"The men were arrested three weeks ago in a central Cairo restaurant following an argument after which a client accused them of practising homosexuality ... Egyptian homosexuals have in the past been jailed on charges ranging from 'scorning religion' to 'sexual practices contrary to Islam'."
As is often the case with Sharia laws, not only is the law here inherently unjust by Western standards of personal privacy and separation of religion and state, but it is incredibly prone to being abused to settle personal grudges.
"Egypt jails five “homosexuals” for three years," from Agence France-Presse:
CAIRO - A Cairo court on Wednesday jailed five men, four of them HIV positive, for three years on charges of ”debauchery” linked to homosexuality, a court official told AFP.
The men were arrested three weeks ago in a central Cairo restaurant following an argument after which a client accused them of practising homosexuality.
A police doctor carried out anal inspections on the men “which confirmed their homosexuality,” the court official said. Human Rights Watch said such examinations constitute torture and are medically spurious.
While homosexuality is not included in a list of sexual offences explicitly outlawed by Egypt’s Islamic-inspired legislation, it can be punished under several different laws on morality.
Besides facing widespread public prejudice, Egyptian homosexuals have in the past been jailed on charges ranging from “scorning religion” to “sexual practices contrary to Islam.”
Hafez Abu Saada, of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, said the men were prosecuted under 1961 anti-prostitution laws which ”must be changed ... as it’s against the international convention of human rights which Egypt signed in 1986.
“This law is also against the Egyptian constitution which guarantees the right to privacy and individual freedom,” he said.
The men, who can appeal the verdict, were also ordered to pay a small fine.
Danger here is that if any of these charges are false, the accused could, after being released, marry normally and then start popping little shahids just to demonstrate their case, and in the process, make Egypt even less safe for Coptic Infidels.
This incident coincides with a book I'm reading right now, "The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945" by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann. It describes not only the genocide against the Jews, but also the persecution and genocide of the Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), euthanasia of the "hereditarily ill", "mentally ill", the "feeble-minded" or even the "camouflaged" feeble-minded, the "asocial"--habitual criminals or people with deviant attitudes" and homosexuals. The authors stress the involvement of physicians and psychologists. What will Egyptian health care workers get up to if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over?
They should have just gone after prepubescent girls like their religion's founder, the pedophile "prophet", Mohamhead.
"a client accused them of practising homosexuality"
Note that they were accused and not convicted. None of that "decadent" Western burden of proof and beyond a reasonable doubt or a jury of their peers stuff. They just have to be accused.
"And they were witches, too. They turned me into a newt!"
not only is the law here inherently unjust by Western standards of personal privacy and separation of religion and state
What aspect of the law is "inherently unjust" by those standards? The part that outlaws "practising homosexuality" (i.e., sodomy)? If I recall correctly, that practice was illegal under the laws of England and every American state until the 1960s. As recently as 1986, the U.S Supreme Court upheld such laws as constitutional. And even when the Supreme Court struck down those laws in 2003, 13 states still made sodomy illegal, punishable by imprisonment for terms such as up to five years (Virginia), 10 years (Oklahoma), or life (Idaho). The Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas clearly did not reflect any universal consensus that such laws were contrary to "Western standards."
Let's not kid ourselves that "Western standards" can be defined by the post-1960s rejection of what had before them been regarded as the standards of the West. (Indeed, 100 years ago, it probably would not only have been said that sodomy was contrary to Western standards, but that conniving at its practice was exactly the kind of thing we'd expect to see in Mahometan countries.)
Now if you want to argue that it's unjust to impose criminal penalties on the basis of inadequate evidence, as apparently in this case, that's another issue, but the idea that "practising homosexuality" is some kind of fundamental human right whose recognition is characteristic of Western civilization is one that would have been laughed at in the West until very recently.
Does Oscar Wilde come to mind? And just a few years before that there was Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, literary figures, all.
Wilde was released after two years hard labor in 1897.
3-5 years for waving a limp wrist...3-5 months for killing your family because they did something stupid like walking on the sidewalk showing ankles, or listening to western music, or loving the wrong Muslim, or refusing to wear the all emcompassing Muslim body bags, or wearing makeup/perfume or saying no to multiple wives or even for getting a job..
Seamus/
Indeed, practising homosexuality (i.e. sodomy) was illegal but societies grow and change and free and democratic societies which base their philosophies on reason and evidence grow out of prejudice and recognise that some things, such as homosexuality, may be inherent to an individual and that using law to discriminate against harmless inherent traits is not sensible, useful, or just, but silly, useless and discriminatory.
Most civilised Western societies (the USA is a glaring exception) accept that homosexuals are harmless and that their needs should be incorporated into the main corpus of law and regulated just as the needs of heterosexuals are. In other words, most civilised Western societies accept that there is a distinction and difference which must be maintained between Church (belief founded solely on faith and unprovable documentation) and State (founded on equality before the law for everyone - yes, everyone - including homosexual people).
What a person does in the privacy of their own bedroom - so long as the acts are consenting and that only adults capable of giving or witholding informed consent are involved - is no matter for the State and the State is not an arm of the Church (any Church or faith) and should not apply faith based, religion based, concepts of morality or standards. That is liberty, and liberty is what we are defending here. But, and just as importantly, I will defend the right of any person who finds homosexual people offensive in their practices to avoid the company of homosexual people - just as I will defend the right of homosexual people who find those who avoid them to be offensive and to avoid the company of such heterosexual people - as most of us do. No law, whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, red-haired or blond, black-skinned or pink-skinned, WASP or Latino, male or female, young or old, should ever force you to endure, to tolerate, someone you find offensive - should it? Surely, you have a right to be as abusive as you need to be against anyone who is different in terms that you, personally, find offensive, no matter what the grounds for your offense?
Well, maybe you do, for that's free speech and it must be defended; but law, the law, seeks, or should seek, to treat everyone, you included, equally. However, what you do in your own life is your own affair but what the law does is everyone's affair - including homosexuals'. Simply because something was illegal or universally reviled and is not now is not a demonstration of the correctness of past attitudes (although it might be in some cases) but demonstrates, instead, the changing nature of society and society's increasing committment to equality before the law for everyone - including homosexuals.
You chose to quote: "not only is the law here inherently unjust by Western standards of personal privacy and separation of religion and state" and to question that quote's relevance. Fair enough, but I think that it is very relevant because the law in Egypt invades the bedroom of consenting adults and does so using religion, in this case Islamic Sharia law, as a pretext and justification for so doing - both of which should be anathema to you, a citizen of the free West, regardless of what sexual orientation, or mores, you might be or have.
You also said: "Now if you want to argue that it's unjust to impose criminal penalties on the basis of inadequate evidence, as apparently in this case, that's another issue, but the idea that "practising homosexuality" is some kind of fundamental human right whose recognition is characteristic of Western civilization is one that would have been laughed at in the West until very recently" and I have to disagree. Practising homosexuality - I don't 'practice', I'm da**ed good at it (are you a practising heterosexual?) - is "some kind of fundamental human right" because we have agreed, on the bases of many evidences, that it is - individual sexual orientation is fundamental to human freedom just as all other inherent characteristics are. Societies change, and change their opinions, and Western free societies, again, with the glaring exception of the USA, have decided (or are in the process of deciding) that sexual orientation is no business of the law (excepting, obviously, in the matter of consent to any particular act, but that applies to heterosexuals also).
So, I do not find that you have substantially proved your disagreement with the headline you quote. In fact, quite the reverse applies in that you have failed, abysmally, to offer any convincing or cogent argument against those particular words. It seems to me, and I could be wrong and I await your considered reply, should you choose to reply, that the words which you quoted as your headline quote do indeed describe exactly what is happening in Egypt today - that homosexual members of Egyption society are being targeted for arrest and imprisonment solely on the basis of civil law motivated by religious belief. If this, as you assert, and I don't know enough about the laws of individual states within the USA to know whether or not your assertions are correct, is also the position in Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho and Texas (to name and shame just those states which you named and shamed) then all I can say is that that copiously proves my point - objectivity in law, law based upon evidence for the need and utility of a law, has given way in many states of the USA to law based upon prejudice and religious belief.
I always thought, believed, that the USA, more than any other country, believed in, and operated, the principle of the separation of the Church and State. It seems not!
Oliver.
Mr. Camford:
I wasn't particularly arguing the morality of sodomy per se (though I might be happy to do so on another occasion). I wasn't even particularly arguing for laws against sodomy. What I was arguing against was the notion that "Western standards" could be defined in a way that rejects the standards that were universally held in the West for all but the past 50 years or so of Western history.
Seamus/
Yes, I got your point and addressed it in my fourth paragraph when I said "Simply because something was illegal or universally reviled and is not now is not a demonstration of the correctness of past attitudes (although it might be in some cases) but demonstrates, instead, the changing nature of society and society's increasing committment to equality before the law for everyone - including homosexuals"
Societies change. One hundred years ago women did not have the vote in the majority of countries on this planet and it was viewed as unthinkable that they ever would for all sorts of reasons including, in my country, a feeling that women were morally deficient and intellectually not capable. However, change happened and will continue to happen and there is not one thing that you or I can ever do to stop the process of change.
When you say that you reject the notion "that "Western standards" could be defined in a way that rejects the standards that were universally held in the West for all but the past 50 years or so of Western history" I have to take issue with you. I don't think that there ever existed universal western standards. Every country was different in many different ways. In many different western countries homosexuality has been tolerated as unremarkable at various times and women were also, at various times, freer. Each and every country changed, and are still changing, at different rates and it just so happens that a consensus is being arrived at in many societies today about homosexuality.
Anyway, as free people living in a civil society that rejects the notion that a theocracy from any belief should govern, or meddle in government, we have a perfect right to reject those standards that our ancestors thought were immutable and that we find distasteful as our descendants will, no doubt, reject some of our standards for the same reasons.
On the subject of whether or not personal relationships between two consenting adults can be judged to be in some way moral or not I feel that I probably differ from you here also. For me, and for many, many others a relationship is simply a relationship and part of the natural order of things. So long as such a relationship is consenting and no abuse is offered by either party to it to the other in it, then it is also valid. The law should have nothing to say and I don't think that a valid relationship can be described as either moral or immoral; for me, that seems as daft as deciding that a brick is either moral or immoral. A brick simply is, relationships simply are: bricks and relationships exist, morality doesn't enter into it.
Personal distaste, and sometimes a morality based on religion or some other superstition, can decide to declare some relationships to be immoral but that sort of prejudice should not influence law nor should it be allowed to medle in the loving relationships of others. One's own personal dislikes or beliefs guide only oneself and should not be used to circumscribe the freedoms of others. Such personal tastes and beliefs, of course, have their place in the public discourse that takes place in free societies and should be mentioned and explained in order to let others in the debate know where and why one stands - but that is all. To use one's personal prejudices, tastes and beliefs in order to corral others in some way, particularly when the behaviour of those others does no harm to you other than offend your own sensibilities, is not honourable or civilised behaviour. That is precisely what is happening in Egypt today and I am very grateful to JW/DW for the efforts to keep us up to date on this, and similar, stories.
Oliver.
"...A police doctor carried out anal inspections on the men “which confirmed their homosexuality,” the court official said. Human Rights Watch said such examinations constitute torture and are medically spurious."
Late in the thread (so for the archives), but it has not been covered, perhaps because the point is blindingly obvious.
Leaving aside HRWatch concerns, many males in the Middle East regard insertive same-sex behaviour as within the acceptable repertoire of heterosexual males. Whereas anal-receptive males are invariably regarded as homosexual.
Hence Marisol's initial bolding of that quote?
MBR/
I'd missed that due to sloppy speed-reading of the original post. You're quite right, of course, checking the anus for scarring or spontaneous, involuntary dilation is useless in proving, or disproving, any particular sexual orientation since scarring and involuntary dilation can be caused and induced by difficult bowel movements. If that's what Egyptian Doctors are relying upon as evidence of sexual orientation then they should be ashamed of themselves since such evidence can be found in over eighty percent of people worldwide - male and female and at any age.
All that has happened here is that Doctors, working for Islam it would appear, have decided that any Egyptian who is HIV+ must be homosexual. That's idiotic and, in Africa - and Egypt is an African country - a singularly stupid assumption. More than that, they, and obviously the Egyptian state, have categorised a simple sexually transmitted disease (HIV in this case) as having some moral property, some moral identifier, in terms of their religious beliefs. Disease knows no religion and has no normative actions in respect of belief in any superstition, Islam not excepted.
All the evidence of history points to one fact: you cannot criminalise a disease and hope to contain it that way. There are an ever increasing number of such cases as this - JW/DW has documented a few in the past and other websites have collated the information on even more - and it all points to one thing: the Islamic world has adopted as fact, because it suits its notions of some spurious moral superiority, the mistake that the West made when it first encountered HIV, viz that HIV is a disease exclusive to gay people. This is costing them dear and revealing, as HIV spreads through their populations at an alarming rate, that most people in the Islamic world do not follow, have never followed, the ridiculous Islamic sexual moral precepts as laid down in the various texts of Islam (the Koran included).
Worldwide, HIV is a heterosexual problem but in a few European countries and in the USA it is a homosexual problem at the moment. In Islamic countries it is a major problem that simply is not being addressed because it is seen as a Western disease and a disease of homosexuals which cannot affect, or infect, the faithful. This is quite wrong. We have no method of knowing what the infection rate for HIV is in the Islamic world but it is suspected throughout the medical community that in the Islamic world the disease has, since 2002, gone from pre-epidemic (Egypt: 8000 cases per year) through epidemic (Egypt 195,000 cases per year) to pandemic (Egypt: probably 500,000 cases this year) - and that in a scant six years. Not only is this indicative of a country where the sexual morality of Islam is not followed it is also indicative of a government that has no clear strategy to fight the disease and is still in denial (no pun intended) about it.
I suspect that the reality of this disease will be a long time adawning upon the Islamist governments because it is so much easier in Islamic societies to simply blame the infected and to demonise them and call them homosexuals - even when no evidence of homosexual behaviour of the victims of this disease in such societies exists. It is impossible for any Islamic government to admit to the fact that its population isn't universally following the Islamic codes about sexual behaviour for Islam is so perfect, according to them, that everyone does follow such codes voluntarily. The spread of HIV gives the lie to this so, therefore, HIV must be confined to the non-desirable elements in society such as homosexuals and female prostitutes and both of these groupos must be conspiring to infect the true believer - the mature, Islam believing, pure male.
I'm quite sure that you can see the stupidity of that, but that is how the Egyption government wants to view the problem in Egypt today. There is, naturally, a bright side to this - if Islamic governments do nothing then the number of infections in the Islamic world will rise exponentially and ...
Oliver.