Oldak Quill wrote:
On 06/03/2008, Philippe Beaudette
<philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just to carry the analogy to extremes, it's
also a lot easier to be
persecuted for false assumptions about one's sexuality than one's skin color
(ie, law enforcement makes up their own mind about your sexuality, but not
skin color...)
But I've seen no evidence of profiling of that type, to clarify.
Philippe
From a BBC News Online article
(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/1858469.stm):
"The police told the man to take down his trousers. They wanted to see
if he was wearing typical Egyptian underwear - baggy white cotton. If
he was not, they said he must be a homosexual. He failed the test.
The police started to beat him. They tortured him for three days. Six
months later he still has scars on his arms and back.
From the same article:
Homosexuality itself is not technically illegal in
Egypt but it is a
serious taboo - culturally, socially and now politically. Gay men are
vilified by the press and the public.
The United States had the Rodney King case.
I'm sure we could find
incidents like this in many other countries too. Similarly, many places
have incidents of gay-bashing. None of it has any sort of official
government support, but it happens anyway.
Ec