RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two men in Indonesia caught “in the act” were sentenced to 85 lashes by a sharia law court.

Two men accused of having sex with each other were each sentenced on Wednesday to 85 lashes in public, the first case of people being punished for homosexuality in the Indonesian province of Aceh under a strict version of Shariah law. News reports said that vigilantes had caught the two men naked in bed, and that the two had pleaded not to be reported to the Shariah police.

You have to wonder how they were caught.  Do the police have roving vans equipped with “gaydar” that picked them up on sensor sweeps?  Or did the police have a man “on the inside”?

Homosexuality has been illegal in the highly conservative province since 2014, but this is the first time citizens have been punished for it. The maximum sentence for the crime is 100 lashes, but the court sentenced the men to 85 each after they apologized for their actions.

See, sharia law has plea bargaining, just like American law!

Although the timing of the sentencing appears to be a coincidence, Wednesday is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

What big words!  “Transphobia” sounds like fear of vampires or people from Transylvania, and “biphobia” sounds like a fear of bipeds.  But missing from the list is Islamophobia.  Shouldn’t gays have been fighting that as well?  The two whipped men certainly must have been!

According to an annual report on state-sponsored homophobia, compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, homosexuality is effectively a crime in 72 countries.

Intersex?  I can’t keep up!  This article needs subtitles!

In three – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – it is codified as a crime punishable by death, though executions are rare. In five other countries – Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – a death penalty for homosexuality is codified under Shariah law, but it has not been put into practice.

It’s ironic that the left is more incensed about the refusal of Christian bakers to bake a cake for two men claiming to marry each other than about the whipping and execution of gays in Islamic countries.  I guess the left has more tolerance for some kinds of intolerance.

What we are talking about here is the difference between tolerance and acceptance.  No Christian bakers want to see people whipped.  They tolerate people who are attracted to members of the same sex.  They would be happy to sell cookies to Anderson Cooper or Shepard Smith.  But what they don’t want to do is be forced to approve of homosexual behavior, in this case by making a cake.  That distinction is what is lost on the left.  The left is more outraged by Americans’ lack of approval for homosexual behavior than it is by Islam’s lack of tolerance for those who engage in it.  I wonder why.