With homosexuality neither socially or legally accepted in Egypt, some Egyptians regularly decide to poke fun and rally against homosexuals just to make their lives a little bit more intolerable.
It's all too common in this country for public personalities to provoke hatred and entice violence against homosexuals and LGBT rights activists.
The latest example is Aymoon El Magnoon, an Egyptian cartoon channel on YouTube that was started by a rather tragically unfunny, hateful bigot. In a recent episode, which is trending on YouTube, Aymoon El Magnoon used derogatory terms against homosexuals and calls activists hypocrites along with other horrible terms.
This dull and distasteful video highlights a variety of issues that homosexuals face living in Egypt. Ridiculing people who are already being affected by their inability to be themselves is not OK. It is not OK to make fun of, or rather bully, people who are already isolated and alienated in their own homes. Being used as means to a good laugh should not be tolerated because they are not mere objects or a source for peoples' amusement.
Other than the fact they are made to feel like diseased castaways, homosexuals, with no legal foundation, are often subjected to governmental prosecution, public ridicule mocking and sometimes even torture. They are forced to live in the dark, without the ability to acknowledge who they are.
This is a problem, a monumentally huge societal dilemma that needs to be addressed.
The government's stand against the LGBT community in Egypt is cowardly and ridiculous for a few reasons. For starters, there is no actual law criminalizing homosexuality. Instead, vague charges such as "debauchery" and "ruining public morals" are used against the LGBT community. What exactly does one have to do to "ruin public morals"?
Islamic institutes and the Coptic Church of Egypt have also slammed the LGBT community, saying that they're "unethical" and that homosexuals can be cured by "God's grace." Not only is this argument scientifically unfounded, but it is downright ludicrous. Homosexuals will not bring by the apocalypse and they are not evil figures that were put on this earth to destroy or "ruin" our lives. It's about time Egyptians realize that homosexuality is not a disease. Hatred is.
The public's views on homosexuality may have changed in the last few years. Younger generations are becoming more accepting of one another. The older generations, however, are incredibly set in their ways to the point of provoking anger between LGBT rights activists and the LGBT community. The country will not fall to it's demise because there are Egyptian homosexuals.
Try to think about this for a minute, this country is filled with so much hate, ignorance, and disregard to a person's emotional and psychological well-being, that people are actively seeking to hurt one another simply because they are all different. We as a society are falling short in the regards of fighting for equal rights to every Egyptian citizen. Instead, we teach hate, how to alienate, and effectively destroy any hope for love and acceptance in the Egyptian LGBT community.