Banned in Turkey!

I'm positively thrilled, proud, practically giddy if that were possible.  Toquima's folks came home today and came out to pick him up.  They've been away and at least part of the time were in Turkey.  They check my blog periodically when they travel to keep up with Toquima's life at camp.  They reported that my blog was blocked when they tried to access it in Turkey.  I've never said anything bad about Turkey, until now, so the supposition is that I'm blocked because I identify myself as "gay" in short profile that appears on the front page of the blog.  Turkey is known to have blocked gay websites and dating apps. 

Now, I've been blocked and unfriended by a few individual christian bigots, and I've done the same to them, but this is the first time I've been blocked by an entire country ruled by a desert-dwelling, pre-historic, Abrahamic mythology.  I don't consider muslims any different than christians.  The fundamentalists among them allow a primitive belief system to govern their 21st Century lives.  As long as that continues they will continue to be an archaic society of goat herders whose only contribution to modern society is as a source of antiquities and anthropological study. 

It's a cautionary tale for us because the American Taliban (i.e., the GOP) wants return American society to a similar level of oppression.  It's also laughable because (again, like the GOP), it's completely hypocritical.  Gays exist in the muslim world in the same percentage as other populations.  Those that have the means (the Saudis) move out and never go back, or they travel to one of the "doctrine-free zones" operated in some Gulf states, sort of like Hong Kong is for the Chinese.  There they can smoke, drink, gamble, and whore around before returning home to a life of pretend piety and oppressing women. 

It's curious though, because Blogger gives me statistics on where page views originate, and guess what, Turkey is always on the list.  I seriously doubt that there is a secret community dog lovers in that place, so the more likely explanation is government monitoring or Turkish geeks who can get around the block and are hoping for something salacious.  Both are likely to be disappointed.

If anyone travels to, or knows anyone stuck in a religious hell hole overseas, ask them to try to access my blog.  I'd be curious.  I'd love to be banned from fucking Russia too, but the blog also gets a lot of hits from there, although I suspect they are just spammers because of the multitude of comments (which I block before they appear) trying to hawk knockoff Hermes handbags in the Cyrillic alphabet. 

It's a shame about Turkey, there's old stuff there I'd like to see.  I feel the same about Egypt because I'd love to see the pyramids but I won't go until they join at least the 20th century.  And I'd love to see the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg if Russia ever decides to grow up and oust the fucking Orthodox christian cult and Putin.  Of course, we have our own 1st century thinkers to worry about here at home.  The biggest, dumbest, right-wing christian bigot closest to home is Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia GOP/teabagger candidate for governor.  The biggest threats are those closest to home.

Here's my stats for the past month:

Pageviews by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
United States	4802
Russia	136
United Kingdom	108
Canada	79
Ukraine	59
France	41
Germany	37
Poland	31
Turkey	22
China	18