Podcast: Gay in Iran (Script)

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You’re listening to Iran’s Weekly Wire; I’m Roland Elliott Brown.

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Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once told an audience at Columbia University that there were no homosexuals in Iran.

He was responding to a question from an audience member about why Iran executes homosexuals. He grinned from ear to ear while the audience booed.

He obviously relished the chance to show his contempt for liberal values, and for a persecuted minority in Iran.

And he did nothing to dispel a popular talking point among Iran’s western critics: that Iran executes people for being gay.

This week, I’m going to look at that claim, and find out what homosexuals in Iran are really up against.

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To start, I spoke to William Beeman. He’s a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He’s studied homosexuality in Iran.

I asked him whether it was really true that Iran kills people for being gay.

[William Beeman] No it’s not true. Nobody has been executed in Iran for being gay. That's really an important point. What could happen in Iran, is that you could be executed if you were caught in a sexual act with someone of the same sex. [...] But an execution for people being gay, I have no documentation of it, and I would defy anyone to provide it. No one I have ever heard of has been able to demonstrate that that actually happened any place in Iran. So it is something that I think is just a bit of propaganda, it's another situation where people are claiming that Iranians are frying up babies for breakfast in order to be able to really say something negative about the country.

Homosexual acts are definitely illegal in Iran, and by law they’re sometimes punishable by death. But Beeman says that in practice, they’re very hard to prove.

[William Beeman] Unless there is a confession, or unless there is a witness, you can't be convicted that way, and when I say a witness, it is the same kind of witness structure that you have when you are trying to prove adultery. There has to be four neutral witnesses who actually observe the act in order for it to actually hold up in any kind of religious court.

Beeman points out that there was one infamous case in Mashhad in 2005. Two teenagers were executed for alleged homosexual acts. But he says that episode was really a case of statutory rape.

Even so, Iran’s courts aren’t exactly transparent.

I also talked to Shadi Amin, a lesbian activist who works with an NGO called Justice 4 Iran. I asked her what she knew about the execution of homosexuals.

[Shadi Amin] Unfortunately because of strong censorship around the issues about sexual offences, we are not able to say in what extent those laws are being practiced. But what we can definitely say is that people are being arrested, detained, and abused because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. We have also documented several cases of intimidation, violence and torture done by police or Basij militia inside and outside jails.

So, even if Iran isn’t executing people for being gay, and homosexual acts are very hard to prove, Iran is still persecuting homosexuals.

And according to Shadi Amin, official prejudice mirrors popular prejudices.

[Shadi Amin] The culture of homophobia is prevalent in Iran. It is strengthened by state propaganda on one hand, and the lack of any accurate sexual education on the other hand. So people of different sexual orientation and gender identity are often subjected to violence both in family and society. Homosexuality is still a taboo in Iran, and apart from a few exceptions, the society in general doesn't tolerate it.

So homosexual life in Iran is, in large part, a marginal life.

At the same time, people aren’t as isolated as they used to be.

Many take the risk of meeting each other online and sharing information via social media, even if there is some danger of police entrapment.

And some of them are starting to push for greater recognition and acceptance inside Iran.

Here’s Arsham Parsi, an Iranian activist based in Toronto.

[Arsham Parsi] I started my activism when I was in Iran, and it was a big risk but I had to take it because the previous generation did not do anything and it was my social responsibility to support my community, therefore I got problem and living in Iran and fighting for LGBT rights is difficult. I think we all are optimistic and we fight for equality and we hope that one day we have these rights in Iran. We know that it's far away and having that life will not happen in our lifetime, but all things we do is an investment in a better future.

Like all Iranians, Iran’s homosexual community is keenly attuned to what’s going on globally. Here’s Shadi Amin again.

[Shadi Amin] In recent years the LGBT community in Iran has been increasingly affected by what is happening in the world young people in Iran follow closely the news about successful campaigns, for example for legislation on same sex marriages in different countries and other issues. They also watch gay series and movies such as L Word or music videos the bands like Taboo and etcetera. Our research shows that many lesbians and transgenders in Iran found out about their orientation and identity for the first time when watching such movies or music videos, or also watching the interviews from the activists in Iranian TV channels, I mean the channels like BBC or VOA which are working from abroad.

Now, Iranian officials have long denounced the influence of western media and culture.

But apart from Ahmadinejad’s comments in New York, it has been pretty rare for high-ranking officials to talk about homosexuality.

Even so, they can’t ignore the issue completely. The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people are protected under international human rights treaties.

Following the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of human rights last year, the head of Iran’s Human Rights Council, had to state Iran’s position.

Mohammad Javad Larijani responded by accusing the West of hypocrisy.

He said,

“Twenty years ago, homosexuality was considered a disease or a crime in the West. Homosexuals in Los Angeles had to undergo hormone therapy. Now, all of a sudden, homosexuality has become fashionable in the West. You cannot attack the lifestyles of other countries by resorting to the universal applicability of human rights.”

So Iran’s officials think western countries have weaponized the issue, and are using it against Iran for political purposes.

That’s one reason they want to shut down the debate.

Another reason is, they think the Ayatollah Khomeini solved the problem back in the 1980s. That’s when he issued a fatwa allowing government-funded sex change operations.

And there’s a whole Islamic philosophy behind that, based on the notion that human souls are gendered. William Beeman explains.

[William Beeman] very prominent clerics say that the problem is that a person's soul and their body should match, and if their soul and their body doesn't match, then it is religiously authorised for the state to actually pay for the operation that will bring the person's soul in line with their body. Now there are undoubtedly transsexual people in Iran who have had sex change operations. There have been both male to female and female to male sex change operations with the full compliance of the state, and with the state paying the bill. I am not convinced that all the people who had these operations were in fact transgendered. They may have been merely gay. They may have had same sex attraction or even acted on same sex attraction. But the important thing to know is that they were not executed.

So in theory at least, there’s a narrow tolerance for people who are willing to change their gender to fulfill accepted roles.

Obviously, that’s not something anyone would do just to win the approval of the state.

And the question remains, why does the state disapprove so much of same sex relationships? What threat does it perceive? Here’s Shadi Amin:

[Shadi Amin] As it is clear in official discourse, the main threat they feel when it comes to LGBT rights is losing heterosexual family as the main constriction of an Islamic society. In addition to that, the Islamic Republic considers its objection with LGBT rights as the main indicator of shaping and maintaining an Islamic society. And that's I think the Islamic morale will be in danger if you talk about homosexuality. That's what they say in their propaganda against homosexuality.

In other words, Iran’s leaders think that if they tolerate homosexual relationships, the whole edifice of an Islamic state would crumble.

Anything seen as a threat to state security in Iran is taboo. That explains why the topic is almost untouchable, even for Iran’s self-styled reformists.

[Shadi Amin] As far as we know, none of the religious or political authorities have said something positive on this topic. On the contrary, when the so-called reformist clergy like Mohsen Kadivar for example, publicly advocate against homosexual relationships, by saying for example on his website that it is  a sinful and perverse act, and absolutely forbidden in Islam. We have no information that some of them have said anything positively about homosexuality.   

And they can afford to be silent, because the government seems to have public opinion behind it. Here’s Arsham Parsi again:

[Arsham Parsi] Personally my first goal is not the government. My first target is society, parents, because if tomorrow the Iranian government declared that homosexuality is legal and they can get married, thousands of people would protest because its lack of education, its lack of information and accurate information toward LGBT community in Iran, and our first goal is to inform people and let them know that homosexuality is not..something disgusting, and they have to support their LGBT beloved family members or friends.

Homosexuals are likely to remain one of Iran’s most peripheral minorities for a long time to come.

They don’t enjoy the same support or sympathy as Iran’s many ethnic and religious minorities, or its political opposition.

Their most vocal advocates are all in exile in the West.

And that’s right where Ahmadinejad would want them.

When he said there are no homosexuals in Iran, he was expressing a wish, and a political vision. And a provocation.

But he knows perfectly well, he wasn’t stating a fact.

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That’s all from Iran’s Weekly Wire; if you want to find out more about this issue, join us on Twitter or Facebook, or visit IranWire.com