I spent time in Morocco over twenty years ago when I was in-house counsel for an oil company and found the country to be quite pleasant and very pro-western. I always thought of it as a country I would like to visit again. Perhaps not after all. I was disturbed to read this story of anti-gay arrests and a general anti-gay atmosphere as reported by Gay City News (http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19133423&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6). I am sure that this is exactly what Daddy Dobson and the folks at New Life Church would like to do to gays if they could.
When I was in Morocco, the government ministry personnel that we met with in Rabat to negotiate a concession agreement during non-business hours drank alcohol like there was no tomorrow and even took us to an private club with "ladies of the evening," if you get my drift. It's the same old hypocritical double standard. Punish gays and close your eyes to everything else. Here are some story highlights:
Amid media hysteria and large and riotous anti-gay demonstrations in Morocco, six men whom prosecutors claimed participated in a "gay marriage" have been convicted of violating that country's law against homosexual conduct and sent to prison. The drama, which attracted huge national media coverage- in large measure of an hysterically anti-gay character - took place last month in Ksar El Kébir, a largely impoverished city of more than 100,000 halfway between Tangier and the nation's capital of Rabat, and which is dominated politically by the principal Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development, popular among Morocco's economically deprived majority.
According to the feisty Moroccan French-language weekly magazine Tel Quel, noted for its progressive views, "All began when F., a local celebrity known for his sales of alcohol, organized a private party on November 19 in a house in the Hay Diwan neighborhood, habitually reserved for celebrations of marriage...F. 'has the reputation of a libertine whose comings and goings are spied on by the local population,' a local source told us, 'and his party did not go unnoticed.'
"The day after the party, anger spread throughout the city as the rumor spread like wildfire that a 'homosexual marriage' had been organized the night before," continued Tel Quel. "There was a chain reaction when a video of the party was quickly posted on YouTube, and on November 21 a petition was published calling for 'the opening of an official investigation into the celebration of a homosexual marriage'" in Ksar El Kébir, according to Tel Quel.The petition was signed not only by the Party of Justice and Development and numerous local associations, but, surprisingly, also by the local chapter of the national human rights group, the Association Marocaine des Droits Humains (ADMH).
The court sentenced three defendants to six months in prison and two defendants to four months; it sentenced the sixth, whom it also convicted of the unauthorized sale of alcohol, to 10 months.Abdelaziz Nouaydi, a Rabat lawyer on the men's defense team, told Human Rights Watch staffers that the judge convicted the men even though the prosecution presented no evidence showing that behavior violating Article 489 had occurred, offering the video of the party as the only evidence. The video included no indications of sexual activity.The six defendants all pleaded innocent to offenses under the article. At the trial, the judge refused to release the men provisionally pending their appeals.
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