Embrace civilization
We need not be all homosexuals to think seriously about homosexuals and consider them as ordinary citizens

Ahmad Nikoobin
July 26, 2005
iranian.com

Yesterday, in a Barcelona suburb the mayor pronounced two young women married. In Canada a young homosexual couple got married. Same story in the Netherlands. And in Belgium, Noel Mamere the Green mayor of Begeles, a small town near Bordeaux, Gironde, France, declare a young homosexual couple legally married.

Meanwhile in Mashhad two young men were hung because they committed a homosexual act.

Here we are. The civilized world has jumped forward, differences are accepted, and even those who do not understand the differences are tolerant enough to accept reality. Racism and xenophobia are outlawed in most of civilized countries. Every day a new civilized society joins the camp of those who accept all forms of personal differences.

By contrast, Islamic religious savages have aggressively started their opposition to any progress. Differences are not tolerated. Homosexuals are hung or thrown from minarets and prostitutes are stoned to death. Fanatic Jews or Christians are no better. Orthodox Jews persecute homosexuals and Catholics led by the Pope, bishops and cardinals profoundly regret that they can not re-establish Medieval torture chambers for infidels.

Indeed, our world is contradictory. The gap between progressive people and the reactionary ones is increasing. What happens in one given place in the world cannot even be imagined in somewhere else.

Ask a Swede about hanging homosexuals in Iran. He or she will not understand your question. On the other side of the world, ask a mullah about marriage between homosexual couples in the civilized world. He will not be able to imagine it. To him a homosexual is a sinner and must be killed (unless the homosexual is the mullah himself). Killing infidels helps to frighten everybody: "Hm? you do not want to accept us? You do not want to be like us? You do not want to accept our rectionary laws? We will kill you."

When Nazis massacred defenseless Jews, they united the German people around the most aggressive, reactionary ideas to hide their real aims, which was extending German influence in a wider region of the world, by attacking the weakest social link, the hated Jews first. The mullahs (all of them agree on social repression; there is no difference between Khamenei, Rafsanjani or Khatami) also rose to power by killing the weakest, those who are different, to silence opposing voices.

These days, they have once again stepped up their killings, to try to frighten the Iranian people as they are threatened by strong social movements in different parts of the country:

- The people of Mahabad in Kurdistan Province are restless. They will not give up against the atrocities committed in their city.

- The textile workers of Kashan have walked to the capital to demand salaries which they have not received fully for the last four years.

- Students have had enough of the situation.

- Mahshahr workers in the south are strongly pushing for a minimum wage of 450,000 toman per month.

- Women no longer accept a system which uses acid as an offensive tool. They have had enough, they want to live under 21st century rules, they have had enough of reactionary Islam.

- Political prisoners are on hunger strike, they seek freedom of speech.

The Islamic regime is going to be toppled soon (soon on a social scale). We need to propose alternatives. There are surely going to be many alternatives, at least I hope so.

For the progressive Iranian, any alternative must have a clear position on basic human rights. Any progressive alternative must have an opinion about capital punishment, women's and minority rights. Any group supporting repressive measures against minorities, have no place in the upcoming progressive Iranian society.

We need not be all homosexuals to think seriously about homosexuals and consider them as ordinary citizens with equal rights to any other ordinary citizen. I am not homosexual; I do not even understand those who are. But I surely think they are like any other people and have the same rights.

Let's free ourselves of all our reactionary traditions. Let's build a modern society with progressive traditions, progressive human beings, an Iran which is going to be on the tip of human progress. That is what we must fight for.