Queer for Christ

These days I cannot think of Iran without seeing this image in my mind, an image I will never, ever shake. It shows two of the estimated 4000 gay men and lesbians the government of Iran has executed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Yes, the Iranian government claimed the two individuals in the photo had raped a young teenager, and that was the crime for which they were being hanged. That is disputed and is ultimately irrelevant: the fact remains that the Iranians regularly execute gay and lesbian human beings for being gay and lesbian.

[please note that I had posted a photo of Mehdi here, but his family has asked that it not be displayed on the web]

Last week, the British Labour government (aren’t they supposed to be on our side!?) was set to send yet another young Iranian man to the gallows until 80 members of the House of Lords intervened, writing a letter that seems to have made a strong impression on Ms. Smith. Mehdi Kazemi is a 19 year-old student who had been studying in the UK when his boyfriend named him to authorities in Iran prior to his own hanging. The British Home Office initially denied Kazemi’s asylum request, based on his belief that he would be immediately executed upon his return to Iran.

So anyway, thanks be to God and some members of the House of Lords, last week the Home Secretary announced she would review her decision denying the young Iranian asylum in the UK. Her earlier decision, for which no rational explanation is immediately apparent, led Mehdi to head to the Netherlands, which ruled against him in legal deference to the UK - a fellow EU country - which had already ruled on the matter. Again, aren’t these people (the Dutch) supposed to be on our side!?!?

Here’s a fact many of us on the Western side of the Atlantic don’t know: the Archbishop of Canterbury sits in the House of Lords. I have sought in vain on the internet for the list of the 80 members of the Upper House of Parliament who signed the letter urging the Home Office to review this asylum claim, to no avail. As an Episcopalian and (for now) an Anglican, I am sending out a call to any and all in the UK or wherever who may know the answer to this question: did Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans worldwide, sign this letter? Has he spoken out on this matter at all? In light of his recent comments on Sharia law in the UK (for which he got something of a bum rap, I will concede), one would think he would seize on the opportunity to show Christian leadership on this issue, and exercise his leadership, if any, on this most compelling of humanitarian emergencies. If he did not sign this letter, I will have more to say. If he did, I will likewise be back, praising his name and thanking God. But right now, the evidence is that he has remained silent.

Here’s something else you may not have known: the Iranian government, in its misguided, pre-modern ignorance of human sexuality, offers gay and lesbian Iranians a “humane” alternative to death by hanging or stoning: forced - even subsidized - sexual reassignment surgery. Now, Willie Nelson has recently recorded a song that might indicate he shares this unsophisticated understanding of queerness, but I can forgive Willie, ’cause he’s trying to do the right thing - I think.

Can we at least expect this much from Rowan Williams?