No Gays in Iran’? An Aide Says, Make That ‘Not Many’

[MADem]

October 11, 2007, 9:43 am
‘No Gays in Iran’? An Aide Says, Make That ‘Not Many’
By Mike Nizza



At Columbia University last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earned full-on belly laughs for the kind of sound bite that reporters on the campaign trail only dream about.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” he said. “In Iran, we don’t have this phenomenon.”
Now, a media adviser to Mr. Ahmadinejad tells Reuters that he was misunderstood — that the translator failed to capture the president’s subtle way of speaking:

“What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer. He said that, compared to American society, we don’t have many homosexuals,” Mohammad Kalhor said.
Kalhor told Reuters that because of historical, religious and cultural differences, homosexuality was less common in Iran and the Islamic world than in the West.

Still, the shift from claiming that Iran is 100 percent gay-free to saying it is just less gay than the United States seemed unlikely to quell the criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad, not least because the facts of gay life in Iran have not changed at all. From Nazila Fathi’s sobering article in The New York Times:

Gays are punished by lashing or death if it is proved that they have had homosexual relations. Two gay teenagers were executed in 2005 in Mashad, a northeastern city.
Fear of persecution is so strong that some gay men and lesbians have sought and received asylum in Western countries.
The Iranian Student News Agency reported in 2005 that a lesbian had been killed in prison by other inmates whom, it was alleged, she had forced to have sex with her. Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said in May in an interview on state-run television that the police were looking for men who dressed and looked like homosexuals.

And the media adviser’s explanation belied writings inspired by the Iranian leader’s original claim. “In fact, homosexuality has a particularly rich history in Iran,” Bret Stephens wrote in an Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal. Another column, in the Toledo Blade, offered some details....

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/no-gays-in-iran-an-aide-says-make-that-not-many/index.html?ex=1349841600&en=ae58533243a27789&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[skipos]

1. A DUer who claims to speak Farsi said the original translation is accurate

Maybe they will post here

[MADem]

2. Of COURSE it's accurate--the Midget Mayor is a lying sack of shit.

If you look at the Midget Mayor's website, where the transcription of that appearance is posted in two languages, that whole exchange about gays is ... forgive the expression .... POOOF!!!! DELETED.

Like it never even took place. It's there in ENGLISH, but it's not there in Farsi. After all, the only people who can't handle his truth (so he says, anyway) are his own peeps...

The guy is such a meglomaniaical dipshit, he just can't leave bad enough alone. He just HAS to go back and take another swipe, even as his gaffe was fading from the international mindset. But see, he comes from a place where there's sufficient censorship and illiteracy, and where "Because I SAID SO" actually WORKS in some neighborhoods--so he just HAS to see if he can pull that shit on the world stage.

The idiot doesn't understand how it works in the rest of the world, where facts can actually be challenged. It shows him to be what he is -- a provincial, moronic asshole.