BANNED AT SEA: by Daniel Webb
When you can’t pray the gay away, call the port authority.
While Egypt gave no official reason for refusing our port, Turkey at least had the tits to say “no homo” out-loud:
“The planned voyage of a cruise ship chartered by groups known for their behavior that is incompatible with the structure and moral values of our society has been cancelled. This event has caused great unease among various segments of our society. It is absolutely out of the question that the group in question will be coming to our city with such an organization. Respectfully announced to the public.”
My mind went to the poor queer people struggling to survive under the harsh regimes in Turkey and Egypt. I can certainly relate to living in an authoritarian and fascist state, I am from Texas.
Little do these authoritarians know, queer people and Patti LuPone can go wherever they damn well please, including the cruise ship cafeteria’s raw sushi bar, which is where Ms. LuPone was standing when I pushed my way into an introduction. She had a warm energy and a firm handshake, although I felt immediate regret for even offering my hand during a cyclospora outbreak. Patti was braver than most, I certainly wouldn’t shake any random man’s hand at a raw sushi bar on a forbidden gay boat.
But while Patti was the ideal ambassador for our Sailing But Furious cruise ship, the mood onboard was hardly furious. I mean our story was basically a Broadway musical in the making by this point.
“Who cares?! Let’s go to Montenegro!” is a Sondheim lyric waiting to be sung.
But that’s exactly what we did. We sailed onward, charting a new course to Kotor, Montenegro, arriving at dawn as a summer storm chased our ship thru the lush, unfolding mountainous coast. And just as news broke of Lindsey Graham’s death, an actual rainbow appeared in the sky, shining bold against the sunrise. We cheered, and it was all very gay and very beautiful.
There was only one question about having visited both countries just one year earlier and now being refused entry: What had changed in the last eleven months?
The Turkish government has been bold in their bigotry, banning pride celebrations for years and arresting anyone in attendance, all while taking in millions of gay dollars for hair transplants, teeth implants, nose, calves, and ass implants, or whatever other gay implant that’s cheaper overseas than in America. “Oh well, I’ll just go to Korea,’ became a popular phrase overheard onboard.
But what had changed since 2025? It’s not like the cruise ship got gayer in a year. Gay cruises are already a pride parade on peptides, and while they aren’t everybody’s scene, and despite some inescapable cliches, gay cruises can elicit beautiful and often overwhelming experiences.
For instance, the 6 a.m. breakfast buffet on a gay cruise is a sight to behold. It’s a rare mix of men who have been up all night dancing and partying, versus the ones who actually slept during the night. It’s fun to watch the breakfast crew sustain a smile while serving a man wearing a dog collar and ass-less shorts. There’s nothing quite like seeing a sexagenarian tweaker in a fluorescent thong harangue the lady dishing out hash browns, screaming at her through the sneeze guard “You have beautiful bone structure!” I love gay people.
The internet decided we were idiots for even thinking we could go to either country in the first place.
“What were we thinking going to Muslim countries?!” they guffawed. “Don’t they know about their anti-gay laws?”
So what am I supposed to do, never go to Florida? Ok, that’s an easy answer. But if I’m seriously basing my travel plans on the local government’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies, then I’ll never see my Texas family members again.
The press called us many versions of foolish, entitled, and tacky, but “twice-rejected” was the phrase that really stung. Personally, I’ve been dumped, ghosted, used, trashed, blocked, and infected, but never twice rejected.
Being rejected for being queer isn’t anything new to queer people, often the shock and disappointment of rejection is what empowers people to mobilize and work for change, even under the thumb of extreme authoritarian governments. This year on June 28th, during a very public crackdown on pride celebrations, the Istanbul Bar Association courageously unfurled a giant banner outside their offices declaring “LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
Being on the banned gay boat felt like a privilege, a once in a lifetime credential, a moment of pride for our community, denied entry to a country’s port just for being amoral, which I swore was protected under maritime law.
Daniel Webb is an internationally banned writer, comedian, musician, and queer.
I was a performer on the LGBTQ+ cruise ship that was banned from entering Turkey and Egypt. Broadway sensation Patti LuPone was also a performer on the banned gay boat, along with 1,800 queer passengers from all over the world.
The government of Turkey publicly denied our entry two days before we left the mainland. Egypt, however, waited until our ship was just one hundred miles off the African coast before turning us away, suddenly, in the middle of the night.
Patti LuPone, a defiant voice against bigotry and fascism and even more defiantly pro-gay boats, fired off a social media post announcing herself as “furious, but sailing.”
Honestly “furious, but sailing” was the perfect mantra for our situation, gay men are already mostly furious, you would be too if you ever had to deal with anal fissures in a romantic setting.
In August 2025, eleven months before I was internationally banned for being “incompatible to the structure of society”, I sailed with the same company on the exact same ship and visited both Turkey and Egypt without any problem, warning, or general forbiddenness. And despite my extraordinary faggotry, my experiences in both countries were beyond welcoming.
In Egypt we drove all the way from Alexandria to the Giza Pyramids, where I lived out my Elizabeth Taylor fantasy of walking among ancient historical ruins while being high on pills. The only hiccup occurred when our tour guide remarked that this was his first tour group that was exclusively men (gulp).
The banned gay cruise might not be the ambassador for human rights you envisioned, I mean, we weren’t exactly Rosa Parks. Ms. Parks stood strong in her conviction and activated change in real time, we simply picked another port and k-holed our way there.
For the record, the only drugs I did on the cruise ship were a couple of IPAs and a complimentary glass of champagne. Again, you don’t always get the ambassador you want.
A cruise of mostly gay men doesn’t begin to define the spectrum of souls that make up the queer community, but it certainly exemplifies the resilience and survival of queer people in the face of political oppression, especially during these increasingly authoritarian times. Literally nothing can stop queer people.