Thursday, May 25, 2017

Here's a Saudi Do


Donald Joffrey Trump's first foreign trip abroad, surprisingly, was not to Russia. Can you believe it?

No, his first stop was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he somehow managed to go the entire trip without tweeting that his hosts were fostering Radical Islamic Terrorism. Trump did advise the Saudis and an auditorium full of leaders of Islamic nations that they needed to drive the terrorists out of their countries. (Just don't drive them into ours.)

It is hard to see how these Islamic countries are to make any headway in stopping terrorism if their rulers do not lead by example. Their state-sponsored terrorism includes the persecution of their own LGBTQ citizens. Arrest, public whipping, torture, and execution -- whether by the state itself or the state encouraging family members to handle it -- is meant to terrorize the LGBTQ out of existence.

We know that Egyptian President Sisi was in the audience, since he was in that bizarre photo with Trump, King Salman touching the Glowing Orb. I don't know if Indonesian president Widodo, or Afghanistan's President Ghani, or Pakistani President Hussain, or Chechen President Kadyrov were there. We do know that newly reelected Iranian President Rouhani was not present.

It's not just a Muslim thing, of course. Antigay state-sponsored terrorism is practiced and in Nigeria and several other African countries. And, it has to be noted, Trump's BFF Putin was persecuting LGBTQs in Russia well before Mr. Kadyrov took up the cudgel.

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