Still living dangerously: a new documentary on cable's Here network notes the struggle of gay rights in much of the world.

Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World * Directed by John Scagliotti * Narrated by Janeane Garofalo * Here TV network * Premieres May 11

For gays and lesbians in the Western world, talk of political progress in a conservative-dominated era invariably takes the form of arguing over whether the glass is haft empty or half full. But as Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World demonstrates, we should consider ourselves lucky to have any glass at all.

Directed by veteran documentarian John Scagliotti (Before Stonewall, After Stonewall) and narrated by Janeane Garofalo, Dangerous Living premieres May 11 on the Here TV network and begins on another May 11, back in 2001. On that date in Cairo, 52 gay men were arrested on the Queen Boat, a popular floating discotheque, and imprisoned for "debauchery"-there being no official law against homosexuality per se in Egypt.

As the film shows, this throwback to the sort of situation common in pre-Stonewall America was part of a widespread backlash in countries as diverse as Jamaica, Honduras, Malaysia, Uganda, Pakistan, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and the Philippines. For as the many highly articulate gays and lesbians of these regions testify, the success of the gay rights movement in the West had by the 1990s come to be regarded as a threat by Third World nationalist movements. Such was the case even in those countries with long-recognized histories of same-sex love visibly reflected in countless sculptures, paintings, literary works, and ancient artifacts.

"Talking about gay rights is a Western idea," notes Pakistani activist Adnan Ali. "As long as you don't identify as gay, you can practice homosexuality." This "don't ask, and I won't tell" notion was in play for some time, making it possible for Egypt to become a haven for gays throughout the Middle East. But by the 1990s, with the impact of, as the film's activists note, "HIV/AIDS, MTV, and the Internet," everything changed. Countries that never had gay rights demonstrations began to witness them. They were small in number of participants, who were often masked. But more important, as far as the opposition was concerned, were the discos, Internet cafes, and other gathering places where gays, lesbians, transvestites, and transgenders met and socialized with one another. Such seemingly innocuous activity became a target for reactionary politicians like Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, anxious for a scapegoat to blame for his nation's many ills.

But with backlash comes resistance. "My sexuality is my own," proudly declares Ashraf Zanati, a gay Egyptian imprisoned and tortured as a result of the Queen Boat raid. That this still happens in seemingly sophisticated cultures provides a lesson to us all. But then, so does Zanati's fierce resistance. *

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000.