The Iranian government may be hunting more gay teens after publicly executing two boys for having sex with each other last week.
According to human rights activists, police officials are searching for three boys connected with the "crimes" of Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, who were hanged last week.
That's not exactly news to wake up to.
It's shocking, isn't it? I mean, really, truly shocking. Teens jailed, beaten, tortured, executed? For fooling around? And there's likely more to come? I don't even know where to begin. For something to knock the words out of me these days--well, that's pretty rare.
Of course, if I were a better informed fag, I'd have heard about this last week when the story first broke. As it is, I'm sitting here before 7:00am, before my second cup of coffee, trying to make sense of it alongside a dozen other week-old headlines. And all I keep coming up with are questions:
- In Death of a Princess, it's said that to carry out a conviction of adultery under Islamic law, a defendant has to admit his/her crime three times in court. Apparently, a conviction for sodomy is just as difficult to obtain, since the defendant must confess his crime to authorities four times, or it must be documented by four righteous men. So were these boys coerced into confessions? Or did they blithely admit their acts, unaware of the consequences? Or were their admissions an act of defiance? Or were they blindsided by four former friends?
- If the boys were convicted on the word of others, what could they have done to merit such retribution? Did they piss off the wrong person by doing something kinda cruel, as teenagers are often wont to do?
- Could the execution have been simply a way of saving face? The boys were initially charged with raping a 13-year-old boy, but all sources seem to agree that those were false accusations intended to make the conviction more palatable to the public. What if the rape conviction came first, and then, when proven baseless, the authorities found themselves needing a way out?
- The relatively small chorus of protests--which has included the European Union and Iran's own Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi but not the US or, as far as I can tell, even Amnesty International --has relied almost exclusively on the argument that children under 18 shouldn't be executed. Apart from gay rights groups, no one has mentioned the issue of homosexuality and human rights. That's probably a tactical thing, done with the understanding that people are more likely to feel sympathy for innocent children than innocent sodomites. But still, you'd think someone might mention it.
- What's the rationale behind making Iran's age of "criminal responsibility" (i.e. the age at which individuals can be tried and sentenced as adults) 15 for boys but only 9 for girls?
- How many right wingers are going to take the opportunity to say, "See what you'd be facing over there, you dirty fag? Shut up and be happy with what you've got."
- Given my childhood (and adult) penchant for precocity, how long would I have lasted in Iran (or Saudi Arabia or Sudan or Jordan)?
Anyone?
