We don’t have homo’s in Iran ..... 
because we KILL them! 

>>>

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country....”

How do these guys do it, then? Oh, doing Iranian - like “doing Greek”, eh, ha ha!

I am sympathetic towards Ahmadi-Nejad, even though I of course disagree with many of his stands. He voluntarily went into the lion’s den, where the University President (falsely) called him a “cruel dictator” in an incredibly rude introduction. He has tried, vainly, to create a dialog between Iranians and Americans, only to be slapped down repeatedly.

I don’t expect Middle Eastern political figures to instantaneously embrace gay rights, women’s rights, or full religious rights. This takes time and persuasion. But I don’t think demonization is the way to get people to change and open their minds. We can’t expect the Middle East to “liberalize” by repeatedly threatening to bomb them into submission (don’t tell me I’m exaggerating; almost all presidential candidates, both D’s and R’s, have explicitly said they want to keep nuking Iran “on the table").

How about opening a dialog instead? How do you know talk won’t work until you’ve tried it? Hmmmmm?

I learned from a gay friend from Uruguay that the “gay” culture is experienced and expressed differently in different societies.

For example, he couldn’t understand why gay men in the USA and Canada felt the need to shelter within an all-gay environment - gay bars, gay baths, gay districts, gay shops, etc. He said that in Uruguay gay men (don’t know about lesbians) did not feel the need to huddle together and put up walls. He said when they wanted to cruise or socialize they’d just go out to an ordinary mixed sex bar where, using “gaydar” - eyes meeting across the room - and other nuances of behavior, one gay man could easily “meet and greet” another. He said, sure, there were “cruising areas” noted for same sex solicitations, but they were few and discrete.

My friend said in Uruguay gay men felt no need to upset the non-gay population with bizarre and outrageous public conduct such as often occurs in North America. He felt that an all-gay environment was really boring - just as an all straight, all white, all black, all fat, all anything environment would be. It is DIVERSITY that makes the human experience dynamic and progressive and interesting, not SIMILARITY and SAMENESS.

This might be what Mr. Ahmadinejad meant - that the gay culture in his country did not go out of their way to make a spectacle of themselves and therefore weren’t as obvious or noticeable as in the USA.

I went to the comments on the article in the NY Times wearily as I anticipated that the “Gay Hangings” story would be in there somewhere and require rebuttal. A poster had got there before me however and wrote:
“This article is just one more of many which either demonize or ridicule Ahmadinijad as a means to “soften us up” for the planned aggression against Iran. Example: the writer states that two gay teenagers were hanged; that’s true. But they were convicted and condemned, not for homosexuality but for the brutal forcible rape of a little boy. To not state that when it’s widely known is to betray the agenda of the writer, and hence make the article less credible in other ways.”

It is a great shame that the message that this rather naive but sincere man has tried to convey to the U.S. has been obscured by his occasionally unfortunate choice of words. Consider the history of his “wipe off the map” comment and the reprehensible and deliberate obfuscation plied by no less than the BBC, Reuters and AP in this extraordinarily erudite essay:
http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/caught-red-handed/

A close reading of Ahmadinejad’s letter to George Bush and his speech at Columbia reveal a constant theme - the inconsistency between the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed and the foreign policy of the United States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2 006/05/09/AR2006050900878.html
As it happens, I am agnostic but I am assured that the majority of Americans embrace religious belief. How come the media has given no coverage to this important question that Ahmadinejad poses, which should be of interest to the devout, yet fastens on to the occasional mouth-fart and holds it under our noses?
Why am I reminded of a classroom of adolescents all pointing at one unfortunate victim of flatulence?