Occupy Wall Street continues, but the police repression seems reminiscent of some of the worst attacks on the Arab Spring protestors in the Middle East which helped inspire the American movement. Are Middle East dictators and other leaders, including a dead one, giving New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg advice? These...

There's no Internet, no Twitter, no Facebook. But you can still call Cairo, at least as of Monday night. Not seeing any of their updates, I wanted to know how friends -- foreign ex-pats and locals were doing. Their eyewitness reports are astounding, telling of happy people in the streets,...

Beirut. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I stood in Ground Zero surrounded by the wreckage of the Twin Towers, a few days after September 11th, going in to dig for bodies alongside my police officer former brother-in-law.

Beirut, a city that destroyed itself as...

While Europe and North America were busy celebrating pride month, Syria underwent a completely different experience. The website Gay Middle East recently ran a note about government crackdowns on gays and the arrest of 25 young men who had attended gay private parties, accused in a combination of...

I begin writing this from Aleppo, Syria, where I am packing to finally leave the region on a 3 flight journey back to New York. I'll use this blog post as my final update, telling about my last days and giving an overview of my seven week trip, highlighting three...

It's been a month since I checked in on my Middle East tour for the Arabic version of Gay Travels in the Muslim World, when I was still in Beirut. I have been to several places doing book events and talks since, but I am writing this now...

It's not always about the numbers. It's about something actually happening, and that is why I view the Tuesday, December 22 book signing at the Beirut Book Fair for the Arabic Version of Gay Travels in the Muslim World as a success.

Things began almost immediately at 6...

I have to admit that at first I was afraid to enter, but it was what I spent two years working on - the debut of the Arabic version of my book, Gay Travels in the Muslim World, here in the Muslim world itself.

This edited collection of stories...

Baghdad, Iraq -- This is my second time in Baghdad, and I have to admit, overall I have seen a lot of improvements. My first trip, in the summer of 2007 to do a large investigative report for New York's Gay City News was during the height of the Surge,...