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September 24, 2007
Iran's president, Columbia queers agree
Posted by: Chris
It's always nice when we can bridge the gap between West and East, Judeo-Christian and Muslim, left and right. Thanks to the Columbia University Queer Alliance, we can now say for sure that if you travel far enough left down the ideological spectrum, you'll circle round to the far-far-extremist right.
Columbia Queers, meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It turns out you crazy kids agree on one important point: There's no such thing as an Iranian homosexual.
You may have heard that Ahmadinejad offered that nugget of wisdom when confronted at a Columbia University appearance about his country's long history of abuse, including arrest, brutality and even capital punishment, for gays.
"We don't have homosexuals" in Iran, he said in response. "I don't know who told you we had it."
Well it certainly didn't come from Columbia's uber-progressive queer student group, who previewed Admadinejad's visit with a warning -- not to the "petty dictator," as Columbia University President Lee Bolinger memorably referred to him -- but to the rest of us:
We would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay," "lesbian," or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.
There you have it, the radicals of the left tolerating even the most brutal forms of intoleranceon the right. It's bad enough that "scholars of sexuality in the Middle East" are, like the Iranian president, so anti-West and anti-gay that they would write us out of existence. But it's downright depressing to see bright young minds so tortured by self-hatred for their own culture than they buy into the bullshit.
There are gay people in Iran. Just ask Pegah Emambakhsh.
For a complete gay news summary on Iran, click or bookmark: http://gaynewswatch.com/iran
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Comments
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I was once told that people in bible times didn't get as drunk as we do because their wine was weaker. (really at a seven day wedding party?) Also people in the past didn't get as high smoking weed.
Both patently false even on the surface, but the line is actually from Joe Solomenese as well, so I'm sure they will get a cookie and a pat on the head for proper parroting. All the gays at weddings in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran will be glad to know that they aren't really gay and that their weddings are shams. I thought they were against affected attitudes of moral superiority? Brown gays don't count!HRC hates middle eastern gays!! heh
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Actually ...
First of all please do not use the phrase "patently false even on the surface" unless you have actually have done research.
Wine: has a natural peak alcoholic level due to the balance between the processing microbes and alcohol. Wine is slightly stronger and more consistent today than in the past due to "fancy science". Also most non-barbaric peoples of old diluted their wine 1 part to 3 parts water. So yes it was much harder to get drunk if one drank wine properly.Cannabis: modern cultivation methods have made it possible to create far stronger concentrations of THC than what was regularly growing in days of yore. Also lack of cultivation would mean that plants could be pollinated and pollinated cannabis plants have reduced levels of THC. So yes it is possible that people in the olden days had weaker "hits" than todays college students.
Oh and the very argument that you have all so gleefully missed really does play the significance between same-sex desires or inclinations and the cultural construct of that is the word "gay." No reasonable historian would argue that same-sex desires are a modern "western" idea but it is often argued that how each society has interpreted those desires has differed from time to time.
The comments to this entry are closed.
dstavro on Sep 25, 2007 2:51:48 AM:
I wonder how Ahmadinejad's comments registered with the American Christian fundalmentalists? Hopefully their hatred for Islam is greater than their hatred for homosexuals. Perhaps they will see some similarities between their actions and Iran's.
I hope the Gay and Lesbian Task Force is all over Colubia's ass. I experienced this same attitude in university. I almost died when my professor told me that the ancient Greek's actions cannot be considered homosexual behavior because "times were different back then"