Iranian queer theory

http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010679

[rquoter]The Queerest Denial
Ahmadinejad says there are no gays in Iran.

BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, October 2, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been doing a brisk business in harassing, entrapping, lashing, imprisoning and executing homosexuals since nearly the moment it came to power in 1979, with little notice in the West beyond the occasional human-rights report. So when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the startling claim at Columbia University last week that "we do not have homosexuals in Iran like you do in your country," it offered what could have been a learning opportunity to those who think Iran is just another misunderstood regime with an equally misunderstood president.

Such wishful thinking. The Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls spent a fair bit of time Wednesday night debating what to do about Iran, without once mentioning Ahmadinejad's peculiar world view. These are the same debaters who in August went before a gay audience to denounce Bush administration policies as "demeaning" and "degrading" toward gays. In the Nation--a magazine that excoriated Ronald Reagan upon his passing for his "inaction and bigotry against gays"--editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has nothing to say about the subject either. Instead, she devotes her latest column to denouncing last week's symbolic Senate vote to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.

In the Guardian, another crusading voice from the left on gay rights, foreign-affairs columnist Martin Woollacott lambastes Columbia's president Lee Bollinger for his "mean-spirited" remarks to the Iranian president, which he takes as an indication that "it is still difficult to suggest that Iran has arguments and interests worth considering on their merits." But again, no mention of Mr. Ahmadinejad's attitude toward gays, much less its "merits." And on "progressive" Web sites like Democratic Underground, there are earnest debates about exactly what Mr. Ahmadinejad meant by the word "like," as if he were merely making an academic cultural comparison rather than denying the existence of an entire category of his own citizens.

Long gone are the days when people spoke of the love that dare not speak its name. We are now living in the era of the hate-that-dare-not-be-spoken-about--lest disingenuous neocons use Mr. Ahmadinejad's unfortunate pronouncements to cut off dialogue and beat the drums for war. But if one side of the political spectrum is not to be trusted to discuss the subject, and the other side simply won't, who will?

For that, turn to a revealing and moving documentary by Indian-born journalist Parvez Sharma called "A Jihad for Love," which he describes as a "discussion about Islam through its most unlikely storytellers." Mr. Sharma (who is very far from being a conservative of any kind) spent six years filming his subjects on four continents: They include a gay imam in South Africa, a lesbian couple in Istanbul, an Egyptian who spent a year in prison for being gay before fleeing to Paris, and four young men who fled Iran for their lives and now live as political refugees in Canada.

The documentary is notable for its depiction of the tenacity with which its subjects hold on to their faith despite the wall of bigotry, often homicidal, that confronts them. Nowhere is that seen more vividly than in the plight of the Iranians. Take Arsham Parsi, 27, a subject of Mr. Sharma's who now runs the Iranian Queer Organization (irqo.net) from Toronto. In 2001, he says in a phone interview, "two of my close friends committed suicide because of the bad situation for queer people." Their deaths galvanized him to begin a gay and lesbian support group, conducted furtively and electronically, consisting largely of articles on gay-related subjects from English language sources. The enterprise grew to include six separate electronic magazines. "We used to think we were alone in the world," Mr. Parsi says. "With these magazines, we knew we were not."

In fact, homosexuality has a particularly rich history in Iran--the Qajar dynasty's Nasseruddin Shah, a contemporary of Queen Victoria and ruler of Iran for nearly 50 years, took a Kurdish boy named Malijak as his lifelong lover. It is hardly less present in contemporary Iran, not just in the parks of Tehran but the seminaries of Qom. But Mr. Parsi's activism put him at particular risk. "The police use the Internet to make undercover arrests," he says. "They'll write to say 'I am looking for a partner,' entrap someone, and use their correspondence as evidence." That was the fate of friends of Mr. Parsi, who in 2003 were sentenced to 100 lashes in the space of an hour, and it would have been his, too, had he not fled Iran on word he was about to be arrested.

From Toronto, Mr. Parsi works on asylum cases and continues to publish a newsletter called Cheraq ("Light"), which reaches about 3,000 readers in Iran. Yesterday, it published a selection of letters to Mr. Ahmadinejad by gay Iranians.

"I pray that some false note in the divine composition has you fathering a gay offspring so that the hammer that you've raised over our heads comes down on your very own," writes one. "I recommend you partake in the first Iranian gay Pride parade so you can see for yourself that it will be more glorious and more populated than your Quds day or annual revolution commemoration day parades," writes another, adding that a gay parade would be attended voluntarily, in contrast to "a bunch of schoolchildren and innocent peasants who have been forced to show up to punch the 'world oppressors' in the mouth."

All of this ought to be evidence that, when it comes to the Iranian regime, the gap between bad neocons and pure-of-heart progressives ought to be no more than tactical: This is, ultimately, a regime that needs to go. Not so. Mr. Sharma, for instance, rails in the Huffington Post against the "the Good-vs.-Evil caricature" that he says prevails in Western attitudes toward Iran.

Mr. Sharma is a gifted filmmaker, but his politics remind me of the Socratic observation that poets are poor judges of their own work. Or how else is one supposed to view the scene he captures of Mr. Parsi at last arriving in Toronto and weeping both for the freedom he has gained and his friends still trapped in Islamist captivity? Is it a testament that there is no meaningful difference between free and unfree, Bushworld and Ahmadinejadland? Take that view seriously, and you wind up taking the notion of gay rights, and human rights, too lightly for anyone's good.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.[/rquoter]

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/10/02/DDBHSGBVP.DTL

[rquoter]Jon Carroll
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Our nation's gay leaders pronounced themselves "surprised" at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's open admission that the long-rumored "gay gap" is real. CIA sources have been saying privately for some time that advanced satellite imaging has revealed traces of gays in the area around Tehran, but other pundits were skeptical. "The idea that gays have a different heat signature is an unproven hypothesis," said spokesperson Leslie Tracy.

Now, in the wake of Ahmadinejad's candid admission, a team of gay proselytizers is being formed in a humanitarian effort to bring Iran up to First World standards. "Never let it be said," said Col. Tracy Leslie of the Revolutionary Gay Army, "that America sat idly by while another nation suffered through a decadeslong gay drought."

Leslie called for volunteers to help beef up the regular forces. "We don't want to make the same mistake the Bush administration made," he said. "When we act to enrich the lives of the Iranian people, we want to make sure we have enough personnel to handle every city, town and village."

Some gay people, he acknowledged, might refuse to serve. "That is, of course, their right. They are free to enjoy their gay communities, even though they are aware that entire towns halfway around the world might be without a single gay person."

But he added: "If those people would just look at their copies of the Homosexual Agenda, they would see no mention of borders there, no idea that one country is gayer than another. We do not confine our recruiting to the Bay Area or Oxford, England. We are everywhere."

Gay historian Lee Parker sought to place the problem in a historical context. "We must remember that ancient Persia was, in many ways, the cradle of homosexuality. Persian warriors were known to seal their brotherhood with sexual congress - as indeed were the Greeks. There is no mention of lesbianism in the ancient texts, but then, there never is. That's the patriarchy for you. Nothing, nothing, Sappho, nothing, nothing."

Parker added: "If what we hear is true, it's sad that this ancient center of gayness would find the practice all but wiped out today. Oh, I suspect there are certain isolated desert areas where the old ways are still remembered, but probably not many. I understand that American television programs are occasionally available there, but how could average Iranians make any sense of 'Will & Grace' if they have lost the cultural memory of gayness?"

Leaders of Gays for Iran have dubbed the initial push the "shock and awww" campaign. "It's sort of like shock that the gay army is here and awww they're pretty nice," said psychologist Parker Lee. "We believe that Iranians will like any group of Americans that doesn't try to kill them."

Lee indicated that cultural sensitivity training would be among the group's biggest concerns. "You can't just go in there and get all butch and start herding all the bears into one corner and explaining their role in the community to them. For one thing: whole lotta bears in Iran. And none of this choosing-up-sides butch-femme-butch-femme thing. That just does not reflect the diverse reality of the gay experience, and anyway, that distinction is very hard to make as long as burqas are firmly in place."

Also, it's vital that we allow recruited Iranian gays to develop their own culture. Lee: "Perhaps they have no interest in musical theater or women's golf. We can't impose our belief system on them. Just teach the basics of gayness and let things develop naturally. Mostly, we're advocating a hands-off policy. Seriously, hands-off. We are not sexual imperialists."

Parker again: "It is important, I think, to answer Ahmadinejad's poignant cry for help. It is so rare for a political leader of a supposedly hostile country to speak frankly about internal problems. Sure, he was mostly bluster and 'death to America' and 'George Bush is evil,' but that is expected of him in his role. What of the private Ahmadinejad, the anguished president of a deprived nation? Don't we for humanitarian reasons need to answer his call?"

Lee agreed: "We cannot know, of course, whether the president's remarks had any personal component. It is possible that he has spent many lonely months cruising Tehran, looking for a wink or a nod or a foot tap. How lonely he must be! He's kind of cute in a crazed-zealot sort of way, and I'm sure that there's a jihadist somewhere who'd be just right for him. If international peace might start with a gentle touch on the cheek, surely we owe it to the world to create an environment where that can happen."

"We may have to stay there for a long time," said Col. Leslie. "It's not a quagmire, though; it's an opportunity."

We're looking for a few good men who are looking for a few good men. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask instead what you can do for the people of Qom.[/rquoter]