r/iran • u/_flac Safavi Dynasty • Jun 12 '15

Greetings /r/Italy, today we are hosting /r/Italy for a cultural exchange! [12-13 June]

Welcome Italian friends to the exchange!

Today we are hosting our friends from /r/Italy. Please come and join us and answer their questions about Iran and the Iranian way of life! Please leave top comments for /r/Italy users coming over with a question or comment and please refrain from trolling, rudeness and personal attacks etc. Moderation outside of the rules may take place as to not spoil this friendly exchange. The reddiquette applies and will be moderated in this thread. /r/Italy is also having us over as guests! Stop by here to ask questions.

Enjoy!

The moderators of /r/Italy & /r/Iran

47 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

257 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

What are your opinions on homosexuality and LGBT rights? And what do you think about this issue in your country?

10

u/f16falcon95 Mordecai Ben Gureh babat! Jun 12 '15

Almost everyone on this subreddit agrees that killing Gays is wrong. Among those, a few accept gays and some agree to conversion therapy.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

Are there conversion therapies? How do they work? I've read somewhere that the goverment pay to surgically change gender to gay people, I hope you're not referring to that.

8

u/f16falcon95 Mordecai Ben Gureh babat! Jun 12 '15

I don't know whether they exist or not, because I have not lived in Iran for a long time, but Iran does have Opium and Alcohol rehab centres. Therefore, conversion therapy is also a correct way.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Ok. I just don't understand how homosexuality could be considered as harmful as opium addiction or alcoholism, and "cured" in some rehab centre

4

u/f16falcon95 Mordecai Ben Gureh babat! Jun 12 '15

There are Iranians that believe that Homosexuality is a genetic problem and the way to cure it is through rehabilitation, the same way you would treat someone with Autism. It's not harmful, it's just badly looked upon and shameful for our society.

Opium and Alcohol are also part of the shameful parts of our society, hence I mentioned them.

In Islamic Republic Iran, Men are often looked upon as the "Man of the house" where they have to look after everything, and the idea that gay men look and perform like Women is looked down upon for older generations. Yes, Women in Iran are doing a great job at being better than Men in Iran, but we have been wired to think like this for a long time.

I can't speak for youth, though. 65% of Iranians are younger than 35 and they are liberal. I haven't lived in Iran for long enough to tell you whether the youth in Iran accept gays as they are.

1

u/derintellectual Jun 12 '15

Yes, Women in Iran are doing a great job at being better than Men in Iran, but we have been wired to think like this for a long time.

What makes you say this?

2

u/f16falcon95 Mordecai Ben Gureh babat! Jun 13 '15

My wisdom and my experience.

8

u/tinlizzey12 Jun 12 '15

The claim that Iran goes around hanging gays is bullshit, but Iranian society still considers homosexuality to be a perversion and shameful. Homosexuals get a red mark on their military exemption record, for example. On the other hand, its not as if homosexuality was something new-- it is mostly dismissed with a smirk. Imagine the 1950s.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

We've heard a lot of gay people sentenced to death, even recently. You're telling me this is all bullshit?

14

u/tinlizzey12 Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

You actually haven't heard "a lot" -- youi've heard the same story repeated over and over again, embellished and promoted some more. The Iranian exile dissidents who promoted this claim, found a willing and credulous audience in gay-rights advocates, right about when "Pink washing" became a thing.

This is what the Human Rights Watch monitor has to say about the allegations

For eight months, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has researched a report on abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Iran, interviewing dozens in Iran and the diaspora, trying to separate fact from rhetoric and rumor. As a prominent Iranian dissident said last week, 'We need cases!' documentation, not speculation. When pictures of two young men hanged in the Iranian city of Mashhad circulated in July 2005, revulsion rode with them around the world. Doug Ireland began a campaign in Gay City News to prove that the Mashhad case was one of consensual homosexual sex, and that the Ahmadinejad regime was carrying out a 'massive pogrom,' an 'intensifying crackdown.' His reporting was deeply irresponsible. His claims about Mashhad relied entirely on second-hand sources. Ireland never confirmed those reports. No one has. His main source hasn’t shared information directly, even with the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization. Ireland proclaimed the rape charges 'refuted.' If we want to challenge Iran’s government, we need facts. There is enough proof of torture and repression that we can do without claims of 'pogroms.' If we want to act, we need a goal. That means listening to Iranian dissidents, straight and gay. http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/files/DebatingIran.pdf

Being gay in Iran is not illegal, sodomy is. And to prove sodomy, you have to have 4 eyewitnesses. Who also have to explain why they were looking.

11

u/italianjob17 Italia Jun 12 '15

And to prove sodomy, you have to have 4 eyewitnesses. Who also have to explain why they were looking.

I bet there aren't many claimed cases of sodomy, aint' it?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '15

Being gay in Iran is not illegal, sodomy is.

So being gay is not illegal but behaving like a gay person with a normal human sex drive would is illegal.

Ok.

1

u/tinlizzey12 Jun 13 '15

Yes.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '15

So there's truth to the "pinkwashing", I see.

-1

u/tinlizzey12 Jun 13 '15

Pink washing is not about fighting discrimination, it is about exploiting discrimination.

1

u/Beatut Jun 14 '15

Correct, actually I have seen the same photo of hanged people with different captions under the photo: Some Iranian diaspora posts the photos and claim the victims are homosexuals. (Anti-Iranian / Anti-Shia) Arabs distribute the same photo in social media claiming that the victims are Sunni Arabs, and so forth. The same photo is used by different groups to give their audience (west, arab jihadists, separatists) different messages.

3

u/f16falcon95 Mordecai Ben Gureh babat! Jun 12 '15

The Iranian media sometimes likes to Exaggerate to scare its people. Sometimes, they show people that are hanged because of drugs and in the newspapers say that they were hanged for being gay.

The western media also likes to do the same to scare its people away from Iran.

What you can expect for sure is prison time.

3

u/Nmathmaster123 ايرانستان Jun 12 '15

yes we are

The government has bigger problems to worry about. If they actually hanged gays and media wasn't blowing shit out of proportion people wouldn't be going to military physicians to get their military exemption on grounds of their sexual orientation. . .

1

u/thevorminatheria Jun 13 '15

has this always been the case? maybe at the time of the Shah the cultural view of homesexuality was less controversial?

3

u/tinlizzey12 Jun 13 '15

I don't know about the laws but certainly Iranians society back then considered homosexuality as deviant THis isn't a government-forced measure on a disagreeable population. Iranian society does not consider homosexuality to be "normal"

1

u/Beatut Jun 14 '15

Please check this interview in the New York Times, it also explains that there is actually no law against homosexuals. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/middleeast/questions-about-iran-ask-our-man-in-tehran.html?_r=0