IGF CultureWatch

Since I wrote an earlier column about the persecution of gays in many foreign countries, there have been several more news stories about the plight of gays abroad-in Eastern Europe, in Africa, in portions of Latin America, but particularly in the Muslim theocracies of the Middle East-Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Amazingly, these stories have been accompanied by stories about the refusal of several more civilized nations to grant asylum to gay refugees from those countries because officials refuse to acknowledge that gays are persecuted in other countries. In other words, on no justifiable grounds at all.

Item: "Death squads" of religious militants hunt down men believed to be gays in Iraq and Iran and kill them, first torturing them to force them to reveal the names of other gay men they know.

Item: Just six months ago, speaking at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied that there are homosexuals in Iran. The translation of his remarks was questioned, but no alternate version was ever issued, suggesting that the initial version was substantially correct.

But Dr. Janet Afary argues in a forthcoming book on homosexuality in Iran that Iran has a long history of quietly accepted gay relationships well documented in European and Persian sources. However, she says, the current Iranian government has been actively pursuing, entrapping, and prosecuting gays on grounds such as rape and sex with underage partners, offenses they think will generate greater support.

Several instances have surfaced in recent months of young gay men who were murdered by the government on grounds of rape and underage sex that local gays said were completely without merit but were trumped up to sell the legitimacy of the executions in the West.

Item: Information has come out of Iran that gay men are being offered the option-if they wish to continue having sex with men-of transsexual surgery: having their male genitals removed, being given female hormones, and having other surgery to make them resemble women. Some gay men, feeling that they have no choice, are apparently taking the government up on this offer. Iran is reported to have one of the highest rates of transsexual surgery in the world.

Item: I recently quoted in this column one of my correspondents who said that his taxi driver commented, "In my country they kill gays." Alas, my correspondent did not ask what country that was, but it could have been any one of several in Africa or the Middle East.

Item: 19-year-old gay Iranian Mehdi Kazemi, studying in England, applied for asylum after he learned that his former lover had been tortured and executed in Iran, naming Kazemi as his partner. Denied asylum by British authorities, he fled to several other countries, ending in the Netherlands, which deported him back to England.

After significant protests including demonstrations in London, protests by left wing and gay activist groups in Italy and Britain, a supportive resolution by the European Parliament and dozens of members of the British House of Lords, the British foreign office agreed to review its earlier decision to refuse asylum. Its decision is said to be pending.

As prominent British gay activist Peter Tatchell pointed out during the Kazemi protests, "Gay men in Iran are hanged from public cranes using the barbaric method of slow strangulation, which is deliberately designed to cause maximum suffering."

What can we here in the U.S. do to help change the situation? I suppose the most important thing is to become as informed as possible. Much of the information I have presented here I have learned not through the mainstream U.S. press but through the press releases of Peter Tatchell of the British activist group OutRage, the valuable reporting of Doug Ireland in New York's weekly Gay City News, and the "Euroqueer" and recently-formed "Gays Without Borders" Internet listservs, which anyone can join.

My view is that people who understand the situation will think of things they can do to help, whether it is finding ways to pressure foreign governments or even the U.S.'s own State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service which seems just short of homophobic.

The action might be writing letters to appropriate government figures or protests outside foreign embassies and legations. Gays and lesbians who are politically active can bring the issue to the attention of their favorite official or candidate. Letters to newspapers always have value. The more noise we can make on these issues, the better.