(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"Vote for tolerance," "Vote for tolerance", it says on the poster above.
One might think that this was an SV slogan, intended for English-language voters in Norway ahead of the September 12 election day.
But this poster for gay relationships is rather from the Middle East, from Lebanon. Just before Christmas last year, the exclusive clothing store Aishti in the center of Beirut sold their clothes with the help of gays and lesbians.
Homosexuality in the Middle East has become even more topical this week. The Arab TV channel Al-Arabiya announced a few days ago that the Arab world has now undergone its first gay wedding. As New Age readers can read more about on page 6, in the Middle East column, the wedding between two men from Kuwait is said to have taken place at a hotel on the Nile in Cairo. According to the reports, the wedding guests from the Gulf must have partyed until five in the morning.
Al-Arabiya's and the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Esbou's messages may not be correct. But if nothing else, hundreds of readers have subscribed to Al-Arabiya's website. Not surprisingly, condemnation of the gay marriage has been strong. Homosexuality has traditionally been taboo or banned in the three major monotheistic religions of the Middle East – Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
But like Europe, the Arab world contains a multitude of voices. For example, Ziad writes against the condemning: “They do not harm you. Do not drag your God or Allah into this. ”
While Mabrouk has a more humorous view of the gay party in Egypt: "They should get Michael Jackson to sing for them."
Another points out that he is not surprised, since "Egypt is like San Francisco". This last point hides another "public secret", namely that the gay community in the Arab world is far more widespread than most people are aware of.
On May 17 this year, Lebanon was one of the countries marking the International Day against Homophobia. It is no more than 15 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from the list of the world's diseases.
The conclusion of the gay conference in Beirut was "that homosexuality is not foreign to Middle Eastern culture, since it" exists "and since society and the family can actually recognize the existence of homosexuals.
However, the differences can be large between the various Arab-Persian countries – and between the laws of an authoritarian country and social acceptance.
This week, it became known that two men in Arak, Iran, have been sentenced to death for rape. Farbod Amir and Ahmad Men are scheduled to be executed Saturday, August 27, according to the Persian homosexual organization PGLO.
It is a shame that Norway and Norwegian state companies currently have such a close, undemocratic and oil-corrupt relationship with this totalitarian Iran regime. It is time that we in Norway choose to sacrifice our bloody investments for the benefit of the lives of Iranian gays. At least we have a choice.
