Al-Azhar, Egypt's main authority on Sunni Islam, condemned international organizations for controlling the ongoing global campaign supporting gay marriage. Al-Azhar said that the use of mass communication and recruitment of famous personalities and celebrities to promote and praise homosexuality was wrong.
“Gayness is not a victory for human rights, it is on the contrary a deterioration, and definitely a crime to humanity, and a distortion of the freedom of human rights,” Al-Azhar said, according the Daily News Egypt.
The statement, which was released Thursday, was published by state-run news agency MENA and described NGOs' ongoing global campaigns for LGBT equality as "unethical" and insisted that such efforts were being conducted by institutions bent on destroying human values and morals of all religions.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage across America has drawn criticism from across the sectarian divide in Egypt: Bishop Rafael of Egypt's Coptic Church said that homosexuals were sick and required treatment. They can also be cured with "god's grace," he said.
LGBT rights are pretty much nonexistent in Egypt. Foreign or not, homosexuals are highly prosecuted and targeted by the Egyptian government despite the fact that there is no law that criminalizes homosexuality. However, they're often charged with "debauchery" and "deceiving public morals."