What year are we living in? How come I haven't heard about this until now?

I guess being gay is a luxury. It is probably good to remind one's self that it hasn't been all that long that one could freely check the "gay" box on one's myspace account, let alone expect partner benefits at some forward-thinking corporations, have a realistic hope of same-sex marriages happening, and participate in the growing popularity of gay and lesbian parenting in America. And it's probably even better to think twice about broadcasting one's self with too much fervor.

In Egypt right now—as in this very moment, in the month of April, in the year of 2008, in this twenty-first century—the New York Times reports that five men have been found guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery," which is code word for gay, and were sentenced to three years in jail plus three years of police supervision. In addition to being tortured, all five men were forced to take blood tests and were found to be HIV-positive, and so it appears that these arrests are part of Egypt's greater effort to "crackdown" on people with AIDS, though authorities have not confirmed that this is the initiative. However:

The five convicted Wednesday were among 12 people arrested in a sweep that began in October, when police arrested a man during an altercation with another man on a Cairo street, Human Rights Watch said.

After one of the men said he was HIV-positive, authorities opened investigations into other men whose names or contact information were uncovered in interrogations of the first group of men, Human Rights Watch said.

There are just so many problems with this, but what seems deeply troubling, aside from the fact that someone in Egypt can and are being arrested for being gay, is the idea that persecuting people with AIDS will somehow help contain the disease. How is it that we repeatedly fail to realize that stigmatizing only exacerbates problems like this? It's the same resistance met—both here and abroad—by efforts to distribute condoms and promote safe sex practices. God, it's all so depressing.