Deckard; I hear what you're saying and agree recalling our ambassador and sharply criticizing them would be ideal. The problem is that Dubai is a crucial ally in the war in Iraq and our regional command is in Dubai. Just to tie this back to the thread on US involvement on the World Stage this is another example illustrating the difficulty of US hegemony and imposing our values. We are fighting a war to bring democracy on Iraq yet in the meantime we are allying ourselves with countries that don't share our values at all.
Excellent point, and I knew that our Gulf headquarters was located there. I thought about that before my post and just couldn't ratioalize doing nothing about this. If anything, I believe our being there is no "accident" on the part of Dubai... they are looking across the Gulf, and are delighted to have us there. You make the great point about the complexity of choosing to invade Iraq, and the repercussions. Before Bush ever started his damned war I said an old truism, more than once, which is that wars have unintended consequences. This is a good example of one. Keep D&D Civil.
So wouldn't punishing them by protesting their record on gay rights be "imposing our will and values"? It's a tough, tough position to be put in, and that's why it's very difficult to lead a 'principled' foreign policy, because it will likely produce negative results, even if it was the right thing to do. Dubai, btw, is a very interesting place, a city full of contradictions. You can order a prostitute to your place while at one of their finest hotels, but other 'sins' are not allowed/tolerated. I do, however, agree with bigtexxx on this one, I just don't think that gay rights will go too far beyond some European countries and Canada, mainly because of the fact that the majority of the world's population associate with one religion or another, so doubtful it will become acceptable in the same manner that slavery became accepted as a 'social evil'.
My bad. At this point, I would call Dubai the "gutter." Hey, I was close. Tiger, it's not "imposing our will and values," as much as standing up for them. We can agree that they have a different culture, and differences should be celebrated. I think they cross any line of common humanity when they impose hormone treatments on individuals, however. When something like that happens, I think we need to take a stand. Otherwise, what meaning do our values possess? If anyone were to ask me, I would say, "not much," but that's my opinion. Keep D&D Civil
Understood, I was just attempting to tie in the other thread which discusses whether or not we should impose our values, really looking to spark a debate, nothing else.
I saw that discussion being one related to this one a little bit ago. We are in a bind, and it's ironic to me how Bush has tied our hands regarding standing up for our values, as he's busy, in his own mind, "standing up for our values." Very ironic, and sad. Keep D&D Civil.
Actually, I think this used to be done to gay men in the US. It was thought that they were gay because they didn't have enough testosterone and thus "required" extra testosterone to be straight. I seem to remember that this caused them many problems and they had high suicide rates as well. Given the sudden prolifertion of ex-gay groups, I wouldn't be suprised to hear these sorts of things.
I knew I had read about someone who went through that very recently! I was reading about on the halting problem and Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem and I stumbled on Alan Turing's story. I knew he was gay, but I didn't know he had such a tragic life. That says they gave him estrogen, though? That seems strange. I thought they gave him testosterone. That would fit other things I've heard that were done to gay men, too.
We need to do something like this in the U.S. Afterall, just look at how horrible same sex marriages have been for the state of Massachusetts...
Fair enough. Didn't some groups advocate them in our past? Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in some of the former DSMs.
