There have been 2 articles in this week's Guardian regarding Iran and changing sex, go to www.guardian.co.uk and put iran and sex-change into the search and they will magically appear.
What astonished me is that homosexuality is illegal in Iran and has been punished by hanging, yet transsexualism is seen as a medical condition which offers reassignment surgery on the state. Apparently they do more 'sex-change' ops than anywhere else except Thailand.
While I am pleased that they cater for GID, the homophobia is bizarre, especially given current medical thinking that it is an alternative life style and probably genetic in origins, similar thinking applies to transsexualism, so perhaps we should be grateful that no mention of GID appeared in the Bible or Koran.
Angharad.
Comments
Iran
I read on another site that the reason they are pro sex-change is to make "gay" people straight so they are in compliance.
They also went on to describe how homosexuals are put to death and I won't get into that. It also doesn't address the concept of lesbian MTFs and gay FTMs
Huggles!!
Alexis
The Late Late Show
On last night's show, Craig Ferguson (the host) talked about the homophobia thing in Iran. Apparently some Iranian leader made a statement that there ARE no homosexuals in Iran -because- of this policy.
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No. Wait. That was God. Sorry, common mistake...
Uptight Shiites
Yeah, that was the president of Iran, Ahmadnejad (sp?), and I think he meant that in a pure society uncorrupted by western ways gay just doesn't happen (communist leaders used to say that too)...
So then Mahmoud, who are you sentancing to death by hanging?
The late Ayatolla Khomeni still holds a lot of sway in Iran, and he was the one who decreed transsexuals
to be o.k.....So in regards to what is euphemistically called "female circumsion", do they just not
fashion the clitoris, or do they hack it off after they make it, just for funsies? Do they stone t.s.
daughters to death for getting raped? At the risk of not fully embracing cultural relativism,
I wouldn't want to be ANY kind of woman in Iran. Or any kind of man...
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
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