I’ve read about this before, but yesterday I came across this account of two Iranian men, one a successful businessman and the other a university student, now living in destitution in Turkey and trying to get refugee status from the United Nations in order to be resettled in the West. Islamic sharia law in some countries prescribes the death penalty for gays and lesbians.
Just two years ago, Arash and Javad (not their real names), two young Iranian men were building their future together. Arash was pursuing a successful career in Iran’s financial sector and Javad was a university student in Tehran. Now the men live in abject poverty in a remote area of Turkey. They have no income and are frequently forced to scavenge for food in their neighbors’ trashcans. Javad, a diabetic, needs regular monitoring and medication, which he cannot afford. His health has deteriorated to the point where he regularly suffers diabetic comas.
How did two young, upwardly mobile Iranians end up in such dire circumstances? The answer to this question is simple. Arash and Javad are gay men forced to flee their country as refugees. According to the Iranian penal code, homosexual conduct is a crime that is punishable by death.
Read the rest of the story here.
This is what I don’t get, why aren’t national and international organizations which defend gay and lesbian rights speaking out more forcefully about Islam’s persecution of people for their sexual orientation. It’s just like the women’s groups, such as NOW, remaining silent on the abuses of women and girls. The silence about Islamic honor killings, female genital mutilation and forced marriages of young girls to old men is deafening.
There are only two possible answers. Either the groups are chicken to speak out or somehow they have it in their collective heads that criticism of anything relating to Islam is somehow racist and something that right-wingers do and so they let terrible abuses continue without comment. Shame on you!