimination against any human beings be it on this side or that side, be it left, right or whatever.
"If they want to watch a match somewhere in Qatar 2022, I'm sure they will be admitted to such matches...
"I think there is too much concern for a competition that will be done only in 12 years.
"But this gives me the opportunity to say that in Fifa, and this is in the statutes of Fifa, whether it is in politics, whether it is in religion, we don't want racism, and we know what this means, and neither do we want discrimination.
"What we want is just to open this game to everybody and open it to all cultures and this is what we are doing in 2022."
There were still all the usual howls of affected outrage.
This month's Fagburn Fashanu Award for the quickest that an article about The Gays In Sport mentions Justin Fashanu goes to this from The Guardian by Richard Williams;
'The ugly prejudice that casts a shadow over the beautiful game - Twenty years after Justin Fashanu came out football remains out of step with the real world'
Fagburn has written before how he feels hosting the World Cup in a state where homosexuality is still against the law, such as Qatar, is insulting and wrong, wrong, wrong, and how strange it was how some journalists acted as apologists for Qatar.
Fagburn guesses it's good that media folk are getting angry about the FIFA bloke's comment.
So why was there less ink spilled over the more patently anti-gay Qatar than there has been over Blatter?
A clue may be in yesterday's Open Door column in The Guardian.
In November The Guardian ran an appalling puff piece masquerading as "Comment" on why Qatar was the greatest country in the world and really should win the World Cup bid, Why the heat is on Fifa to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar
The paper has had to apolgise as at no point was it mentioned that the journalist, Louise Gray, had just been on a freebie holiday to the human rights abusing but oil rich gulf state paid for by the Qatari government to get journalists to support its bid.
Oops!
If you read any further apologias for Qatar in the media, or if you see any writer getting slightly mealy-mouthed about this hellish shit state, bear in mind the hack may be thinking whilst they're writing; "I better not be too harsh, I might get a free holiday out of these cunts..."
Journalism - it's prostitution by pen.

World Cup 2022 Qatar: Missing An Open Goal

'Where are the footballers who are glad to be gay? Let’s put things right here before we criticise the Middle East' says Robert Crampton in The Times.
To which any rational person would answer; "Bollocks!"
Let's criticise both.
"Given the medieval attitude to homosexuality in large parts of the Middle East, several critics have also raised concerns about the treatment of gay players at the tournament."
No, most critics are angered because homosexuality is illegal in Qatar.
There's even a new cliche uttered in response; "Homosexuality was illegal when England hosted the World Cup in 1967."
Yes, but it's 2010 and it isn't now.
It's good to see journalists defending Qatar - they're very generous with their five star free trips to the sun-kissed gulf state, coincidentally.
But anyway, Robert, you were twisting things to fit your argument...
"Which to me invites the response: never mind potential Qatari attitudes in 12 years’ time, what about actual British attitudes right now?"
Which brings him back to his titular question; "There is not one openly gay footballer among the 92 clubs in the premier and football leagues, or in Scotland as far as I am aware. That’s right. Out of several thousand professional footballers, not one is openly gay, when statistically you might expect there to be quite a few."
So off he goes to tell once more the parable of Justin Fashanu, the only player to come out, whose career then died, and he later commited suicide.
"Last year the Professional Footballers’ Association scrapped plans for an anti-homophobia video."
Though Fagburn suspects this was because the FA realised it was shit.
"Fans — and occasionally other players — routinely direct virulent homophobic abuse at any player whose good looks, or interest in fashion, or art, or books, mark him out as different from the norm."
Yes, but again they don't send gay men to prison in the UK, and homosexuality is still against the law in Qatar.
"...although there may be plenty of reasons to criticise Fifa for awarding the World Cup to Qatar, that state’s possible aversion to gay footballers, 12 years from now, should not be top of the list."
It's not, dear.

• The homo-friendly looking chaps above are of course all players in this year's world Cup photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

World Cup 2022 Qatar: Expect Prison

Fagburn doesn't normally follow the sports or football, but is thrilled to hear that Qatar will be hosting the World Cup in 2022.
Let's hope they decriminalise homsexuality before then, eh?
The penalty is up to five years in prison for both men and women.
According to the International Lesbian And Gay Association; "Along with the civil Penal Code also Islamic Sharia law is in force in Qatar, although only applicable to Muslims. The offence of “Zina” makes any sexual act by a married person outside of marriage punishable by death, while sexual acts by non-married persons are punish by flogging – both offences no matter if they were heterosexual or homosexual."
Nice.
Does FIFA not take a country's homophobic laws and human rights record into consideration?

Amnesty International Report on Human Rights in Qatar.