Iran Still Killing Gays

On July 19, 2005, two teenage Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari

and Ayaz Marhoni, were hanged in public for their

alleged involvement in sodomy and rape.

As I've written before, guys, no matter how disappointed we are with the progress of gay rights in the United States at the moment, it's important to maintain perspective, and be glad of the rights we've already got.  In Britain and the American colonies, men were hanged for sodomy.  We think of that time as practically ancient history now - but homosex remains a capital crime in large parts of Africa and Asia today.

Loving another man is still very much a capital crime in Iran, and Gay City News reports that Iran is set to execute 12 men for sodomy:

Ten young Iranian men, including eight teenagers, are currently awaiting execution for sodomy, and two more are being re-tried on the same capital charge. And, in an exclusive interview with Gay City News, an Iranian student gay rights activist confirmed for the first time the existence of queer organizing on multiple university campuses throughout Iran.

The information about the ten youths currently under sentence of death for sodomy (lavaat in Persian) was released on November 25 in a joint appeal by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO), and COC of the Netherlands, the world’s oldest LGBT rights group, founded in 1946. The three organizations called on Western countries “with significant diplomatic and economic ties to Iran, including Germany, France, Canada, as well as the European Union, to pursue diplomatic efforts to cease these executions.”

It is extremely difficult to obtain information about death penalty cases involving homosexuality under today’s repressive theocratic regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the press is heavily censored and journalists, regime critics, and human rights advocates are routinely persecuted and arrested and where the subject of same-sex relations is officially considered a political and religious taboo. Defendants in sodomy cases are denied open trials. Last month, Human Rights Watch, basing its finding on an Iranian newspaper report, told of the execution of two men for sodomy. . . .

God help those twelve Iranians, and all our brothers and sisters whose very lives are endangered by homophobic laws in Iran, Uganda, and elsewhere.