Re: [A-List] Khomeini on Sodomy

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/26/07, Sabri Oncu <sabri_oncu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Penetration is the key word here. A man who penetrates
> another man is okay in my culture, which is not
> significantly different than that of Iran, and this
> goes back to ancient Greece. There is a difference
> between the penetrating and penetrated in our cultures.
> Pentrating man is respected whereas the penetrated
> man is looked down on. And since women cannot
> penetrate, nobody cares about them.

That probably was the tradition, and in some ways it still is in the
sense of common people's understanding, but the laws on the books in
Iran do not make distinction between penetrators and penetrated (see
<http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd/rsddocview.html?tbl=RSDLEGAL&id=3ae6b51b8&count=1>)
and spells out penalty for female-female sex (see
<http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rsd/rsddocview.html?tbl=RSDLEGAL&id=3ae6b51b8&count=3>),
albeit a lesser penalty than that for male-male sex.

> There are homosexuals in Iran too, just as in everywhere else.

Yes, but my claim is not that there are no Iranian men or women who
identify themselves according to the modern categories.  Rather, it is
that getting identified or identifying oneself as homosexuals,
bisexuals, and heterosexuals is not a norm, whether or not they have
same-sex sex or different-sex sex.
-- 
Yoshie