Religious Left

1/23/2009 - 1 hr GayTalk at 9 AM (PST). Call in during the live show (347) 237-5246 otherwise call voicemail at (360) 283-5052 or send me email tom@2015Place.com . Today I'll talk about the Academy Awards, Obama axing Dybul, polygamy in Canada, Catholic taxes in San Francisco, gays in Iran and more. Click here to listen. I have started a new project to create a dedicated LGBT Channel/Station. To hear more about this, click here . Donations and or sponsors are welcome. Please click here to donate. All the best to you and yours.

AKI Tehran, 23 Sept. (AKI) - Nemat Safavi, arrested almost three years ago at the age of 16, has been condemned to death by a court in Ardebil, in the northwest Iranian Azerbaijan region. Nemat has been accused of having homosexual relations.While that was not stated during the court case, he was accused of "sexual relations that were not admitted". full article

CBC News A documentary looks at Iran's heartbreaking "solution" to homosexuality Filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian has long been fascinated by gender issues, so when she read a New York Times story about how the Iranian government was dealing with homosexuality, she was completely transfixed. Iranian-born herself, the New York-based filmmaker learned that in Iran, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. But the government has provided a way out for the nation’s gays and lesbians: a sex-change operation. Fully paid for by the state, the procedure would allow these people to conform to Iran’s theocratic standards of sexuality. Eshaghian decided she had to interview some of those involved in this gender-reassignment program. The result is a devastating documentary called Be Like Others . Shot in verité style, the film captures the pain and brutality of a regime that is pushing sex-change operations as the path to a final solution to homosexuality. full article

19 year old Makwan Moloudzadeh, accused of homosexual rape when he was age 13 by accusers who have since recanted, was executed without warning last week after a stay of execution in response to international pressures had been granted. In addition to illustrating the arbitrary nature of the so-called Islamic justice system in Iran, something which Iranian expatriates have talked about for years, the fate of Makwan Moloudzadeh illuminates the great risks in relying solely on pressure from international agencies and diplomacy when dealing with the Iranian government. It has been my experience that those who are so very fond of exercising their worldly power do not allow their legal pronouncements to be openly violated without consequence, as apparently has happened here. I am increasingly of the opinion the supreme governor of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the mob itself. full article

According to Amnesty International IRAN Makwan Moloudzadeh (m), aged 21, child offender Child offender Makwan Moloudzadeh, an Iranian Kurd, is believed to be at risk of imminent execution. He has reportedly been convicted of lavat-e iqabi (anal sex) for the alleged rape of a 13-year-old boy. Makwan Moloudzadeh was aged 13 at the time of the alleged offence. His death sentence has been passed to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences and he is due to be executed in public, near his home. He was reportedly arrested on 1 October 2006 in Paveh, in the western province of Kermanshah. He was detained in Paveh Prison and later transferred to Kermanshah Central Prison. Following interrogations in Paveh during which he was reportedly ill-treated, he was tried by Branch 1 of the Kermanshah Criminal Court and on 7 June 2007 he was sentenced to death. The witnesses and the two people who had pressed charges against him withdrew their claims after the trial. Under Iranian law, children (boy...

I thought this was pretty funny so thought I'd share. http://www.maximonline.com/Iranisfaaabulous/video/6118.aspx

Yesterday I saw Bush speak at the United Nations. He was condemning a few countries, including Iran, for Human Rights violations. Listening to this almost made me ill. It almost made me ill because I remember in January of 2006 the Bush administration was aligning itself with Iran on a initiative to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of LGBT people. " This vote is an aggressive assault by the U.S. government on the right of sexual minorities to be heard. It is astonishing that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China, Iran and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic. " Scott Long, director of the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch

(London) An Iranian lesbian facing deportation from Britain has been freed from detention and will be allowed to remain in the UK, ending an international campaign to prevent her from being sent back to a regime that could have imposed the death penalty on her . Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, fled to Britain from Iran in 2005 after her partner was arrested and tortured. Homosexuality is considered a crime in Iran and can carry the death penalty. In 2005, the Islamic regime hanged two teenagers on charges of involvement in homosexual acts .