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London: Gay couple threatened with death in violent late night homophobic assault
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Government considers watered down same-sex marriage bill to minimise Tory rebellion
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Tory MP Gerald Howarth: 'There are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community who want more than just same-sex marriage'
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Philip Hammond: 'No great demand for gay marriage and it's upsetting vast numbers of people'
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Norman Tebbit: David Cameron has 'f**** things up' with his equal marriage bill
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Tory MP Sir Gerald Howarth defends 'aggressive homosexual community' equal marriage slur
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US church blames Woolwich suspected terror killing on UK acceptance of gay people
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David Cameron: Gay teenagers will stand that bit taller following equal marriage vote
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Sir Gerald Howarth: 'I should have used 'militant' rather than 'aggressive' to describe homosexuals
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Robert in S. Kensington 723
GulliverUK 354
Mark Y 328
Iris 327
Jock S. Trap 324
Rehan 319
Midnighter 300
D.McCabe 290
Tim 274
Wingby 272
Note to all gay men and women, avoid these countries like the plague!
I feel sorry for both parties here, the man who was imprisoned but also the family of the man who died. It appears that no dignity was given to either side.
So the Dubai authorities would much rather just charge a man for homosexuality and then release and deport him than focus on the fact the man may be a potential murderer?
Why LGBT people from modern democratic countries go to medieval hell-holes like this is beyond me. Why on earth would you put yourself at risk of being treated like scum by people who are dumb enough to get their complete moral guidance and laws from some old book? if you live in place which gives you a fairly decent amount of rights either stay put or go to an even more equal country don’t go to a democratic backwater like this!
@D.McCabe agreed I don’t know what possess a gay persons soul to want to visit a place where he’s liable for arrest or worse, just based on his sexuality. And since they don’t want us lets not pour anymore of our nasty gay dollars into their economy. I feel bad for those whose jobs require residency in one of those “low on the food chain” nations. I’d get another job…
Dreadful dreadful country and drenched in hypocrisy like most of the other Middle Eastern countries!!! Don’t bother going it’s become Benidorm of the ME just with more money…. Even str8 couples are being arrested for kissing…
I think its more of the whole murder thing that they are deporting him…
Ah, Dubai, that stronghold of Muslim integrity which upholds Sharia Law and…er…totally wallows in Western capitalism….oops!!
Against my better judgement I went to Dubai with my partner for the film festival, in which he was involved. It’s a luxurious but grim place with slaves of different nationalities working everywhere. We stayed at a couple of top end hotels sharing a double bed. I was nervous about this at first as it was pretty clear we were a couple but nobody seemed to care. Of course, outside the posh hotel complexes is a different matter. I shudder when I read the recent stories about how gay people have been treated there.
I pity anybody who forms a relationship with someone who deals with an argument by jumping out of a high-rise window!
I encountered enough gay Filipinos out in the Gulf while I was there to suspect this Filipino was probably not pushed.
It’s a shame Dubai is such a nice place, I would love to visit, but I’m not going to visit a place where homosexuality is illegal/criminalized. Islam disgusts me
What’s nice about Dubai? All it is is a load of skyscrapers in a desert. There are far more beautiful places in the world to visit, often much closer to home. How about the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors, the Highlands of Scotland, Ireland – the list goes on and these are places where you don’t get locked up or executed for being gay.
Dubai is a city that thinks it is the dogs b*****ks and is trying to take after Singapore.
Whatever gave you the impression it’s a ‘nice’ place? It’s absolutely repulsive – almost entirely artificial, massive and generally hideous buildings sprouting like weeds, no trees, and operating on slave labour. Please believe me when I say it is not worth visiting, even out of curiosity. at least Las Vegas is said to have some exuberance – in Dubai it’s nothing but money.
Plus and negative in this case… if the partner did throw him out the window, he got away with murder! If the deceased “may” (highly unlikely) have lied and he actually jumped after an argument as this article states… the partner is lucky to have gotten away with a years sentence. Only he knows and has to live with his conscience.
Fortunately this was not Iran where he would have been hanged regardless!
It is possible that we could be dealing with a murder case here. The stupid thing is that in some Islamic countries homosexuality is often treated more harshly than murder, especially where the payment of ‘blood money’ can absolve a murder while gays can expect to be executed.
Dubai – I have said it many times now, that city is the a**e end of the Arab World and should not be touched with a 40 foot barge pole.
The Belgian man should have said the man who died made a pass at him then he would have been OK
A dreadful story in every way.
I can understand why a young Filipino might feel he needs to go to horrible Dubai out of financial necessity, but why a young gay Belgian would want to live there beats me.
He’s an ex boyfriend of Karla Homolka….says it all really!
After having googled to find out whom you’re referring to, I wonder whether you think the 25yo gay Filipino or the 24yo gay Belgian was the ‘ex boyfriend’ of the Canadian serial killer born in 1970. Either seems more than a little unlikely in the circumstances.
Something VERY wrong when he’s jailed for being gay and not that he possibly killed his lover!
Okay, which part am I supposed to be outraged about here? Dubai being a country with a history of hatred for homosexuality; the fact that Partner A apparently pushed/threw Partner B through a window and killed him but was only jailed for a year; that that year was because they were a homosexual couple; that the year was *not* for murder; or that he was not tried(/deported and tried/whatever the norm would be) for a murder/death?
I doubt there’s anything resembling an investigation in this case that would prove/disprove murder at this point.
Also, @clm1990, I’m relatively sure LGBT from “modern democratic countries” go to “medieval hell-holes like this” is the same reason the rest of us do: it’s not home. Dubai, from my understanding, is a beautiful place. Despite awful laws, etc., people still like going to places because they sound interesting. Safe is relative – you keep to a country’s customs you’re good. Push someone out a window, well …
It is not even remotely ‘beautiful’. It’s a completely artificial city built in a desert, that 50 years ago was a backward little village on a creek.
I lived in the UAE (Dubai and Abu Dhabi successively) for several years about 20 years ago and had gay relationships in both cities, although I think many middle eastern countries have become less welcoming for gay people in subsequent years. I lived in a number of other countries in that part of the world, too (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Oman as well as some others) for several years apiece and had gay relationships in all of them and never felt remotely threatened. I was always pretty discreet (still am, in either the UK or Spain, between which I now split my years) and moved at a level of society where, not to put too fine a point on it, I was probably immune from the harsher realities. I don’t apologise for any of this, it is just the way it was (and perhaps still is) for me – I readily accept that others were/are not so protected. Of course as another commenter has remarked, even heterosexual couples (if not married) have to be very careful in places like Dubai.
That is precisely the attitude that makes so many “ex-pats” (also known as ‘economic migrants’, although as a term it’s usually reserved for the non-white) think they’re immune from the local laws. This can come crashing down if you get on the wrong side of the wrong people.