These day, i.e. June and July months, are the season of Gay Pride Parade. The Gay people is a tiny minority in the world, maybe less than %2, who have been suppressed in the past, but now they enjoy positive discrimination. The story of Gays is really complicated, especially in Iran and in the West. Some gays who attend Gay Pride Parade are indifferent to what happens in the world and seems like a bunch of psychotic, ignorant, narrow-minded, and insensitive s-e-x object, who are obsessed by s-e-x and s-e-x-u-al things. They disgraced wise and healthy gays. Gay pride parades were born out of the Stonewall riots of 1969. Police officers raided a gay bar on Christopher Street in Manhattan on June 28. And after that each year Gay parades have been held in many cities and countries. Gay pride is the concept that lesbian, gay, bi-s-e-x-u-a-l, and transgender (LGBT) people should be proud of their gender identity. New York City is the birth place of the modern gay rights movement, so it hosts one of the world’s biggest and best gay pride events. A full week of activities begins with a rally and ends with a parade. The other major hosts of the big gay parade/events are Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, Seattle, Paris, Manchester, Montreal, etc. As you know, the use of “gay” as a reference to homos-e-x-u-ality may date as early as the late 19th century, but its use gradually increased in the 20th century. Before that, a gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel. In mid-20th century Britain, male homos-e-x–u-a-l-i-ty was illegal until the S-e-x-u-a-l Offences Act 1967.

Even in 1988, the British Conservative Party, who were in government at the time, enacted Section 28 which banned local authorities (including state schools) from promoting hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity or endorsing gay marriages. The earliest law against female gay appeared in France in 1270. In Spain, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, sodomy between women was included in acts considered unnatural and punishable by burning to death. The Spanish Inquisition begins in 1743, sodomites were stoned, castrated, and burned . Between 1540 and 1700, more than 1,500 people were prosecuted for sodomy. Oscar Wilde, the Irish author and playwright played an important role in bringing homos-e-x-u-a-l-ity into the public eye . The treatment of the Wilde case in American newspapers reflects well the American attitude towards the subject in the 1890s; although in open discussion, it could not be named . The term bi-s-e-x-u-a-l-i-ty, like the terms hetero- & homo- s-e-x-u-a-l-i-ty, was coined in the 19th century. Hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity is romantic and/or s-e-x-u-al attraction or behavior between members of the same s-e-x. And Bi-s-e-x-u-a-l-i-ty is s-e-x-u-a-l behavior or an orientation involving physical and/or romantic attraction to both males and females. People who have a distinct but not exclusive preference for one s-e-x over the other may also identify themselves as bi-s-e-x-u-al.

“Gay rights” is a complicated issue. While marriage or any kind of relationships between gays is a personal matter and a matter of basic rights,the adoption of children is a different matter. Adoption of children by LGBT people, or LGBT adoption, is an issue of active debate . Many people argue that a child has a right to be raised by a father and a mother, and legalizing LGBT adoption undermines that right. In fact, adoption of children is not a gay right, it’s a child right . Adoption by gay couples is legal in 14 countries as well as in the jurisdictions of several more. But it’s very controversial. There is agreement between the debating parties, however, that the welfare of children alone should dictate policy . Some wise people say: “Two people, male or female, could f-u-c-k each other if they want, it’s a basic right. But the nature says that gay couples can not have baby. And even if we ignore the nature law, it’s really acceptable that we think children are toy. Children rights are at least as important as Gay rights. Adoption is about children rights, not gay rights. You can f-u-c-k each other consensually, but you can not f-u-c-k a child or child’s life; it’s not your right .” Some researchers said that lesbian and gay parents are as fit and capable as heter-o-s-e-x-u-a-l parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by hetero parents. And some people say: “having gay parents is better than living in orphanage. We know that adoption is a complicated issue as a whole, and we know that many hetero parents and standard family are not healthy and their children have many problems.” But some psychologists are not agreed.

In Iran, the gay culture has a complex history. A Rape culture, that is an Arab-Turk legacy for Iranians, is called gay culture. Many believe that after Islam and when Arabs invaded Iran, the forced Hijab (Burka) and the absence of women in society, along with the traditions of Truks and Arabs created a special Gay-Sodomy culture that was a Rape culture . The majority of gay couples were master-slave couples, and the gay men were sold as slave, or s-e-x worker . In the traditions of Truks and Arabs, raping male children or “Bache Bazi” was common, and still is common in the Arab world, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. After Islam,

hom-o-s-e-x-u-ality and raping men were tolerated in numerous public places in Iran. In the early Safavid era (15011723), male houses of prostitution (Amrad- Khane) were legally recognized . After Islam, the Persian Literature became a “Hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity’s Literature”, and poetic romance with boys and men, not girls and women, is an undeniable fact. The words like “Gholam, Amrad, Mokhanas, Maf-ul, Obne-i, No-khat, Shahed, etc” used for the object of sodomy. And the words like “Gholam-bareh, Bache-baz, Fael, Jamal-parast, etc used for the rapist. But sodomy, especially in the common kind of rape, was not acceptable for many Iranians. “Gholam” was a male slave, who often worked as a s-e-x worker for his master. In fact, “Gholam” was raped, sold and bought by the Islamist slaveholders for being s-e-x worker . And it was really unacceptable for Iranians. But even the natural gay people were treated like Gholam, and the people insulted and called them “Obne-i”. “Obne” was a disease of “itchy ass”, and Obne-i was a man who suffered from Obne, i.e. itchy ass ! Before Islam, Iran was more like India, and Indian and Iranian culture had many similarities in tolerating s-e-x and s-e-x-u-a-l freedom. But in 7th century, Arab Muslims conquered all of Iran, with the exception of the Elburz Mountains and the Caspian coastal plain, and for the next two centuries, Arabs ruled Iran. The sodomy/rape culture in the Abbasid era was widespread, and “Gholams”, the male slaves, started to work as s-e-x workers in Iran. [1]

In the 9th century, Ghaznavids, a Turkish Muslim dynasty, ruled Iran. They have their own sodomy/rape culture like Arabs. In the 11th century Turkic tribes began migrating to Iran, settling primarily in the northwest. The Seljuk Turks, who had converted to Sunni Islam in the 10th century, defeated local rulers and established dynasties that ruled over most of the country until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. The “Hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity’s Literature” was formed in the Ghaznavids and Seljuks era. Many works of literature, like Ghabusnameh (11th), Divan Farokhi Sistani (12th), Suzani Samarghani’s works (12th), Sanaii’s works (12th), Obeyd Zakani’s works (14th), Saadi’s works (13th), Divan Hafiz (14th), etc, were full of gay jokes, gay poems, gay romance, etc. Obeyd, the great Iranian humorists, criticized the Turk-Arab culture of Rape and Sodomy. In some of his jokes, Obeyd says: “the man should rape and be raped, because only in this way he can become a great man !! “. or “A Christian boy became Muslim. After some days, his friends asked him about becoming Muslim and he said: “becoming Muslim means cutting the head of your d-i-c-k in the morning, and raping and sodomizing you at night ! “” The Great Persian poets, such as Sadi, Hafez, Jami, etc wrote poems replete with homoerotic allusions. Sa’di said: “Eternal bliss is in having intercourse, but the bliss is only for the person who is sodomized !!” (“Saadat abadi dar Jama kardan dan, va lik gooy Saadat kasi barad ke dahad !!”) [1]

In the West and other part of worlds, the story of the gay and sodomy culture has its own similarity and difference with Iran’s. The word “lesbian” is derived from the name of the Greek island of Lesbos, home to the 6th-century BCE poet Sappho . The adjectives deriving from her name and place of birth (Sapphic and Lesbian) came to be applied to female hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity beginning in the 19th century. Sappho’s poetry centers on passion and love for various personages and both genders. On the other hand, the Platonic Love , that is considered as a sign of gay culture in the ancient Greece, is about gay romantic love, not gay s-e-x. The earliest Western documents concerning gay relationships are derived from ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. It was said in Ancient Rome of Augustus Caesar that he was “every man’s wife and every woman’s husband”. Many forms of religions, including the Eastern faiths and Abrahamic faiths, do not support gay s-e-x . In cultures influenced by Abrahamic religions, the law and the church established sodomy as a transgression against divine law or a crime against nature. The condemnation of a-n-a-l s-e-x between males, however, predates Christian belief. The church and the pope, like the ancient time, and like Islam, executed the gay. Executions for sodomy continued in the Netherlands until 1803, and in England until 1835 . In East Asia, gay love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history.

Hom-o-s-e-x-u-a-l-i-ty in Japan, variously known as Shudo or Nanshoku has been documented for over one thousand years and was an integral part of Buddhist monastic life and the samurai tradition ! . In Islam Homo-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity is illegal, but as we said before, sodomy and raping men and women are widespread in almost all Muslim countries. The gay, can face the death penalty in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, etc. but the majority of Mullahs and the Islamists are rapists and sodomize themselves (in Hozeh, i.e. Mullah schools) or other men, women, and children (in the prisons and other places). It’s one of the biggest paradox of the Muslim world, especially the Mullahs of Iran .

In 1977, Quebec became the first state-level jurisdiction in the world to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of s-e-x-u-al orientation. Since the 1960s, many LGBT people in the West, have developed a so-called gay culture. To many, gay culture is exemplified by the gay pride movement, with annual parades and displays of rainbow flags. But the gay community has many opponents in the West. Many conservative Americans, like conservative Iranians, call the gays “faggot”. The FBI reported that 15.6% of hate crimes against LGBT people reported to police in 2004, 61% percent of these attacks were against gay men . The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student, is a notorious such incident in the US. In 1977, only 55% of Americans thought that gay people should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities . And in 2007, the number has risen to 89%. But In 1997, only 27% of Americans thought that gay marriages should be legally valid. That number is 46% as of 2007 . The first country to legalize gay marriages was the Netherlands (2001), while the first marriages were performed in the Amsterdam city hall on April 1, 2001. Pope John Paul II, then head of the Roman Catholic church, criticized gay marriage, when it was introduced in the Netherlands in 2001. His successor Pope Benedict XVI has maintained opposition to the institution, considering it amongst ‘the most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good today’ . At present, gay marriages are legal nationally in 10 countries: Netherlands (2001), Belgium (2003), Canada(2005), Spain (2005), South Africa (2006), Norway (2009), Sweden (2009), and Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina (2010). In the US, although gay marriages are not recognized federally, gay couples can marry in five states (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont) and the District of Columbia and receive state-level benefits. Gay couples in New York are able to wed, since July 24, 2011. Australia bans recognition of gay marriages. The ban is stridently supported by the Catholic Church and the two largest political parties .

The scientists say: “Some animal species also exhibit b-i-s-e-x-u-al behavior. Examples of mammals include the bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), orca, and bottlenose dolphin. In some cases b-i-s-e-x-u-a-l-ity is actually a form of fitness favored by evolution. For example, in the absence of male whiptail lizards (Cnemidophorus), females reproduce by pairing up with each other . The hatchlings produced are all female. This all-female species has evolved from lizards with two s-e-x-es, but their eggs develop without fertilization. Female whiptail lizards can lay eggs without s-e-x. But the number of LGBT animals is as small as the number of LGBY people.” A 2002 survey in the US found that 1.8 percent of men ages 1844 considered themselves bi-s-e-x-u-al, 2.3 percent hom-o-s-e-x-u-al, and 3.9 percent as “something else”. The same study found that 2.8 percent of women ages 1844 considered themselves bi-s-e-x-u-al, 1.3 percent hom-o-s-e-x-u-al, and 3.8 percent as “something else”. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior, published in 1993, showed that 5 percent of men and 3 percent of women consider themselves bi-s-e-x-u-al and 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women considered themselves hom-o-s-e-x-u-al. A 2007 report said that 14% of young US women identified themselves as bi-s–e-x-u-al/lesbian, with 5.6% of the men identifying as gay or bi-s-e-x-u-al. Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that same-s-e-x attraction is against evolutionary laws and natural selection, and does not have adaptive value because it has no association with potential reproductive success. But, bis-e-x-u-a-lity can be due to normal variation in brain plasticity . According to a 2008 poll, while only 6% of Britons define their s-e-x-u-a-l orientation as homo or bi-s-e-x-u-a-l, more than twice that number (13%) of Britons have had some form of s-e-x-u-a-l contact with someone of the same s-e-x.

There is opposition to pride events both within LGBT and mainstream populations . Critics charge the parades with an undue emphasis on s-e-x and fetish-related interests which they see as counter-productive to LGBT interests, and exposing the “gay community” to ridicule. The LGBT people and LGBT movement should learn from Feminism and Feminist movement in 20th century. The wise and healthy LGBT, should protest against the dreadful emphasis on s-e-x and fetish-related things. S-e-x and S-e-x-u-a-l things are only a part of human life and human matters. The human beings have many serious problems and issues, and s-e-x is only one of them. Of course, the history of world and Iran can assure us that there is not any kind of freedom, if the people have not s-e-x-u-a-l freedom. In fact, if in a society the men and women have not s-e-x-ual freedom, without any restriction, we can be sure that there is not any freedom of speech, freedom of thoughts, freedom of press, and any kind of freedom in that society. But the humans should not be obsessed with s-e-x-ual things and forget other vital and important matters. Iranians inside Iran, have many dreadful issues, and gay rights is only one of them. But some ignorant non-Iranians think that the gay rights is the first and last issue in Iran. The s-e-x-ual freedom is more important than gay rights in Iran. More than 90% of Iranian men and women are not gay, but they are suppressed and have not any kind of s-e-x-ual freedom. The younger generation of Iranians can accept the gay rights, but just after solving the s-e-x-ual freedom’s problem of the ordinary people. The gay rights is important, but not more than women rights, the child rights, the civil rights, the human rights, the s-e-x-u-al freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of thought, etc, and it’s so obvious that at the present time, and at first, Iranians should fight for these basic and vital rights.

for more Information:

[1] “Shahed-Bazi dar Adabiat Farsi” (“Gay Love in Persian Literacy”‘), by Dr. Sirous Shamisa, 1381 (2002).