Iran executes three men for sodomy

Then again, we have presidential candidates who think the dinosaurs lived with cave men six thousand years ago.  It's easy to think of those "crazy Iranians" as "backwards religious types," but we're hardly setting our own good example of  church & state separation and, more generally, religious sanity.  As for executions being a class of their own, did anyone else notice that Rick Perry's executions got more applause last night than the killing of bin Laden?

More from the Independent. Read the rest of this post...

Facing possible deportation and death in Iran, activist steps forward for immigration reform

With Arizona about to enact its xenophobic immigration law, the debate around immigration reform has been driven to an extreme. We're not discussing how to reasonably ensure fair, responsible and orderly immigration. Instead we're asking, should we require police to demand proof that you're not here illegally, if your skin is a certain color. Anyone who says it's not, answer the question that Gov. Brewer could not: What does it mean to look illegal?

But amid all this news, there are common sense immigration proposals that would actually help some of the people who are most directly affected. These are people who never chose to be in a situation where they face possible deportation. And for these kids who were brought here by their families and have only known life in this country, there are real impacts. Life and death. Take Mohammad Abdollahi, who is a gay, undocumented, and Iranian.

Watch Abdollahi tell his story, and read his letter to the President.


And, here's his letter:

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Mohammad Abdollahi and I am an undocumented immigrant. Two months ago I made history.

On May 17, according to the New York Times, I become one of the first undocumented students, along with two others, to "have directly risked deportation in an effort to prompt Congress to take up [the DREAM Act]." Risking deportation was no small act for me. Not only did I risk being forcibly removed from United States, the only country I know as my home, to Iran, where I don't know the culture or the language. I also happen to be gay. In Iran, people like me are tortured and executed. I am still at risk of deportation and execution, right now, and I will continue to be at risk until the DREAM Act is passed.

I took this risk because I had no choice. For all of my life, my future has been held hostage by politicians, both Democrat and Republican, who have used me as a political football. My family immigrated to the United States from Iran when I was just three years old. Undocumented immigrants are often told, "get in line!" without knowing that many of us were at one point in this infamous line. My family was "in line" until an immigration attorney miscalculated the processing fee for an H1-B visa by $20 dollars and our application was rejected. The second attorney my family hired to fix the application spent his time bickering with the old attorney instead of informing my parents that they only had 60 days to appeal our rejected application. The deadline came and went and we became undocumented.

I've known I was undocumented for a long time, but I still graduated from high school. While working to pay out-of-state tuition, I was able to earn my Associate's degree in Health and Human Services from Washtenaw College. When I had enough credits, I applied to Eastern Michigan University. I handed a counselor there my transcript and he said, "Mohammad, you are the kind of student we want at this university." He then handed me an acceptance letter. I was in.

I looked at this letter and thought of my mother. With this piece of paper, I could go to my mother and tell her that she didn't have to stay up late crying anymore. She didn't have to blame herself anymore. She hadn't done her children wrong by bringing them to this country. I could tell her it was all worth it. Then, the counselor brought back his supervisor, who told me that they could not accept me because I "needed to be in a line to get in". The counselor then reached over his desk and took my acceptance letter from me.

I left. My future was being held hostage. A short time later, the DREAM Act came up for a vote in the Senate, and 44 other people decided that they too were going to hold my future hostage. Three years later, my future and the futures of over 2 million others are still being held hostage. Two months ago, I risked my life because once again the window to my future is closing. I am in limbo. I cannot contribute to the only country I know as my home. I also cannot return to Iran, where the penalty for homosexuality is capital punishment.

My only hope is for the DREAM Act to pass, but time is running out in this Congress. The DREAM Act has more support in the Senate than any other piece of immigration legislation, but it is being held hostage by Democrats who do not want to vote on it separately from comprehensive immigration reform, and by Republicans who refuse to publicly support legislation they have supported before.

I made history two months ago, and today, along with hundreds of other undocumented youth from across the nation, I will make history again. Hundreds of us are descending on Washington D.C. to ask Congress to stop holding our lives hostage and to pass the DREAM Act now. Please stand with us and ask Congress to pass the DREAM Act, now.

Sincerely,
Mohammad Abdollahi

Via Citizen Orange:

Approximately 65,000 undocumented youth graduate from U.S. high schools every year, who could benefit from passage of the DREAM Act. Many undocumented youth are brought to the United States before they can even remember much else, and some don't even realize their undocumented status until they have to get a driver's license, want to join the military, or apply to college. DREAM Act youth are American in every sense of the word -- except on paper. It's been nearly a decade since the DREAM Act was first introduced. If Congress does not act now, another generation of promising young graduates will be relegated to the shadows and blocked from giving back fully to our great nation.

This is what you can do right now to pass the DREAM Act:

Sign the DREAM Act Petition
Join the DREAM Act Facebook Cause
Send a fax in support of the DREAM Act

Read the rest of this post...

Being gay in Iraq and Iran

Sometimes when I reflect on our fight for equal civil rights for the LGBT community here in the United States, I'm drawn to the horrific stories of what other countries and cultures are doing to our LGBT brothers and sisters. Check out the Iranian law on homosexuality:

Article 108: Lavat is an act of congress [vati] between males whether in [the form of] penetration or of tafkhiz (the rubbing of thighs/of the penis against thighs).
Article 109: Both the active and passive partners to lavat are subject to the hadd [punishment].
Article 110: The hadd [punishment] for lavat where penetration has occurred is death and the method of execution is at the discretion of the Sharia judge.
Article 111: Lavat is punishable by death so long as both the active and passive partners are mature, of sound mind, and have acted of free will.
Article 112: If a mature man commits an act of lavat with a minor the active partner [i.e. mature man] will be executed and the passive partner will, unless he has acted under duress, receive up to 74 lashes of the whip.
Article 113: Whenever a minor commits an act of congress [vati: i.e. whether penetrative or in the form of “tafkhiz or similar acts”] with another minor [both] will receive up to 74 lashes unless one of them has acted under duress.

The trumped up case of one such suspect of "Lavat" proves how perilous it is to live as a gay man in a country like Iran, and how desperately important it is for humane societies to give those men asylum.

After the jump, the new forms of torture they're using against gays in Iraq.

I'm especially moved by stories of how the LGBT community has suffered in Iraq after George W. Bush's invasion, and feel a sense of outrage that is born from the sense if we had not invaded, based on lies in the first place, then many of our LGBT brothers and sisters in Iraq would not be living in a more militant Shiite anti-gay society. Of course, those on the Talibangelical right, I'm sure, see this development as a plus. The next story, about a new form of torture being inflicted on gay men, is truly horrific:

As the murder campaign targeting Iraqi gays intensifies, a leading Arabic television network last week revealed the use of a horrifying new form of lethal torture against Iraqi gay men - anti-gay Shiite death squads are sealing their anuses with a powerful glue, then inducing diarrhea, which leads to a painful and agonizing death.

The use of this stomach-turning new torture was first reported by the Al Arabiya network, which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates and was alerted to the story by a leading Iraqi feminist and human rights activist.

Ali Hili is also mentioned in the article. He is an Iraqi gay rights activist who operates out of London, through Iraqi LGBT, and attempts to save gays in Iraq by operating safe houses throughout the country, and trying to provide them asylum. Read the rest of this post...