[lbo-talk] Iran - International Protests Against HomophobicPersecution

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Thu Jun 29 09:22:06 PDT 2006


On 6/29/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> That's one of the reasons I'm trying to learn the
> Persian language,
> and more of us should also, so we can at least
> diversify our sources
> beyond Iranian exiles and Western human rights orgs
> and actually be
> able to listen to what diverse sorts of Iranians are
> saying.
> ---
>
> Abso-friggin-lutely. It is well-nigh impossible for a
> person that does not speak a country's language to
> know much of anything about that country. They have
> access to about .0001% of the necessary data.

Ideally, I should also learn the other languages spoken in Iran as well, Iran being a nation of minorities, of which Persians barely constitute 50%, but I'll never get around to that.

The two executed young men, whose story Peter Tatchell is recycling, were of an Arab minority from the southwestern province of Khuzestan (the major oil-producing region of Iran, devastated during the Iran-Iraq war). It may very well be the case that the severity of the sentence had something to do with their class, ethnicity, and provinciality, rather than the sexual identity that Westerners attribute to them (which the executed young men did not claim themselves). Outside the West and outside the middle-strata enclaves of urban centers in the non-West, it is not common for men and women to claim and assume sexual identities as gay men and lesbians, even when they have same-sex affairs and relations.

Peter Tatchell, btw, is pursuing regime change in Iran. It is inadvisable for those outside Iran -- let alone those in the UK and the US -- to champion GLBT rights _and_ promote regime change at the same time. It's against the interests of the minority of urban Iranians who _do_ claim GLBT identities and want to fight for their rights there, for their cause gets associated with regime change in the eyes of the government.

It should be also noted that Tatchell is opposed to QUIT! <http://quitpalestine.org/> when it comes to whether to boycott "WorldPride: Love without [sic] Borders" in Jerusalem.

QUIT!: <http://boycottworldpride.org/> Tatchell: <http://www.petertatchell.net/international/worldprideboycott.htm>

Tatchell is always looking for a government outside the West that needs to be sanctioned, overthrown, etc. on account of human rights violations. . . except Israel. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list