[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Rasker]

September 08, 2005
IRAN AND THE DEATH OF GAY ACTIVISM
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/

The following is an expanded version of an article written for the new issue of Gay City News, New York's largest gay weekly newspaper:

The architect of Iran’s lethal anti-gay crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right), will be in New York City next week, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly on September 14. Yet, despite the fact that every major Western European capital has seen demonstrations against the reign of terror targeting gays in the Islamic Republic of Iran -- where homosexuality is a capital crime -- not a single gay or human rights organization here has seen fit to call a protest timed for Ahmadinejad’s UN address.

The new wave of anti-gay repression in Iran came to world attention with the torture and hanging of two gay teenagers in the city of Mashad on July 19, who were each lashed 228 times before having the nooses placed around their necks (left). In response to the world-wide protests of these executions, the anti-gay crackdown has been stepped up considerably by the Ahmadinejad government -- his regime has been branded as flaunting international law, which forbids the torture and execution of minors under two treaties to which Iran is signatory. Not only have readers of this newspaper been able to follow this story through the half-dozen reports I’ve written for GCN, Iran’s gay repression has been extensively covered in other media -- Gay Cable News in New York has repeatedly talked about the tragic situation of Iranian gays, Jason Bellini (right) and the fledgling news team at the national gay TV network LOGO have devoted two reports to it, national gay news outlets like Page One Q and 365gay.com have done likewise, and the gay blogosphere has been loudly echoing these reports. Sentient gay news consumers cannot possibly ignore the gay tragedy unfolding in Iran.

Ahmadinejad came to power in significant measure through a campaign against “moral corruption,” which included a crusade against homosexuality as evidence of Western “decadence,” as Christopher de Bellaigue (left) makes clear in his extensive report from Tehran in the August 11 New York Review of Books. Ahmadinejad pledged a government whose “every project, every method, and every administrative mechanism has been extracted from the heart of Islam” -- and multiple Iranian gay groups and activists have begged the West to understand that, in practice, this fulfilled promise has meant that criminal charges of all sorts, particularly rape, have been trumped up against gay people as part of the ongoing persecution under the institutionally homophobic Sharia law that governs everything in Iran. More executions of young men thought to be gay have been reported or scheduled.

Just weeks ago, a 29 year old gay Iranian in London who’d been ordered to be deported back to Iran killed himself, rather than face what he was convinced was certain torture and execution by Ahmadinejad’s homo-hating clerical zealots. In the last weeks, we have received reports that gay Iranians who were expected to arrive in the West have been blocked from fleeing Iran -- since Ahmadinejad’s government is afraid that the horrific stories of repression they would tell would further inflame world sentiment against the Sharia-inspired wave of terror, at a time when Iran is deep in delicate negotiations with the Western powers over its development of nuclear weapons.

Iran has no free press. Reporters Without Borders has named Iran’s senior spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini (left) -- the "Guide of the Islamic Republic" (right) -- as one of the world’s foremost “Predators of Press Freedom, “ newspapers have been suspended and journalists critical of the Ahmadinejad regime thrown into prison, bloggers have been arrested, and blogs serving gays and women have been blocked or shut down. That is why gay Iranians inside the Islamic Republic repeatedly tell us they desperately need Western gay groups to keep attention focused on the reign of terror of which they are victims.

But even though the international criminal Ahmadinejad is coming to our town, the silence here is deafening. Where is the leadership from the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force? Where is the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats? Where are the so-called gay radicals like Queer Fist? Where are our gay elected officials, numerous in New York City? They’re all inventing excuses not to protest the Ahmadinejad visit and Iran’s executions of gays and minor children, or to speak up for the gay Iranians who aren't allowed to speak openly for themselves.

In San Francisco, activist Michael Petrelis and a handful of friends organized in just days a demonstration (below left) and press conference on the Iran crackdown that drew participation from San Francisco’s mayor and gay elected officials, garnered much media attention, and led to the passage of a resolution by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors condemning the horrifying situation of gays in Iran and the executions of Iranian gays. Nothing of the sort in the Big Apple. I’m not one who thinks a demonstration is inevitably the only useful form of protest or political action. But in this instance, given a homophobic government in Washington that won’t lift a finger for Iranian gays, it certainly seems an appropriate -- indeed, vital -- response to what’s happening in Iran. Yet our gay organizations and New York's huge gay population are averting their eyes from this scandal, and waiting for the next sale at Prada or the next White Party or the next black-tie fundraiser. Increasingly, our gay institutions are tailoring their programmatic activity to that which is most likely to attract contributions, rather than setting a cutting-edge agenda and then raising money around it -- too often their priorities are terribly skewed to the concerns of those with capacious bank accounts.

The silence on Iran here underscores a deeper problem -- the death of gay activism. There was a time in this town when something like Ahmadinejad’s visit would have occasioned a massive outpouring of protest and outrage. But the complacent and self-satisfied embourgeoisement of our gay institutions in the last couple of decades, and the replacement of an in-your-face gay consciousness with passive checkbook-and-credit-card “activism” (a label it barely merits) -- coupled with an insularity that refuses to fully embrace the plight of oppressed gays in countries other than our own and internalize an internationalist gay perspective that knows no borders -- are problems which we and our community need to be discussing and debating. There desperately needs to be a revival of the movement spirit which created the larger, freer cultural space that privileged gays now enjoy. The ahistoricity of so many younger gays, who ignore much of the heritage of the movement years, needs to be combated. And we need to remember that there are times -- like Ahmadinejad’s September 14 visit to our town -- when it’s dishonorable for gay people not to be takin’ it to the streets.

P.S. A coalition of Iranian exile organizations has called a protest demonstration against Ahmadinejad -- timed to coincide with his U.N. speech -- for September 14 at 11.00 A.M. in Hammarskjold Plaza, 1st Avenue at East 47th Street, a stone's throw from the U.N. building. The call to the demonstration doesn't mention that same-sex love is a crime in Iran punishable by death, or refer to the anti-gay crackdown (there's a considerable amount of homophobia and incomprehension of these issues in parts of the Iranian exile community too). But, if you want to demonstrate your outrage at Iran's anti-gay reign of terror and the Islamic Republic's execution of kids -- as well as express your solidarity with the Iranian exiles who have fled religious despotism -- you can make your own sign and show up (if you wave your home-made sign on behalf of Iran's gays in front of the TV cameras, it just might get some attention.)
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The Sun Is Rising In The West!Soon It Will Shine on All of Iran!