In response to Jahanshah Javid’s “Gay Times” blog. I will be performing with Tissa Hami, Amir Malekpour and Max Amini in “There are no Gays in Iran” night of comedy in San Francisco on March 12.
The issue isn’t whether homosexuality is right or wrong. The issue, rather, is where does any one person find the delusional authority to limit or call for the limitation of the civil liberties of consenting adults? Should I elect to dress as a chicken for the rest of my days, feathered from eyelashes to balls, and host the filthiest soirees at my apartment where I wag my fowl penis at an enclave of cognizant, excited and willing masturbating geriatric patients, then more power to me. If that is, at the end of the day, what my soul needs, then I fulfill my life’s calling to see it actualized. We should all be so lucky.
With regard to pedophilia, the distinction MUST be made clear that it is a crime of power and fear and a crime that exploits the presence of mind of a sexually immature life.
Before we go persecuting homosexual men, it should be mentioned that 80% of molestation sex crimes are committed against girls. Additionally, in 1992, the Children’s Hospital of Denver did a thorough analysis of all the child molestation cases that passed through its doors for a year. They found that of the 269 reported incidents, only TWO of the perpetrators could be identified as gay or lesbian. This placed the incidence rate for adult homosexuals committing acts of pedophilia between 1 and 3.1% and the likelihood that such an act would be carried out by a heterosexual male or family member was 100 times greater. (Carole Jenny, Tom Roesler, and Kimberly Poyer, “Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?,” Pediatrics, 94(1), July 1994, pp. 41-44)
I think the greatest source of harm in this world comes in the making wrong of natural urges. Repression is a cancer to the spirit. When you pressure people into the suppression of their consensual sexual inclinations and create a culture where they are trained, at a very early age, to judge, compartmentalize and feel shame for impulses that can not be empirically demonstrated as moral or immoral, you create a fertile bed for self-hatred, confusion and, in a great many cases, violence and abuse. What is missing in these cases, and in almost all arguments about homosexuality, is the fostering of mutual respect, compassion and understanding for what is fundamentally human. Conversation isn’t being had. There is no safety or trustworthiness being created to encourage essential candor that could facilitate a healthier, more informed dialogue about sexuality in general. Questions aren’t being asked. Impacts are not being objectively assessed. Nothing is kind, polite, sophisticated, scholarly or wise. It is all blanket assertion, superiority and condemnation. This is, in a word, unintelligent.
What’s nasty in the above post is that Jahanshah is being called homosexual in a disparaging way. As if the very state of being homosexual is fundamentally pejorative. When we take a step back, we can see that any and all sexuality could ostensibly be criminalized– and not too long ago in our own history, it almost all was. Think of the picture from Abu Ghraib where the female soldier was mockingly pointing at a hooded and shackled inmate’s genitals. That could be any of us. What if we did the opposite? What if, instead of shaming eachother, we created a realm of possibility where no one had to feel shame for their sexual selves? What if, instead, we pointed and laughed at the people who felt the need to belittle others? They’re really not so tough. Rather, their weakness and shame is transparent. Seriously, how disastrous must their own sex lives be that they feel compelled to label other people’s sex and sexuality as indecent? I promise you, their sex lives are awful. Happy, sexually actualized, sex-positive people don’t run around condemning people. They’re too busy living happy lives.
Take me, for example. I have terrible sex and I took the time to write this commentary. Seriously, gay or not, my sex life needs improvement. Any takers? Men only need apply.
Love, Mehran
