The Queen Boat: in postmodern, postmillennial pop culture it might make a great title for a TV show, one to satisfy both programmers' appetite for sexual "diversity" and their taste for retreads. Picture The Love Boat, but with the captain in drag. Graham Norton should make his American breakthrough; Brian from Big Brother could be coaxed into a speaking role; "gay cruising" would take on entirely new connotations.
Unfortunately for 52 Egyptian men who are due in court next Wednesday, they don't live in postmodern, postmillennial pop culture. They're stuck, instead, in a Cairo jail. Their crime? Floating on the Queen Boat, a gay flavoured disco that's moored in the Nile.
Police raided the disco late on May 10th, accompanied by armed soldiers who escorted dozens of men to the notorious Tora prison. A number of foreigners were released on the spot, including Europeans and visitors from the Gulf oil states; but the Egyptians have scarcely budged, and their friends and relatives allege that some of them have been tortured and subjected to invasive "medical examinations". They and their families wept and pleaded at their latest court date last week.
Two of the defendants have been hit with copious charges relating to "offending religion"; the rest face the more straightforwardly prim accusation of "practising debauchery with men". The men have literally been demonised in the Egyptian press, which has ignored its rules about pre-trial publicity to publish their names and alleged "Satanist" confessions; their ideological "perversions" have been attributed to European and, worse, Jewish influences.
There's globalisation for you. In that most secular of Middle Eastern states and cities, where not so many years ago a young American male of my acquaintance was greeted on the busy, narrow streets with earnest invitations from local men, the veil of Islamic fundamentalism is falling.
Of course, the story is more complex than that. The flip side of the Egyptian state's capitulation to reactionary Islam in this and other cases is its continuing pattern of human-rights abuses against the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood. According to Amnesty International, "The past year has seen an escalation of efforts by the Egyptian government to muzzle civil society and to act against social and non-violent political groups it sees as a threat to civil order." Such cases, says Amnesty, are heard in "special courts that do not meet international standards for justice". In the case of the Queen Boat 52, Amnesty has issued an "action appeal", with supporters urged to write "Dear Public Prosecutor" letters to Cairo.
The background to this lurid prosecution also includes recession and deepening poverty in Egypt, where the case offers "circuses" at least, if not bread. The context, of course, is scant consolation to 52 men whose lives have been destroyed by the spectacle. The Egyptian ambassador to Ireland, Ashaf Rashed, told The Irish Times this summer that there was no question of anyone in Egypt being criminalised for merely being gay. "You can have the preferences that you wish," he said. "But if your behaviour affects other people or affects religion, that's another matter." The statement may sound vaguely familiar to anyone reared on Jesuitical wriggling about homosexuality.
So what would happen if the Queen Boat sailed into, say, Castletownbere? The forthcoming September issue of the multicultural newspaper, Metro Eireann, contains an interesting article by Tonie Walsh on the situation here for gay asylum-seekers. It seems the Queen Boat's shipmates might be in for a surprise if they thought they were cruising into another homophobic theocracy: Irish law has been protecting people from attack and discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation since before gay sex became legal. Senator David Norris is quoted as saying that sexual orientation "became virtually automatic grounds for asylum under the Refugee Act".
Still, we had better not expect the Cabinet to be down with the red carpet to greet our imaginary travellers - especially not in a State where the Tanaiste speaks blithely this week of closing off the "safety valve" of legal immigration. As Metro Eireann explains, immigration rules here are some way short of the most humane practice: an Irish person can't, for example, bring a same-sex partner from outside the EU to reside here. (Same goes for unmarried heteros.) And as solicitor Hillka Becker observes, the procedures for asylum claims pose special difficulties for gay applicants.
Meanwhile, back in Egypt, most human rights groups are keeping their heads down, and the tourists keep coming: this week, gay Americans are being targeted by ads for a luxury Nile cruise this October taking in Saqqara, home of the only known tomb of an ancient Egyptian gay couple. The tour also includes three nights in Cairo - where there is one boat the visitors had better be sure to miss.
You can read lots more about the Queen Boat case at www.gayegypt.com
hbrowne@irish-times.ie
Medb Ruane is on leave