{"id":392,"date":"2007-09-25T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2007-09-25T17:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/?p=392"},"modified":"2007-09-25T13:42:11","modified_gmt":"2007-09-25T17:42:11","slug":"pop-quiz-whos-nuttier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/25\/pop-quiz-whos-nuttier\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop Quiz: Who’s Nuttier?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President, Islamic Republic of Iran
\nSpeaking at Columbia University
\nSeptember 24, 2007<\/div>\n

[W]e would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as “gay”, “lesbian”, or “homosexual” to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms “same-sex practices” and “same-sex desire” in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad’s presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Columbia Queer Alliance
\nEmail to News Outlets
\nSeptember 24, 2007<\/p>\n

To their credit, the CQA were out there in the street, demonstrating against President Ahmadinejad. But still, I think the President meant there are no gays or lesbians or homosexuals or same-sex practictioners in Iran, because they’ve fucking hanged <\/em>them all. I say the more important point is not how sexual identify is constructed and understood in Iran, but rather how it’s brutally punished.<\/p>\n

(h\/t Andrew Sullivan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have it. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President, Islamic Republic of Iran Speaking at Columbia University September 24, 2007 [W]e would like to strongly caution media … Continue reading Pop Quiz: Who’s Nuttier?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}