Plus: Faulting Ferraro and Backing Obama
I always felt a strong empathy for women and their fight for equality.
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By Michael Lucas
Friday, September 28, 2007
I AM DISAPPOINTED that the United States did not act with more vigor against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s illicit visit to our shores. In the gay community’s wan reaction to it, though, I find an absolutely vomitous apathy.
I certainly hope that nobody reading this is unaware of how gays in Iran are deprived of their rights. But just in case, I’ll give a crash course in one paragraph: Under Iran’s Islamic theocratic government, if two men “stand naked under one cover without any necessity,” both are punished with up to 99 lashes. If a man kisses another “with lust,” the punishment is 60 lashes. Anal intercourse is punishable by death. Dear readers; how many times would you have been put to death by now if you lived in Iran? By law, the Iranian press can only mention homosexuality in the negative. Imagine that please. It is illegal in Iran for a positive word to be published about any topic whatsoever related in any way to homosexuality. Think how you would feel if you had to live in such a place.
So now I ask; what would a homophobic foreign monster have to do to get New York City’s gay community to protest his visit here? I was on the Columbia University campus at the time of Ahmadinejad’s visit. I saw Jewish protestors, I saw conservative protestors, but I did not see any gay protestors. Where was Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in all this? We are talking about a monster who thinks people of the same sex deserve to die if they have anal intercourse with each other.
Ahmadinejad got a long ovation from portions of the Columbia audience. We should give some thought to who was doing the applauding. Were they homophobes who support the idea that sodomy should be punishable by death? Or were they perhaps Muslim students who not only support that idea but also believe the entire world should be subjected to Sharia law?
I hope you noticed that this dangerous charade took place at Columbia so-called University. Some American voices were saying that the most important issue involved was that of free speech. Ahmadinejad has already shown us the regard he has for free speech. Though he did nothing substantial to condemn Muslim violence and lunacy that resulted when a Denmark paper printed an editorial cartoon of Mohammed, he did support an Iranian newspaper’s “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.” The event made fun of the Holocaust, allegedly to “denounce Western hypocrisy on the freedom of speech.”
I’m all for denouncing hypocrisy. The Holocaust cartoons came and went. Not one non-Muslim anywhere committed an act of violence over them. Not one. Yet Ahmadinejad did not say anything to the effect of “I was wrong. The West really IS dedicated to free speech.” What he did instead was to make the Holocaust cartoon contest an annual event. So why is it that we aren’t hearing about an annual Mohammed cartoon contest in Denmark? Can you imagine what would be going on if plans for one were made?
IN WHAT’S REFERRED to as “The West,” Muslim extremists demand tolerance but they do not reciprocate it. Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh made a film called “Submission” about the abuses against women in Islamic countries; shortly afterward he was slaughtered by a Muslim in the streets of Amsterdam. Wonder why no other Dutch filmmakers are touching the topic? Europeans are being robbed of their freedom of speech. You’d think we’d be concerned about that in the United States. Who is even making a peep about it?
And before the Holocaust cartoon contest, Ahmadinejad held what was supposedly a scholarly conference on Holocaust history. Where are the scholarly papers from that conference? What peer review of them has been published? Does the scholarship presented at that Holocaust conference meet the academic standards that Columbia University requires of its professors and students? These questions are rhetorical, but they are urgently relevant. It is not appropriate for a university to invite as a speaker somebody who advances ideas as though they were facts but then cannot back up his assertions with verifiable documentation.
The quote that Columbia invited Ahmadinejad because bin-Laden wasn’t available has gained currency quickly, but it would be more to the point to say they did so because neither Pinocchio nor Pee-Wee Herman in character was available. Columbia University should have more respect for its own intellectual heritage than to invite so shabby a scholar as Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus.
Millions of our tax dollars were spent on Ahmadinejad’s security while he was in New York City. God forbid that anything bad should happen to him. This man is a murderer of innocent gay people, yet his safety is paid for with your tax dollars. What is wrong with that picture?
Why was there not a huge contingent of gay protestors manifesting their outrage against this infamy? Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, in her valiant support of human rights worldwide, would get sickened by people like those at Columbia who play Useful Fools for tyrants, and also by those who remained apathetic when they should have spoken up loud and clear for what is right.
This week, I was sickened by the gay community. I have in the past noted when large contingents of gay people participated in demonstrations against Israel. Where were those LGBT people when this murderer and oppressor of gays in Iran stood on his soapbox at Columbia University?
Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com.
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