Maybe Cory Doctorow?

Oh yeah, no doubt about that. The point that I’m attempting to make is that the Middle East was not always that way

We’re done here.

Oh thank god

And I’m telling you that trying to argue that there was one standard from Gibraltar to the Hindu Kush over the course of hundreds of years of history is utterly divorced from reality.

OK and who should I believe, some random dude on the internet saying “trust me bro” or Everett K. Rowson, American scholar and Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University? What I said comes straight from his mouth, so if you want to argue that point you’re welcome to send him an email. From his article, “HOMOSEXUALITY IN ISLAMIC LAW” (with further citations available in his bibliography):

At the same time, historical and anecdotal texts indicate a widespread acceptance of homoerotic love affairs, at least in elite society and probably much more generally, throughout the lands of Islam, with very little geographical or ethnic differentiation.

Do you mean the Islamic Golden Age?

That’s the one!

I don’t even know how to respond to this considering the loose legal system of the Saudis and the fact that Saudi Arabia as we know it still did not exist in 1928.

Welp, you’re the one who brought up Muhammad bin Saud, not me. As you quoted, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab formed an alliance with bin Saud, the emir of the town of Diriyah. The Emirate of Diriyah, also known as the First Arab State, was ruled by bin Saud and later his son until his son was militarily defeated and executed by the Ottomans in 1818-1819. The Al Saud clan and the followers of ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, however, remained in the same geographical area, and founded the Second Saudi State that lasted from 1824 until 1891, followed by the Third Saudi State in 1902. The Third Saudi State would eventually change its name to “Saudi Arabia”, and it is ruled by the Al Saud clan to this day.

Okay, first, the paragraph notes that it is bin Saud’s endorsement of the Wahhabist movement, which dominated from Damasacus to Baghdad, which is the relevant portion.

Here are links to maps of the First Saudi State’s territory, the Second Saudi State’s territory, and the Third Saudi State’s territory. You’ll notice that Palestine does not fall within the borders of any of those three maps. Furthermore, I think you might need a reminder on where Damascus and Baghdad are located. Go find both of them on a map, draw a line between the two, and tell me if Palestine is anywhere near the area denoted by that line. Once again, you need to do your research before you post assertions online.

Second, the culture of the Ottomans is not particularly relevant to the culture of Palestine - the Ottoman Empire was not a nation-state, and Palestinians were sure as shit not culturally Turkish. Third, most areas outside of Anatolia had a great deal of local autonomy to administer laws and punishments.

Fair enough. Palestinians are also sure as shit not culturally Saudi Arabian, though, so why do you keep bringing that up? I think the best source about specifically Palestinian history would be from a Palestinian academic. Let’s read an excerpt of an interview with Palestinian scholar and author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Sa’ed Atshan:

Same-sex marriage is not yet recognised in Palestine and homosexuality, under the British Mandate criminal code Ordinance of 1936, can face legal repercussions, including prison sentences. The British played a prominent role in exporting homophobia to the Global South, including the state of Palestine. “There is a role that Western colonialism has played in exacerbating homophobia within the Middle East, North Africa region and across the Global South,” Atshan agrees. “Much of the justification that the British and the French marshalled in colonising these parts of the world was the belief these people were seen as primitive and barbarians. The ‘evidence’ for that was that these people were viewed as too accepting of homosexuality and they need to be disciplined.” As a result, heteronormative Victorian models of gender and sexuality were imposed on colonised locations such as the anti-sodomy laws across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the Global South. “A lot of the legislation comes from the Western colonial forces, so we have to think about those legacies of colonial homophobia, and the British were a huge exporter of homophobia all over the world.”

My friend.

Once again you have made assertions without doing your research.

I said “homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era”

Do some research, learn when the Islamic Era ended according to whichever scholarly consensus you’d like, then count how many years that was before the criminal punishment for homosexuality was specified in Saudi Arabia in 1928.

And also, that’s where your haste has brought you: Saudi Arabia, not Palestine. Muhammad bin Saud’s name should have tipped you off to that. Palestine was created by carving up the Ottoman Empire, so that is the historical culture you must evaluate to make your claim, not Saudi Arabia’s. With that in mind, here’s the very next paragraph after the one you quoted:

Homosexuality in the Ottoman Empire was decriminalized in 1858, as part of wider reforms during the Tanzimat. However, authors Lapidus and Salaymeh write that before the 19th century Ottoman society had been open and welcoming to homosexuals, and that by the 1850s via European influence they began censoring homosexuality in their society.

This is not a misconception. This is the inconvenient reality. The Ottoman Empire began censoring homosexuality in their culture in the 1850s because of exposure to European society.

My friend, maybe you should do some research before you make assertions so confidently, especially if you’re going to use those assertions to accuse others of being racists or ethnocentrists. I’d recommend the Wikipedia article called LGBT People and Islam, particularly the “History” section of the article. The TLDR is that homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era, although their view of what homosexuality is would be considered lacking by modern standards. In fact, they were so damn gay that they wrote love poems to their male pages and Europeans made fun of them for it. Here’s a quote from Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World:

Whatever the legal strictures on sexual activity, the positive expression of male homoerotic sentiment in literature was accepted, and assiduously cultivated, from the late eighth century until modern times. First in Arabic, but later also in Persian, Turkish and Urdu, love poetry by men about boys more than competed with that about women, it overwhelmed it. Anecdotal literature reinforces this impression of general societal acceptance of the public celebration of male-male love (which hostile Western caricatures of Islamic societies in medieval and early modern times simply exaggerate).

Eh. Some level of advertising is necessary.

I used to run a Magic: the Gathering shop right when it opened. We had great prices, great prizes, a phenomenal gaming area, and since I was the only employee I knew the customer service was top notch.

None of that would have mattered, though, if people didn’t know I existed. I knew I could eventually rely on word of mouth to grow my community, but I still had to get the first customers in the door for the first time.

And coming at it from the other side, lots of online services that we use for “free” are paid for by ads being shown to us. If those ads were banned, we would see large upsets in how those services are paid for. There’s potential for good here, since one possible response could be subsidization and commodification of websites like YouTube, reddit, and Facebook, but who knows what the chances of that could be.