Naming and Shaming

The American GLBT community outs Iran’s homophobic murders.

By Tim Fernholz, Georgetown University

LGBT Americans have plenty of problems: They can’t marry the people they love; they’re often discriminated against. But compared with much of the rest of the world, they’re sitting pretty. In countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many others, gay people face more than discrimination: They are often executed by their own governments. In an effort to bring more attention to these killings, gay activists around the world held vigils on July 19, the first anniversary of the execution of two gay teens in Iran.

The two teenagers were hung in Iran simply for the crime of being gay, though some confusion exists around the situation. The Iranian government argues that the two had raped a 13-year old boy, though numerous journalists dispute the Iranian statement. Reports say that more than 4,000 gays have been executed in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Anderson speaks at Thursday’s rally

In Washington, Rob Anderson, who just completed a year as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic magazine organized a rally in Dupont Circle, the geographical center of D.C.’s gay community, to remember the two boys and urge Americans – and LGBT Americans in particular – to recognize and challenge this problem. Similar rallies took place in 26 cities across the world , including New York, Vienna, Moscow and, of course, Provincetown, after gay activists and writers like Mike Petrelis and Andrew Sullivan promoted the event on their blogs.

 
Over the course of the D.C. rally, 60 people came to light candles, sign a petition, hear speeches and send personal messages to underground gay organizations in Iran. A leader from the Gay and Lesbian Activist Association read a letter from a 24-year old gay Iranian involved in an underground LGBT organization, asking for the support and attention of LGBT people in more tolerant countries. "You have festivals, we have prisons," he wrote.

The event attracted members of the GLBT community, allies, Iranians – and controversy

Ahoura Afshar, a gay Iranian who lives in D.C. and attended the event with a homemade Iranian flag, told me he was happy that the event was taking place because it "brought attention to an issue that people don’t think much about." But he hopes that those involved won’t stop at calling attention to the issue, and instead work constructively to encourage more human rights oversight in Iran. "I don’t think that naming and shaming is going to work with Iran."

 
A less positive note were two counter-protestors who arrived bearing signs with the legend "Dear Gay Neocons, please do not represent me! Queer Iranians." Despite the fact that one of the express purposes of the rally (as advertised on handouts and in newspapers) was opposition to foreign military intervention in Iran, because it would cause even Iranian youth and reformers to rally around the flag and setback the cause of liberalization, the counter-protestors felt that the event could offer legitimacy to those who might support force in Iran.

One, Sima Shakhsari, said that she opposed the rally because Sullivan, a well-known conservative, helped promote the event, and because the pictures of the two boys being executed were graphic and failed to distinguish between the Iranian people and the Iranian government. Shakhsari opposed the "methods" being used at the rally, and said she wanted the voices of more Iranians represented, even though Iranian gay groups supported the rally and several gay Iranians attended.

Ahoura Afshar waves a homemade Iranian flag—one that is much friendler to LGBT Iranians

This characteristic among some on the left – an unwillingness to condemn evils around the world out of political correctness, or fear of making common cause with those who disagree on another issue, like military interventionism – is a weakness that makes progressives seem, with some justification, as appeasers who lack commitment to the universal applicability of liberal values. Advocating change is different from advocating violence; it is our duty as global progressives to condemn not only evils in our own country – our own anti-gay discrimination, our own use of the death penalty – but also those acts that offend human sensibility across the globe.

 
"Many countries around the world need to be told that being gay is not a crime," Anderson told the attendees. " Iran, yes, but also Poland and Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iraq. We have the right to speak up. We have the ability to organize. … Do we have the will? And do we care enough about or brothers and sisters abroad?"

 
Photos: Elvert Barnes

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