A.D.D.

Homosexuality is illegal in the UAE. A bunch of guys were arrested recently for dressing in women's clothing. The foreigners are going to be deported, and the Emeratis will be sent to prison. While prison seems like a good place to experience homosexuality, Emeratis can opt for hormonal treatment to shorten their sentence if they'd like. The United States apparently has a problem with this and has condemned the arrests and the hormonal treatment. What message does this send to the Arab world? It probably goes something like this. "Regardless of how you treat your women, if you mess with a gay man it is our business to ensure that you desist, because we are a godless society and we want to make sure your societies become just as godless." History has shown us that if there is anything that Arabs hate more than a society that they perceive as godless, it's a society that tries to force them to become what they perceive as godless. To be fair, the UAE treats women very well for an Arab nation, but plenty of our "allies" (oil suppliers) over there don't and we consistently turn our heads away from the problem. While I don't think that arresting gay people makes any sense at all, I do wonder if it is worth fueling al-qaeda recruitment centers and arming fanatically vocal religious leaders just to make a public statement that will be effectively ignored by Dubai. If we can look away from the brutal treatment of women in the MidEast to avoid driving up oil prices, why can't we tolerate hormones being made available to homosexuals to avoid driving up our casualties in Iraq.