Petrelis Files

What's The Latest News on Gays in Iran?

Be sure to get up to date on the latest developments about gays in Iran and the problems they face. Read this report from veteran leftie gay journalist Doug Ireland on Mike Rogers' queer news site, PageOneQ.com.

And also check out Ireland's intelligent and respectful response to Paula Ettelbrick of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and her lame essay on Iran's gays and IGLHRC's laziness.

Finally, look over a good opinion column appearing in the current issue of Boston's gay newsweekly.

From Bay Windows' September 29 edition:

Death of activism
Where's the outrage over Iran's treatment of gays?
By Laura Kiritsy

Despite coming on the heels of the international furor
raised by the July hangings of two Iranian teens accused of engaging in
homosexual sex, the story of a 22-year-old man having been imprisoned and
tortured by Iran's Interior Ministry because he is gay has generated little
reaction in the LGBT community).

Perhaps it's in part because Amir lived to tell the tale,
unlike the hanging victims, Mahmoud Asgari, who was just 16, and Ayaz
Marhoni, who was 18. Their July 19 executions in a public square in Mashhad
were depicted in a series of chilling photographs, the first of which showed
them handcuffed to one another inside the rear of a barred vehicle tearfully
speaking with reporters; another depicted them being led away in blindfolds
by authorities, one of whom is wearing a black ski mask; the third and final
photo shows two hooded figures literally tightening the nooses around the
still-blind folded youths necks. Just as the brutal murder of Matthew
Shepard - who was beaten beyond recognition, tied to a fence on a Wyoming
prairie and left for dead by a pair of gay bashers - captured the public's
imagination, so too did the images of Asgari and Marhoni, going to their
deaths for allegedly engaging in gay sex acts.

The response was most notable in the blogosphere, where
LGBT folks as ideologically diverse as San Francisco rabble rouser Michael
Petrelis and conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan both denounced the
hangings on their respective Web sites. Petrelis, in typical fashion, called
for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to condemn "Iran's stupidity" and
urged others to follow his lead in contacting Rice's office and ask that she
condemn the killings. (The State Department declined to do so.) [snip]