LGBTs in the Islamic Republic of Iran

I. INTRODUCTION

They live in a society whose homophobia and heterosexism render them “invisible.” They suffer silently through personal trauma and societal conflicts; signs of their gender identities are often met by shunning, mocking and bullying. They have had no easy access to basic information they need to make sense of their anxieties and desperations. Even today, there is no correct understanding of gender dysphoria. Above it all, they have to deal with the Islamic state and the perils of its strict laws, enforced by its thuggish morality police. The possibility of death gawks at them.

Yet, Iran’s LGBTs seem to be emerging from the deafening silence and their still-cautious voices are being heard by international human rights advocates and monitors. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) organized its second conference on their human rights violations in Düsseldorf in 2014. The participants were expatriate Iranians, mostly of recent arrival, including human rights scholar-advocate Mehrangiz Kar.¹ Their presentations, as collected in this manuscript, are arranged in three sections; yet, it contains two substantively distinct parts.² The first deals with the young lives of LGBTs who are discovering their gender identities and learning to live with their daily predicaments that are now compounded by the concept of “coming out” that appears as a historic, life-altering possibility. The second part, twice longer than the first one, is given to the future-oriented theological-theoretical explorations that advocate an Islamic acceptance of LGBTs. There is no synergy between the two parts, with the possible exception of the opening chapter by Kar, who offers a critical commentary on the conference’s presentations. Thus, I will discuss her presentation last.

In the first part, Mani Mostofi discusses Iran’s “Queer Internet” and highlights the “successes and setback” of this trend-setting phenomenon; Zeynab Alsadat Peyghambarzadeh offers a critique of the Iranian LGBT movement that fails to give due recognition to bisexuals; and Hossein Raeesi explains the Revised Iranian Code of Criminal Procedure and its possible effect on those charged with sexual “crimes.” In the second part, Arash Naraghi, Sh. M., and Mehri Jafari offer their own rereadings of Islam. Finally, Mehrdad Alipour presents his own “theological reflection” on the Islamic rereadings of Arash Naraghi, a participant in the conference, and Scott Kugle, a non-participant, and a convert to Sunni Islam who has written extensively on LGBTs.

A discussion about Iran’s LGBTs within a human rights framework is indeed unprecedented, both in the Iranian sociopolitical narratives and in the international human rights documentations and analyses. In my own human rights writings since the early 1990s, there is regrettably no reference to them. I have mainly relied on the existing national or transnational documents, journalistic resources and published memoirs, wherein their voices were noticeable by their absence. For example, in numerous reports issued by the first two UN Special Rapporteurs on Iran between 1984 and 2002, there is no mention of LGBTs. Then, after an interval, the Human Rights Council appointed Ahmand Shaheed as another prolific Rapporteur in 2011. In his reports since, the voices of LGBT Iranians are amplified. Shaheed observes that the emerging LGBT activists feel that human rights advocacy “can help bolster their quality of life.”³ As Kar explains, “LGBT individuals’ self-disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity is a staggering challenge to themselves as well as to the Iranian society.”⁴ Now they speak, though guardedly, and their voices are being noted. What explains the change?

The overall ideological failure of the regime’s Islamization drive may provide a proper context for our understanding of the breach in the cultural wall of silence, allowing the suppressed voices of gender non-conformists a small space for self-expression. The Shia clerics directly ruling the Iranian state has been a historic anomaly. The Sultans and the Shahs ruled the premodern state and the clerics controlled the mosques and madrassas. Now, with great cost...