Recall the media coverage at the height of the Jimmy Savile scandal, times it by about a thousand, and you get an idea of the hysteria currently surrounding gay men in Egypt. That’s not an arbitrary analogy. The social ramifications of coming out as a ‘gay man’ in most parts of the Middle East are the same as for some chap on a council estate in Barnsley declaring in a packed pub at closing time that he has a 12-year-old girlfriend.

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