Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:44 am Post subject: Galloway annoys gay rights activists
"George Galloway: Propagandist for Iranian regime"
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This video was released by gay-rights group 'Outrage' and is being used to suggest that Galloway is a bigot against gays... you'd think these people would have had enough people trying to smear them to know that doing the same to others is unacceptable. If it wasn't so stupid it would be laughable.
Hmmm, I'm not sure about this one. George does get pretty close to the line when he talks about the Iran / homosexual thing.
Granted, it is just being highlighted for reasons of propaganda - yet one more reason to hate Iran, to dehumanise Iran and to make it easier for people to become complacent about an attack on Iran, but I don't think George does himself any favours here.
For instance, on today's Wright Stuff (which I've just downloaded and watched - thanks again, Face!) he came back to this issue and said (I'm paraphrasing) "People don't get hanged for being gay in Iran, they get hanged for sex crimes". Well, if two young men having sex is a considered a sex crime, then they do get hanged for being gay, because two men don't have sex if they're not gay. It's sort of like saying "I'm not in jail for being a burglar, I'm in jail because I burgled someone's house". It's the same thing - and it's pedantic of him in a situation where pedantry can only be seen as apologism.
If I were in a position to give him any advice on this, it would be to condemn the oppression of gays much more loudly throughout these kinds of speeches, then there'd be no way people could put clips like that on YouTube without enormous amounts of selective editing.
It's obvious to anyone who follows George's politics that he is not anti-gay in the slightest, so why does he leave himself open to that cynical interpretation?
If he was referring to the case that I remember reading about, then he should have clarified what he meant by "sex crimes", otherwise yes, it can appear ambiguous; in fact the two teenagers were hung because they were found guilty of raping a much younger boy, so George is right that they were not hung because they were gay, but because they committed rape.
George is right that they were not hung because they were gay, but because they committed rape.
That's interesting. So can we assume that the lad who has been spared deportation is also a rapist? Because his boyfriend was hanged, and it was is widely reported that if he was returned to Iran he, too, would die.
I'm just thinking out loud here - I'm off to research this myself right now.
I live in Belgium and have couple of Iranian friends.
They tell me this is all bullshit and in Iran they don't hang gays, the only case was in 2005 in the city of Mashad, where 2 gays were hanged for raping a teenager.
They say he is probabely looking for a way to stay out of Iran. Every year thousands of Iranians flee Iran in search of a better life.
By the way, these friends of mine hate the Iranian regime.
I live in Belgium and have couple of Iranian friends.
They tell me this is all bullshit and in Iran they don't hang gays, the only case was in 2005 in the city of Mashad, where 2 gays were hanged for raping a teenager.
They say he is probabely looking for a way to stay out of Iran. Every year thousands of Iranians flee Iran in search of a better life.
Why was his boyfriend hanged then?
I've been Googling like crazy and I can't find any definitive, unbiassed information on this. All I can find are sites that are likely to be behind the right-wing agenda, sites that are likely to be behind the left-wing agenda, and sites that are bollocks like Wikipedia (which, incidentally, states that sodomy is a crime punishable by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia and a few other Middle Eastern and African countries).
I don't know, I can't find either.
They also tell me that till recently it was a common thing among the Iranian asylum seekers to say they are homosexuals to avoid being sent back. Untill the belgian government intrduced new measures to verify the true nature of their asylum. Apparently gays in Iran have to be registered and carry a card.
Apparently gays in Iran have to be registered and carry a card.
That doesn't help me fall in love with the Iranian regime!
This is all very confusing. It's depressing that it's so hard to get to the truth in matters like this. Most people just look to the newspapers for the facts, which is exactly why there's so much hatred around.
The fact that Iran is represented by a bumbling goon with no apparent appreciation of the importance of choosing your words carefully and his eyes so close together he's almost a cyclops is really hurting that country, too. If he has a PR team he should hang them. (OK, that was a joke!)
you don't have to fall in love with the iranian regime to know the west actions towards it, sanctions and the drum beat to war, are unjustified and wrong. theres plenty of stuff that should be changed in iran, as in other countries including our own, just because we're against western interference we shouldn't ignore what is wrong with iran and other places
also i think they could have gandhi as president and it wouldn't make any difference to how the media portray him - look at how they cover chavez! ( not that i'm comparing chavez and ahmadinejad! )
After the false story of "babies thrown out of incubators" in Kuwait (with "eye witnesses") I have to consider all anti-Iranian "evidence" with a pinch of salt.
So is it true that sodomy is a crime punishable by death in Iran? All the sources I can find say yes, and if so then you can be hanged in Iran for being gay.
I agree that the evidence regarding the previous case of those two young men hanged was technically due to rape of a minor (not that it makes it OK to kill them, but just that it wasn't because they were gay), but this most recent case does seem, as far as I can tell, to be based on laws against sodomy.
I agree with Luke and Mandy that we should be taking these sorts of reports with a pinch of salt because they are surely only being highlighted in this sensationalist, mass-coverage way to aid the anti-Iranian propaganda in the run up to a possible attack on the country, but what I can't swallow is the way it seems that the Left are almost "apologising" for the situation. No matter what the exact reason for these hangings and potential hangings is/was, we can't escape the fact that the Iranian regime murders its citizens for for sexual deviency.
Saudia Arabia does the same, too, so I'm not trying to single out Iran. I have no anti-Iranian agenda at all, but it does piss me off slightly the ambiguous way the Left sometimes counters these propaganda reports. It's all well and good to point out inaccuracies in warmongering propaganda, but when the facts have been corrected and people are still having their necks snapped, we must still condemn it in very strong terms.
It certainly isn't easy to find out the actual situation in Iran ! I found an Times interview with an Iranian Government Minister who said that if homosexual activity is in private there is no problem, but those in overt activity should be executed ! I also found a few sites that stated that the maximum penalty for sodomy was death, but rarely used as the person concerned usually repents to appease authorities, and the Shari'a judge normally request that he be pardoned; and a few Sites mentioned punished with lashes until the fourth offence, then death !
However I think that my original link posted above, is probably closer to the true picture when they quote the publishers of the Iranian gay magazine;
"The regime does not systematically persecute gays anymore, there are still some gay Web sites, there are some parks and cinemas where everyone knows that these places are meeting places for gays," they wrote. "Furthermore it is legal in Iran that a transsexual applies for sex change and it is fully accepted by the government.
"There are some media which sometimes -- not often -- write about such issues. Having said that, the Islamic law, according to which gay punishment is death, is still in force, but it is thought [to be] not much followed by the regime nowadays.
"Thanks to the Internet and contact with the international community, people get the info, and Iran society has changed a lot, and support for GLBT rights is growing in Iran, though we still have a long way to go," the publishers said. "On the whole, we are optimistic about the future as Iran's situation cannot continue [as is] and people are pushing for reforms and changes."
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