Iran's Secret World of Sex

Remember how former Iranian President and utter nut case Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that there were no gays in Iran?  Well, a new study shows just how out in fantasy land Ahmadinejad was - 17% of the Iranians interviewed sad that they were gay.  Not only, that sex is much more prevalent among unmarried heterosexuals than the mullahs (who bear a bizarre resemblance to the Catholic Church hierarchy when it comes to being obsessed with policing the sex lives of others) want to admit.   Note how clerics are suspected of being the most common users of "sigheh," i.e., temporary marriage, to cover their adulterous affairs.  It seems whether it is the Catholic clergy of Islamic mullahs, no one is more engaged in hypocrisy than the "holy men."    The Economist has details: 

IT IS the last thing Iran’s religious rulers want to talk about, but they may just have to. An official report has documented the nation’s worst-kept secret: sex of every kind is taking place outside the marital bed in the Islamic Republic. Something, in the ruling ayatollahs’ view, must be done.

An 82-page document recently issued by Iran’s parliamentary research department is stark in its findings. Not only are young adults sexually active, with 80% of unmarried females having boyfriends, but secondary-school pupils are, too. Illicit unions are not just between girls and boys; 17% of the 142,000 students who were surveyed said that they were homosexual.

In Tehran, the capital, long known for its underground sex scene, chastity is plainly becoming less common. The scope and pace of change are challenging the government and posing a headache for the clerics who dispense guidance at Friday prayers.

The report is also a rare official admission of the unspoken accord in Iran: people can do what they want so long as it takes place behind closed doors. Parliament’s researchers, on this occasion, were allowed to say the unsayable.

Their suggestion for stopping unsanctioned sex is remarkably liberal. Instead of seeking to cool the loins of the youngsters altogether, they should be allowed publicly to register their union by using sigheh, an ancient practice in Shia Islam that lets people marry temporarily.

Clerics themselves have long been suspected of being among its biggest beneficiaries, sometimes when they are on extended holy retreats in ancient religious cities such as Qom.

Iran’s media, always wary of being shut down, have played safe by ignoring the report. So have members of parliament. In most official circles, sex in Iran is still too hot to talk about.

Historically, Iran - or Persia as it has been known through most of history - was an advanced culture, something that continued under the Shah.  That all ended when the Islamic extremists overthrew the Shah and brought in a reign of terror that either killed or drove into exile some of the country's best and brightest.  If one wants a glimpse of what America would be under Christofascist rule, Iran offers a good example.  Fundamentalist religion and knowledge/modernity and personal freedoms are mutually exclusive.   It really is that simple.

Anti-Gay Pastor Equates Gays to Child Molesters, Cannibals,and Rapists

There are times that the hideousness and undisguised animus of the self-styled "godly Christian" set is simply numbing and shocks the conscience.  Or at least the consciences of decent moral people.  And it is clear that this animus goes far beyond a mere statement of religious belief.  Indeed, the desire to encourage attacks on and crimes against LGBT citizens is almost palpable.   And like it or not, because of the refusal of what I refer to as the "good Christians" who cower in silence rather than upset the sensibilities of bigots within their denominations, the hate merchants have become the public face of Christianity.  It is no wonder that the younger generations are walking away from institutional Christianity when despicable levels of hate and bigotry seem to be the only visible attributes of the faith.  An anti-gay pastor in Colorado (pictured above left) has once again highlighted what is fast becoming the predominant public face of Christianity in America.  KOAA.com has coverage of the virulent hate being preached from pulpits in El Paso County, Colorado.  Here are highlights:

A local pastor is causing a national stir equating homosexuals to cannibals, child molesters, rapists, and murderers. Pastor David Beuhner of Christ the King Church in northern El Paso County is calling for discrimination against the gay community as state lawmakers revisit marriage equality this session.

"If we embrace homosexuality, we'll destroy society, we'll destroy families, we'll destroy everything. It's not just that God hates homosexuals, there's a reason why he hates it." That's the line causing national outrage from the LGBT community; Pastor David Beuhner took to the airwaves early this month on his radio show 'Generations' in what he says is a last-ditch effort to save our society from falling off the moral cliff.

"If you break natural laws-- you say you don't believe in gravity, you jump off a building, you're gonna die. Homosexuality has consequences and God designed those consequences," Beuhner told News 5's Jacqui Heinrich in an exclusive interview explaining his on-air remarks.

As the Colorado legislature reopens the issue of marriage equality this session, Beuhner is speaking out not just against civil unions, but calling for discrimination against gays, equating them to cannibals, rapists, and child molesters. "The word of god is quite clear. He's destroyed every culture that has embraced homosexuality. The sin is similar to that of cannibalism and child molestation in the sense that it's a sin against society," Beuhner said. "I'm calling for discrimination against adulterers, rapists, murderers, homosexuals. Yes, we must discriminate as a society."

"God's law to the civil magistrate in terms of homosexuality says you should remove the abomination from the land, so that's God's instruction to the people who work up in the capitol who make our laws. That's what they're going to be held accountable for," he said.

Can't you just feel the "love"?  And Beuhner not only proves that he's an asshole and a bigot, but he also shows himself to be an ignorant ass as well when he repeats the Christofascist canard that God has "destroyed every culture that embraced homosexuality."   As this blog has noted before, one of the factors that destroyed the western Roman Empire - most likely the culture Beuhner was referring to -  was Christianity and the Church, not the gays.  And ridiculousness of his claims become even more clear when one considers that the Classical Greek/Roman period lasted five (5) times longer than the period that the United States has existed or the fact that the Persian Empire (before the rise of Islam) lasted over 1,200 years.  And that's just the beginning of the empires that accepted homosexuality.   If one looks at China, which may soon eclipse America, the various dynasties of imperial China lasted over 3,900 years (see the image below) versus America's paltry 237 years of existence.  Not surprisingly, Beuhner's church views the Bible as follows:

We acknowledge the Bible, which includes all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, to be the infallible and inerrant Word of God, sufficient for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Beuhner is an ignorant, bigoted ass and one wonders how his knuckles are a bloody mess dragging on the ground as they must.  Yet his kind of thinking passes for intelligent discourse in today's GOP.  If Christianity is not going to be fated to ultimately die, the "good Christians" need to directly challenge the Beuhners of the world and stop their hijacking of the faith.

Young men sipping tea and having sex. Individual panel from a hand scroll on homosexual themes, paint on silk; China, Qing Dynasty (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries); Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, Indiana, United States

Islamist Gangs Use Internet to Track, Torture and Kill Iraqi Gays

Britain's Guardian has a sickening story on how Islamic gangs are tracking and murdering gay Iraqis - like the murdered young men in the photo above. Meanwhile the U.S. military and the puppet government of Iran do nothing to stop the disgusting slaughter. It truly makes me sick - and again think that religion more often than not is one of the greatest evils on the earth. One also has to wonder about the mindset and sexual identity issues of someone who would track down gays in the manner described in the article. Sadly, this type of hate and murder is the ultimate fruit of religious extremism be it Islamic or Christian. Something needs to be done to stop this horror. Here are highlights from the Guardian:

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Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims. "It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up," he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

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Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi's group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

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The deputy leader of the group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. "Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts," he told the Observer. "We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God's forgiveness before they are killed."

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Homosexuality was not criminalised under Saddam Hussein – indeed Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s was known for its relatively liberated gay scene. Violence against gays started in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003. Since 2004, according to Ali Hali, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group, a London-based human-rights group, a total of 680 have died in Iraq, with at least 70 of those in the past five months. The group believes the figures may be higher, as most cases involving married men are not reported. Seven victims were women. According to Hali, Iraq has become "the worst place for homosexuals on Earth".

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The killings are brutal, with victims ritually tortured. Azhar al-Saeed's son was one. . . . "We found his body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals," she said. "I will carry this image with me until my dying day."

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The irony is that these ignorant Islamic extremist don't realize that in the Persian Empire at the height of its power - which stretched from India to the eastern most Greek Islands - homosexuality was accepted and indeed a number of the emperors had their make lovers and eunuchs. It was not until Christianity and Islam spread across the western and eastern portions of the former empire did homosexuality become condemned. Like Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism needs an ignorant, uninformed population to flourish. As for Iraq, I hope the Chimperator and his Christian Right extremists are happy with the fate of Iraqi gays.