Gay Life in Iran

Our introduction to gay life in Iran was a strange one. Our first evening in Iran, while walking around Shiraz looking for something to eat, we crossed a public square in the middle of town that at first glance did not seem out of the ordinary, but turned out to be one of the most aggressive gay cruising grounds we had ever seen. The first man we met had an extremely high feminine voice (although he was like 6’2″) and showed Derek a (straight) porn video that was on his mobile phone, suggesting that we walk over to his house. The second started with polite chatter but then moved quickly to sex (“In America, man on man okay?”), repeatedly asking Derek the size of his, um, ****, and complaining about local sizes. Despite a very reserved appearance (he was an academic of some sort), this man was quite explicit about what he wanted, and persistent. (I suppose we could have just walked away, but while not sharing his interests we stuck around fruitlessly trying to engage him in more substantive conversation.) Passing through the same square on the way back from dinner, another man told us that he loved America and George Bush and said that George Bush was gay. All of this, happening on our first full night in Iran, was utterly surreal.

Having gay sex in Iran is a capital offense, as is well-known, and there have indeed been cases in which gay men have been executed (although it is not clear whether they were executed merely for homosexual sex or for that in combination with other crimes). Even if one is not executed, there is no doubt that punishment for being openly gay would be quick and harsh. Iranian President Ahmedinejad famously said at Columbia University that there are no gays in Iran, and one fairly liberal, open-minded Iranian we spoke to agreed with that statement, only acknowledging when pressed that there may be a handful, four or five. (Other Iranians did recognize that there were of course gays and lesbians in Iran, and were embarassed at the absurdity of the President’s statement, with which they were surprisingly familiar.)

So is there gay life in Iran? In one month, without much effort, we witnessed a surprising amount. Just by keeping our eyes open, we came across what we believe were four gay couples in Iran. One was relaxing by the river in a large Iranian city, one guy’s head in the other’s lap. In the same city, two other young men, rather similarly and tidily dressed, were walking hand-in-hand. Having just passed us on the street, they looked back and lifted their clasped hands to show that they were together, then a couple seconds later again looked back and lifted their hands. One young man showed us a tattoo on his arm apparently of his boyfriend’s name, which he showed to us saying, “I love [Abdullah],” and pointing to the young man next to him. A fourth couple was quite suggestively stroking each other’s hands and forearms on the Tehran subway, much to our shock. Some of you may argue that all these were the sort of liberal male/male expressions of closeness/friendship without any sexual content that one sees all over from the Middle East to India. As one man told us, two Iranian men can share a bed naked without fear of interpretation of homosexuality–it is just simply acceptable among male friends. But we’re quite familiar with those sorts of behaviors as well, from our experience traveling, and these were not those. In our best judgment, these individuals expressly signaled to us their sexuality (why us I’m not sure, other than that we are two foreign men), and we think they were gay.

The situation seems to be that public awareness of homosexuality is so low in Iran, being gay so unthinkable, that you can get away with a surprising amount of public displays of affection, certainly more than a heterosexual couple can. What we saw gay men do in Iran was beyond the mere friendly same-sex handholding as in India or elsewhere–they were flagrantly physically affectionate, with no-one the wiser.

Public awareness of homosexuality is so low, the possibility so far under people’s radar, that you can also have a public cruise in the center of town. In addition to the square in Shiraz, we visited a park in central Tehran known as a gay meeting place not only on gay websites but even in Lonely Planet.

In the early evening, gay men make up a small (though to the westerner easily identified) minority, among many young people and families, but grow to dominate the park more and more later at night, numbering in the dozens. The atmosphere was much lower key than Shiraz, with men talking to friends and saying hello to strangers but without a sense of desperation.

Park, at night

We were told that, during Khatami’s presidency, there were even drag queens or transsexuals in the park, but after the accession of Ahmedinejad the police came and arrested them, and ordered them never to return to the park again (better than the treatment of such people at the time of the Islamic Revolution–apparently transsexuals working in cabaret shows were put in large bags and thrown off of high places, a traditional Islamic punishment). The police continue to raid the park, including by posing as attractive young gay men on the prowl (of course, a classic ploy in the U.S. as well, as former Senator Larry Craig knows). If the police catch someone taking a compromising action or making a compromising statement, they make them sign statements promising never to return to the park–it is less clear what happens at a second offense.

Of course, banishment from the local park isn’t the only risk gay men face in Iran. We were told by one young man that he had been beaten up by basijis, a radical fanatical group that is a remnant from the Iran-Iraq war, near the park because he was perceived to be gay. Despite being able to hold your boyfriend’s hand in public, you can’t actually be “out,” or self-identified as a gay man or couple. One man told us that he was able to find and have sex but could not maintain a relationship for fear of exposure and total destruction of reputation and career. And, ultimately, there is the possibility of execution.

Two bonuses on this post, a poem and a joke.

A poem, mine:

Did guys in Texas fear being arrested
before Lawrence v. Texas the sodomy laws tested?
So the guys of Shiraz cruise the parks for the hung
with no ‘pparent fear that they too get hung.

One piece of “evidence” of the ancient and persistent existence of homosexuality in the Middle East (like anywhere else) is that many Middle Eastern countries have a city that is infamous for homosexuality, and the butt of all gay jokes in that country. In Iran, this city is Qazvin (we were there, but didn’t notice anything particularly gay about the place), and we even heard boys in Tehran teasing one another by saying that the other was from Qazvin. At our request, a gay Iranian told us this Qazvin joke:

The grim reaper came to collect the soul of a Qazvin man. “You may write a last statement,” the grim reaper said, “before you leave this world forever.” The man answered, “Oh, I’ve already prepared my statement–it’s under the bed. Could you bend over and get it?”