Panama’s Canary Islands Diplomat Quits After Cross-Dressing Carnival Photo Riles Up The Locals
Italo Afu, a Panamanian diplomat to Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwestern tip of Africa, resigned yesterday after a photo of him dressed in drag — a lace pink dress, earrings, and a banana in the booby region — – during Carnival celebrations were published in local media and set off a firestorm of angry Christians. Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli says Afu “should not have done it”; Afu says he’s stepping down because he did not want “to harm anyone, much less my country.”
I think south america has a huge double standard when it comes to gay people. If a macho straight man chooses to dress in drag, it shows that he’s so comfortable with his sexuality and masculinity that he can pull it off and no one says anything. However, if they even detect that the man is gay and sometimes likes to dress as a woman then they mistake that as all gay people secretly want is to be women.
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Validation of homophobia, Rodrigo. That’s all it is, and all it’s ever been. That’s why you see homophobes constantly going out of their way to make excuses for their actions. Homophobes are desperate to validate their bigotry since it’s not based on anything much outside of personal insecurity and everything that comes with that insecurity.
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He’s cute. This is very sad news because the man can’t even dress up for a party without people getting angry over something so insignificant? What exactly did he do wrong in their eyes? I do know how extremely rigid Latin America can be about gender things. Things like this make you just shake your head in amazement we live in 2011 and how societies worldwide could be so repressed.