Iranian Gays Coming Out on Facebook

The recent reported executions of three gay men in Iran took place against a backdrop of protest: Gay Iranians are emerging from the closet, at least on Facebook, reported British newspaper the Guardian on Sept. 11.

"A group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians have posted videos of themselves on Facebook in a campaign to highlight the discrimination against sexual minorities in Iran where homosexuals are put to death," the Guardian reported.

"Hundreds of Iranians in and outside the country have joined a Facebook page, called 'We Are Everywhere,' which encourages members to share their personal stories online," the article continued. "Members of the campaign in Iran have posted audio messages or videos which do not reveal their identity while some outside talked about their sexual orientation freely."

Because the regime in Iran follows an interpretation of Islamic sharia law that punishes homosexuality with death, gay Iranians must be cautious when coming out on Facebook, both for their own sakes and that of their families, which might face social disgrace. Even gays who have left the country speak out with care.

The means by which some chose to tell their stories included some novel and ingenious ones. In one man's case, his story was written on paper towels that he then unrolled before the lens of a video camera. The footage communicated his words without revealing his face or his voice.

"I am an Iranian gay," the scrawled account read. "I fear to show my real face, I fled Iran, I escaped from my own family, I was driven away from my country. Now, I am a gay refugee in Turkey and count the days, we are everywhere."

The newspaper account noted that Turkey is one place of refuge for gay Iranians. Others go to Canada. A film by Parvez Sharma, "A Jihad for Love," recounted the stories of a handful of gay Iranian refugees in the context of looking into gay Muslim lives in a number of nations.

"One of the things I always say -- and I have said it on my Web site, I've said it on my blog -- is that, for me, the central concept in the making of the film is that we are Islam's most unlikely storytellers, and the silence that has surrounded our lives had been extremely loud," Sharma told EDGE in a 2008 interview.

"We need to demolish that silence, and we need to start staking claims, as Muslims, to our own religion, and finding the space in all the discourses of violence that surround Islam right now" in order to offer another vision. Sharma said.

The international community responded at the Facebook page with words of encouragement.

"You are brave and amazing," wrote one well wisher. "We sign lots of petitions here in Australia in your support and we really care and appreciate what you are doing."

"Lots of love, support and PRIDE from Scotland," another posted.

Others posted greetings from Germany, Greece, Spain, and the United States.

"Stand up for your rights," one supporter wrote. "There are many people out there that support you and stand beside you in this."

Though anti-gay religious bias is deeply rooted in Islam, a growing movement seeks to counter animus in the Islamic faith community both socially and scripturally.

In the Old Testament, angels looking to see whether there were any just men in the city of Sodom visited Lot. When a gang of men appeared at Lot's door demanding that he surrender his visitors so that the mob could rape them, Lot offered the gang his own daughters instead; but the mob insisted that the visitors be handed over.

This is one of the Biblical passages that fundamentalists and anti-gay Christians point to when they condemn gay people for their sexuality. But the story appears in the Qur'an also, which is the holy book for Muslims. The Muslim prohibition against gay relationships is drawn from that scriptural episode. A gay Muslim scholar living in Canada told the press last year that the passage does not condemn gays at all. Rather, he argued, the passage condemns sexual assault. Committed same-sex relationships based on love, and the people united in those relationships, should not be shunned by the faithful, but embraced as part of the community.

But Dubai-born Canadian scholar Junaid Bin Jahangir, 32, found his new interpretation a hard sell, despite his years of careful research and study. The young scholar has made it his vocation to understand the Muslim injunction against gays, and correct what he says is a misinterpretation of scripture. His efforts bore fruit with his contribution to new book, "Islam and Homosexuality," a project edited by prominent Australian scholar Samar Habib that collects essays from contributors around the world.

Speaking Truths to Extremely Prejudiced Powers

Jahangir's thesis may be an enlightening one, but the man himself feels a need to shun the limelight. Much as their Christian counterparts, anti-gay Islamic clerics dismiss gays as sinners, and some call for their deaths. Jahangir will not permit his photograph to be published in the media for fear that he might be targeted for violent reprisal.

Even his fellow academics have shunned the scholar and his thesis that not only are gay relationships permitted under his interpretation of scripture, but they should be accorded equal status with heterosexual families.

"The apathy is unbelievable," Jahangir told the Canadian press. "How many more marriages do we want to fail as we pretend this doesn't exist?"

Sharma voiced similar thoughts to EDGE.

"In the Qu'ran, and in the teachings of Mohammed himself there is [reference] to the greater jihad, and the greater jihad is always struggle with the self, which is what is pointed out in the film," he noted. "What is happening for all of us, whether we live Muslim countries, or whether we live in America, is this critical choice that we need to make at this time, which is, 'Are we going to choose the language of violence and oppression that a small minority speaks for, or are we going to claim the concepts that are inherent in our religion which talk about compassion, which talk about love, which talk about understanding?'

"And this is extremely challenging. The people who are daring to speak out about this greater jihad are the ones who are going to take the discussion about Islam in a profoundly different direction."

But in Iran, the government remains steadfastly anti-gay. A Sept. 7 article in British newspaper the Independent reported that three gay men had been hanged by Iranian authorities several days beforehand. But details, and even verification that the men had indeed been gay, were hard to obtain.

Intense stigma surrounds the issue of homosexuality, the article noted, and families are usually reluctant to speak out when a relative is killed by authorities for being gay.

The newspaper's account was drawn from a story carried by the government-run Iranian Students' News Agency. The names of the three gay men were not revealed. The Iranian news source "quoted Abdolhamid Amanat, an official at the prosecutor office in Khuzestan Province, as the source of the announcement" regarding the killing of the three gay men, reported The Prophecy Blog on Sept. 8.

The Iranian legal system often cloaks the executions of gay men in charges of rape, or "coercive sodomy," the Independent article said, noting that the executions of two teenaged boys, one 16 and the other 18, that sparked an international outcry in 2005 had been carried out after the boys were convicted of coercive sodomy.

But that was not the case with regard to the three purportedly gay men. The courts convicted them of sodomy, but with no charge of coercion. Under Iran's interpretation of Sharia law, even consensual sex between people of the same gender is punishable by death.

"Iranian authorities have previously presented such cases as rape, in order to make the execution more acceptable and to avoid too much international attention, but this time the news is not presented as rape," noted Iran Human Rights' Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

"This case is the only one in recent years where the only basis for the death sentence has been a sexual relationship between two men, with reference to the articles 108 and 110 of the Islamic Penal Code," Amiry-Moghaddam, who has been looking into news of the executions, told the Independent. "These articles are very clear."

"Section 108 defines sodomy under Iran's interpretation of Sharia law and the latter rules that the punishment for lavat (sodomy) is death," the Independent article noted.

"The three were judged in the revolutionary court of Ahwaz city, section 17 (behind closed doors)," a Sept. 7 article at GayMiddleEast.com reported. "The ruling was approved by Section 14 of the Iranian Supreme Court. At this point we do not know if the courts allowed proper legal representation."

The report that the three men were executed under charges of gay sex might well be true, but that does not mean the men actually had sex or were even gay, noted Ahwazi Arab Solidarity Network's Daniel Brett.

"Sometimes these charges are leveled at members of families who are involved in commercial or land disputes with families with a modicum of political influence," Brett said.