World Views of Homosexuality: Iranians Denounce It, Demand Torture Against It

Gay rights are a major issue in the United States. Marches and rallies are held for it, blogs are devoted to it, but unfortunately, in one part of the world, gay rights are not something that involves an institution as simple as marriage. There are no life partnerships, no gay pride parades, no gay taverns or bars. In fact, to even be identified as homosexual would warrant the prompt arrival of enormous cranes on the backs of the much fabled gallows trucks.

When the issues that face gays in America consist of an attempted allowance for state recognized marriages, it becomes difficult to imagine a government stating anything more drastic than opposition to gay marriage. However, according to Iranian Minister Mohsen Yahyavi, homosexuals should be "tortured and executed", reports the British Times Online. This proclamation comes after President Ahmadinejad's laughable claim that "homosexuality is a phenomenon of the West" and that it "doesn't exist in the East".

Iran does not appear to treat these threats as idle either, as videos and photographs consistently leak from the Islamic Republic of men and women strung from the governments' mobile gallows, Iranian soldiers chanting or sometimes firing AK rounds into the air as the amassed citizens throw stones and shoes at the dangling victims. There is little to no decorum offered to the executed prisoners, who are unceremoniously blindfolded, with a noose thrown around their necks, then the crane begins to lift, strangling them.

Bogus!, a gay rights organization based in Britain, suspects there are more homosexual executions than Iran actually admits - often times throwing false charges onto them to justify their executions. Such allegations usually consist of religious desecration, adultery, or insulting the Prophet Muhammad, all of which carry with them the penalty of death in the strict fundamentalist nation of Iran.

By July of this year, Iran reportedly arrested 1,000 people in what it called "morality crackdowns", several of which were either hanged or stoned to death.

Minister Yahyavi proposes a frightening escalation to the ill treatment already served homosexuals in the country, risking the addition of torture to their death sentences. When pushed on this issue, the minister said, "according to Islam gays and lesbianism were not permitted....homosexuality is against human nature and that humans are here to reproduce. Homosexuals do not reproduce."

Anti-homosexual rhetoric is a common problem in the Middle East. Talk shows based in the Palestinian territories suggest that homosexuals in Jerusalem are the victims of Jewish conspiracies, and are forced to take on alcohol to cope with their wrong doing.

Dr. Yousuf al-Qaradhawi reasserted the position that homosexuality is an absolute crime in 2006 on al-Jazeera. Though he said that the response to it is controversial and there is a great deal of debate on how best the state should deal with homosexuality, he insists that the bottom line is that it is indeed a crime.

Such recommendations offered include burning, throwing from a high place, or stoning.

He also makes a distinction between homosexuality and lesbianism, interestingly enough, and insists that homosexuality is not as bad as lesbianism - and that they should be treated differently. He refers to the open organization of homosexuals in public a "calamity of societies," something that the Iranian Minister appears to agree with whole heartedly.

Sources:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/11/africa/11iran-web.php
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2859606.ece
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1170.htm
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/598.htm