Though oil-rich Sauda Arabia is our “ally” in many ways, it’s no secret their social practices tend to more than raise eyebrows from international human-rights activists.
The newest transgression: a ban on “gays and tomboys” that will be enforced by their ruthless morality police. It mirrors a similar crackdown in Iraq that has claimed the lives of nearly 60 people perceived to be either gay or emo.
The girl on the left in this photo wouldn’t survive a day in Saudi Arabian schools because of her dangerous admiration of un-feminine things, it seems.
Emirates 24/7 quotes a newspaper called Sharq Arabic, who had the news:
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The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most feared law enforcement authority in the oil-rich country, has been asked to enforce the new orders, Sharq Arabic language daily said.
“Instructions have been issued to all public schools and universities to ban the entry of gays and tom boys and to intensify their efforts to fight this phenomenon, which has been promoted by some websites,” it said.
The paper did not make clear who issued those instructions but said gay and tom boy students can go back to schools and universities if they prove they have been corrected and have stopped such practices.
The last big gay Saudi Arabian scandal came when they wanted to behead British nurses Stephen Comiskey for “flaunting his sexuality” (and possibly being connected to a Saudi gay prince).
J
Non-westerners don’t understand homosexuality and all these western things.They went through a different path historically than Europeans,the Americas and Oceania.
Also,why should this be a surprise? Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country with Sharia law.It’s not a secular democracy.I don’t agree with it and I hate it but it is what it is.
cam
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Non-westerners don’t understand homosexuality and all these western things.They went through a different path historically than Europeans,the Americas and Oceania.”
___________________
Can we stop pretending that everybody else in the world is stupid? Of COURSE they understand it. If it wasn’t becoming an issue over there they wouldn’t be sending out the religious police to deal with it. Saudi students have been coming to Western universities for decades and decades, they have lived here etc…
To simply say “Oh well they just don’t get it” is to excuse it because they are somehow unable to understand.
J
What I meant was they think it’s some disorder and/or some deviation.
Hell,even many in the West also believe that.But you have secularism in the West.
Andy
The girl in the photo is also uncovered, so that may present problems too.
J
Are you guys sure that the kid is a girl? Looks more like a boyyy
cam
@J:
Well, we HAD secularism in the West. The U.S. is getting a bit scary with every candidate seeming to have to put their religion on display for the cameras.
J
@cam: America is still secular,it’s just that it has stupid and cowardly politicians who don’t seem to get that.
Danny
Considering the gay community and their straight friends and family vastly outnumber every police force and military force on the planet (and are actually a giant chunk of every police force and military on the planet) it is absurd that politicians and religious “leaders” are permitted to get away with violating human rights at all when they could be wiped out in a single afternoon should the gay/straight family and friends community simply will it so. The real conversation that needs to take place is among everday people about the punishment for politicians and religious leaders violating human rights. Politicians and religious leaders in the end have very little power to maintain the rule of law when they violate the human rights of countless millions of people. Politicians and religious leaders try to control the conversation so those they harm don’t stop and think about the reality of it. Saudi Arabia, among other countries, is a prime example of this.
unusualsuspect
I worked in Saudi. You have the desert tribes who will screw anything (woman for children, goat or melon for necessity, boy for pleasure) and the urban Sauds don’t keep goats. Of course there are gay and bi-sexual Sauds. . . but in general as long as they top – or claim to – it’s regarded as desperation or high spirits. Don’t forget the Koran promises not only beautiful, female virgins in Heaven, but also beautiful boys serving wine. As for the religious police, or muttawa, these are often used as a power play in Saudi’s internal politics, which are both feudal and arcane. This is not a good country and no-one should pretend otherwise.
BlackRockRitual
If there is a God, I think that tomboys are her most sacred creation.
BlackRockRitual
@J:
I love how this sort of thing shows how little dividing things into “Eastern” and “Western” doesn’t make any sense.
For Chinese people, Islam is “Western culture”. If secularism is such a “Western” thing, then what the heck are Japan, China, and Korea? Do you realize that Japan ridicules America for how religious we are?