What Iran is Really About

I want to call your attention to an execution that occurred in Mashad, Iran, a year ago today. Two young men, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, aged 18 and 17, were hanged in a public square, allegedly for the sole reason of being lovers. A few days later, the Iranian government claimed that they were being executed for sexually assaulting a minor, but most western observers believe the charges were trumped up ex post facto, as the Iranian media made no mention of them when the two men were executed.

[I complain about the injustices I face as a contributing homosexual member of a western society, yet I am cognizant of the fact that I am not due for the gallows now or, likely, ever (unless Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church ends up running the country).]

Barbaric actions like this abound in Iran. The Islamic Republic thinks nothing of stoning adulterers, hanging young homosexuals, and persecuting religious minorities. Meanwhile, they are busily importing their ideologies and fomenting a civil war in Iraq, and transferring cruise missiles to paramilitaries in Lebanon. Afghanistan's Taliban went on a similarly psychotic rampage, destroying ancient relics, demolishing walls atop convicted homosexuals, murdering adulterers and unwed mothers, and ultimately hurling their country back to the dark ages.

What chills me to the bone is that these actions are the logical and expected outcomes of Islamic theocracy. How do you think a country like the Islamic Republic would act when armed with a nuclear arsenal? Especially when unemployment is rampant and a young population is faced with a deep and abiding hopelessness? Is it reasonable to think that appeasement and containment (which seems to be the "least-bad" short term strategic solution) will work in the long run? On the anniversary of a barbaric and senseless murder of two young men, it may be worth our while to wonder if "America is the Great Satan" and "Death to Israel" are empty slogans, or more?

By the way...

Yesterday, proponents of the gay marriage amendment failed to muster 2/3rds of the U.S. House of Representatives to approve the amendment. Georgia Representative Phil Gingrey administered the floor debate yesterday. After the amendment failed, he spoke of the symbolic value of supporting a marriage amendment regardless of its chances of success, saying, "This is probably the best message we can give to the Middle East in regards to the trouble we are having over there right now." That's just great! Raising the spectre of homosexual rights to appease Islamists. In light of the picture and of what I said above, that's pretty ironic.