I ignored it deliberately because it was written by the person who wrote the Wikipedia article, whereas the first part is a direct quotation from the law. Guess which part "consensual sodomy" appears in. Here it is directly from the English language version of the
UAE penal code:
So they only give the death sentence to rapists who also kill their victims. Other than that, there doesn't appear to be any other reference to sodomy in the whole penal code. It could be covered under "indecent acts" which carry a minimum of 6 months in prison (there's no maximum mentioned in the section I've read).
I've heard gay rights campaigners suggest it can theoretically lead to up to 14 years in prison. This is because in addition to the UAE penal code, there is also the Abu Dhabi penal code. Article 80 prohibits "personal intercourse contrary to nature" with 14 years in prison. The equivalent law in Dubai stipulates 10 years in prison (ETA: I should say 'up to'). Where claims of the death penalty may come from is that sharia law does stipulate death as the punishment for homosexual acts, but in the UAE, sharia is only used in civil matters between individuals, not criminal cases.
Obviously I'm not here to defend the UAE's record on gay rights (it's hard to defend 14 years in prison for being gay), but let's try and be factual with our criticisms. I think the nub of the issue here is exactly that these 'journalists' on Twitter don't actually give enough of a shit to actually research these issues, because they're only interested in using them as a reason to bash our club, not because they actually care about the issues. Notice that the journalists who actually do a lot of good work on this issue in the Middle East aren't the ones sharing it with our club's name to score cheap points.
