Egypt: Homosexuals to Occupy Tahrir on January 1  · Global Voices
Mona Kareem

This post is part of our special coverage Egypt Revolution 2011.
Profile picture of the 'Egyptian Homosexual Day' Facebook page which reads as "We Do Not Want to Hide."
If Islamists were the ones to appeal as threatening to women and religious minorities in Egypt, then they are not alone when it comes to opposing passing LGBT rights in post-revolution Egypt. Recently, a Facebook page was established to promote the rights of homosexuals and to call on them to gather on the 1 January, 2012, in Tahrir Square to demand their rights.
Hundreds joined the page, not necessarily to support the demands, but to write homophobic comments, murder threats, and to cite Quran verses that show how Islam forbids homosexuality and defines it as a major sin. In one of the pictures posted by the page admin, a comment is written to define the page and to justify the rights of homosexuals to a normal life [ar]:
To explain why they have chosen to protest in Tahrir Square in January, the page had a post saying:
In one of its status updates, the page admin posted a message that s/he received from a gay Egyptian man, who was afraid to post it himself after he saw the insults and threats filling the page's wall:
The page admin has also posted a note to media stating the reason behind rejecting interviews:
Another status came as a reply to all the threats that the page had on its wall:
The page has also posted a YouTube video which plays a written message from a gay Egyptian who says that he is just another citizen who contributes to the society and respects all, and expects to be treated the same in his own country.
The comments on this planned day that this Facebook page came out with were not only found on Facebook. Some people started to talk about them on Twitter. Ahmad Abdelhady (@Hadeezz) had an odd opinion on this that he didn't fully explain:
Activist Mostafa Hussein (@moftasa) condemned the murder threats against homosexuals, but rather in a sarcastic way, as he attempts to put it:
An engineer called Hussain Imam (@kemam) tweeted several posts on the LGBT planned day and suggested in one of them:
Another Twitter user (@MiSrBtfHam) called on his followers to report the ‘Egyptian homosexual day’ Facebook page to shut it down:
This post is part of our special coverage Egypt Revolution 2011.