“We were excited to go to new places and potentially experience that safe space in places like Turkey and in Egypt.”
There was a cruise sailing the Mediterranean and when they got to Turkey the nation would not allow them to port. The same thing happened when they went to Egypt. They just weren’t allowed to stop off, get out, stretch their legs. These anti-gay nations refused them entry and for some reason, the passengers aboard the Virgin Voyages’ Scarlet Lady were surprised. They had wanted to go be fabulous and gay in nations where such things are illegal and don’t think it’s fair that they were stopped at port.
The Turkish authorities said “A cruise ship chartered by a group known for behavior that does not align with the values and moral standards of our society and that had generated significant concern among various segments of the public, has been canceled. It is absolutely out of the question that this group will come to our province for such an event.”
One man who was on the cruise, an American from Miami, said “There are thousands of men who come to the ship to celebrate and to feel free to be who we are without any fear of homophobia or to be able to be ourselves in a public space.”
The thing is, that’s something you can do in America and the British Commonwealth nations, but is not the default in the rest of the world. The gay cruise passengers are suffering from serious worldview delusions.
“I mean,” the man said, “I think what’s really disappointing is that we spend a lot of our time as gay people really trying to find safe spaces, and going on this cruise is a space that’s about as safe as it’s supposed to get, right? And we were excited to go to new places and potentially experience that safe space in places like Turkey and in Egypt, where it is obviously very difficult to be a gay person in those countries.” Why would he think he’d find a safe space in Muslim nations when Islam bans homosexuality?
These folx thought that they could travel to homophobic countries under the protection of a cruise ship waving the Pride flag and be able to spread their message of homosexuality and freedom to the oppressed gays of those nations. They actually thought that. The amount of cognitive dissonance it takes to imagine that authoritarian, anti-gay nations would welcome them is just mind-boggling.
“We thought that it would be a great opportunity for those people in those countries to also experience what it’s like outside of the rest of the world where people can be free and be celebrated for who they are,” the passenger said, framing the cruise as a mission of gay diplomacy.
There are two things (at least) wrong with this thought: he thought that the oppressive leaders of these nations would welcome the gay men into their oppressive nation, and he thought that the societies of those nations are not actually represented by their leadership and would be welcoming and pro-gay even as the regimes were not. Both notions that his statement is predicated on are false. This is a man—and a cruise—that did not vet their underlying beliefs for veracity before assuming they were right.
The gay cruise went to places that have actual laws against homosexuality and were shocked that they weren’t accepted, embraced, celebrated. “It’s pretty stunning, to be honest. I mean, and the reasoning behind it is that it’s a gay group,” said president and CEO of Atlantis Events Rich Campbell. “It’s very concerning to me when a country decides they can pick and choose which tourists are allowed in and which are not.”
How does he not realize the world does not operate on American values? How can he be so daft as to think nations don’t value their own territorial rights and customs? Turkey and Egypt didn’t want a gay invasion and they are under no obligation to honor the customs of American life.
This was the first time in 36 years, Campbell said, that the gay cruise line was “actively told we may not berth here because of who we are.” A journalist aboard was aghast. Randy Slovacek told CNN “There’s never been a problem, but suddenly they have a problem. We are just a group of people who are just touring the world and trying to see everything we can.”
They forget that much of the world does not want to see them, doesn’t care at all about their rights or their journey or their wish to see the sights. The shocking part is not that nations stopped them but that these passengers were surprised.
Looking at this from the outside, from the perspective of an American exceptionalist who can see for real what makes America so great and what makes us different from all the other nations of the world, it’s not even remotely surprising that other nations are not as open, liberal, and accepting as we Americans are.
Most other nations in the world do not let people do or say whatever they want. Many, many nations are not cool with gay people at all and don’t have any qualms about just banning them from having relationships or living openly at all. In the Democrat’s beloved Gaza, Palestinian leaders have chucked gays off roofs as punishment for being gay.
The only port where they would have been welcomed in the entire Middle East was Israel. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, and Gaza will all jail or execute gay people for being gay.
Yet the American left continues to imagine that every place out there shares our values, that their citizens share our values, that bringing in lots of people from there to here will cause no damage to our own society. And for some reason a cruise full of happy gay people, led by none other than Broadway legend Patti Lupone, was gobsmacked to discover that they and their American values of acceptance and chillness were not allowed in restrictive, anti-gay nations.
America is not the world. The rights and freedoms and fairnesses we fight for here are not the global default. The safe space the thousands of men were looking for, where they could just be themselves and live openly, is not a cruise ship but the United States.
This first appeared in Libby Emmons’ newsletter. You can subscribe here.