5 Year Prision Sentence For "Being Gay"

Kudos to Doug Ireland for highlighting this news report out of the United Arab Emirates:

Eleven of twenty-six men arrested at what police in the United Arab Emirates called a "gay wedding" have been sentenced each to five years in prison. The 15 others were acquitted but are still being held until the government decides whether to have them retried. The men were charged with homosexuality, a crime under Sharia law, although police acknowledged that none of the men were engaged in a sexual act when police raided the event (emphasis added).

Please note the emphasis I added to the news report. The police did not witness any homosexual activity. 365gay.com has (as usual) done an excellent job in covering this story.

In their report, they mention that what happened was that there were 12 men dressed in traditional Arab women's clothing (and the men declared that they were not gay, but transgendered) and 12 men dressed in tradition Arab men's clothing. Is this case about ``being gay"? Or is it about gender identity? Or some complex mélange of the two? Regardless, the point is that countries which are ruled using Sharia law can be quite harsh against both gender non-conformity and homosexuality, and often see the two as one and the same.