"Thieves, Homosexuals and Scumbags" in Iran

by Michael Jones · 2009-06-19 08:01:00 UTC
Topics:

Iran

Two years ago at a United Nations gathering in New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that there were no gay people in Iran. Quite a bold and ridiculous statement, given that Iran has a history of executing people for being gay.

Now, in the wake of the election debacle engulfing the country, "President" Ahmadinejad is now calling his political opponents nothing but "Thieves, Homosexuals and Scumbags." Not that I want to be in the business of debating Ahmadinejad, but I think 99% of this world knows who the real scumbag is when it comes to Iranian politics.

LGBT activists in the United Kingdom joined with demonstrators this week to protest the shady election in Iran, and to join in solidarity with the millions of people around the globe calling for change in Iran.  Here at change.org, Social Entrepreneurship blogger Nathaniel Whittemore has been chronicling the recent demonstrations, and how social media has not only fueled activists in Iran, but has taken Twitter to a whole new level of geopolitical significance.  His posts (here, here and here) are an interesting read.

If the choice in Iran is to side with Ahmadinejad, or with the "thieves, homosexuals and scumbags," I'll take the latter.  As Peter Tatchell, a UK activists for LGBT rights, said during the demonstrations in London: "We support Iran’s defiant women’s rights activists, the jailed trade unionists, the beaten and murdered students, the persecuted Baha’is and Sunni Muslims, and Iran’s oppressed ethnic minorities, the Arabs, Kurds, Baluchs and Azeris. Their struggle is our struggle, because human rights are universal."

Indeed, it can't be put any better than that.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.

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