And hello? Ahmadinejad is a "gay denier" too.

No less worthy of condemnation as well.

These "but it's their culture" posts are sickening. A couple hundred years ago, it was our culture to enslave black people. Our culture was wrong on that and his culture is wrong on gays (and many other groups).

Culture can change and often for the better.

That irritated me to no end. I know muslims who are tolerant of gays (I asked yesterday) and I know southerners who don't fight dogs.

For your one cause.

in Iran and implied that is just as bad as denying the holocaust. It is your choice to extrapolate from there.

I care more about the treatment of gays in Iran, than the actual denial of their existence, per se.

It's "she," btw.

I tend to think 'he' unless otherwise obvious. Which I shouldn't, since I am a 'she' also.

This is illustrative of something that just drives me INSANE. When people don't actually READ the intent of the remark, but just paste their view on top of it. ARRGGHHH!!!

Where the hell did you get that?

And, it's not my "one cause," I have quite a few "causes." I've been on DU for a long time and have a varied posting record. A simple search would show that.

And hit send without so much as an after thought. You implied that if a nation doesn't change to what you deem as culturally acceptable that they should be changed to your definition of "better".

I don't know about you, but I have problems with murdering people over a biological trait. One would think all DUers could agree on that statement.

The Holocaust was wrong, too. Am I wrong to think that, since I'm not a German during WWII?

There are ways other than war to change the cultural direction of a nation if it includes the torture and execution of people based on their sexual preferences. Information and education come to mind.

BTW...can you prove that all 70,500,000 of those people hold that same cultural belief?

The first post that started this was satirical imo.

I am so fatigued and fed up with this stupidity. Nobody said that anybody "should be changed," which you wrote in an effort to set up the straw man that the poster is in favor of forcing change on another country.

She wrote - listen carefully, I know this is difficult - that cultures CAN change. Got that? They can change. Cultures can change for the better.

Here in the United States, slavery is no longer legal. Our culture changed. Got that? Our. Culture. Changed.

I'm not going to give Iran a pass on their human rights violations, which includes the FACT that they execute people for being gay. I'm gay. They would execute me. This is personal. On a larger level, a moral level, it means that human rights supporters need to stand up to human rights violations.

Not to invade. That would be ANOTHER human rights violation. But we can and should influence them to change.

There's a little difference between "condemnation" and regime change.

Nice try, though.

n/t

Most of the folks in the middle east are, although gays were known and tolerated in various historical periods.

This is what a return to fundamentalism, there and here, brings. I'm hoping to defeat a man in Ontario who is running on a platform of funding all religious schools; among other things, I am convinced that it leads to faulty socialization and creates religious ghettos.

that there isn't ONE form of Christianity or Islam or anything. If you open the door for YOUR version (which you see as moral and right and good) then you open the door for ALL of them. And more injustice has been inflicted on the world in the name of religion than anything else.

hating gays and being a denier of their existence = bad

If people here get pissed off about the former and not the latter, it makes me wonder, it really does.

or that he is a denier who is gay.

'Cause he could get in a whole lot of trouble for having the gay.

and not-so-much by his remarks about gays is perplexing.

"Ahmadinejad doesn't really deny that there are gays in Iran." with a long and convoluted explanation if it would get locked and there would be a blistering post from the admin.

K & R

Seems like everytime he opens his mouth he says something either stupid or insane, or in any event something easily refuted. It seems to me that the more he talks the more idiotic he reaveals himself. He talks so much crap that the serious stuff, like that letter he sent W last year just gets swollowed up by his idiocy.

and I think we all should take his remarks seriously.

Just like when Bush the Idiot speaks. Who knows what he'll do next anyway.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1911086

They are much more fanatical about condemning homosexuals and they did 9/11.

SEE!! I HATE THIS SHIT.

Nobody said anything about attacking anybody. You can condemn a man's comments without feeling the need to attack his country. And you can question whether or not he really denied this or that without denying it yourself.

Can't you people READ?

"Meanwhile, the Senate on Wednesday, voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

While the proposal, by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6951012,00.html

I don't think many people are denying that there's numerous reasons to think the man is a total scumbag.

"In 2000 the Saudi government reported that it had sentenced nine Saudi men to extensive prison terms with lashing for engaging in cross-dressing and homosexual relations. <5> That same year the government executed three Yemeni male workers for homosexuality and child molestation. <6>

In April 2005, the government convicted over a hundred men of homosexuality, but none were sentenced to be executed. All those men were given prison sentences with flogging because they were at a private party that was either a same-sex wedding ceremony or a birthday party. <7> Yet, not long after a gay foreign couple was sentenced to death for homosexuality and allegedly killing a man who was blackmailing them for homosexuality.

In May 2005, the government arrested 92 men for homosexuality. It is unknown what happened to these men. Likewise, on November 7, 2005 Riyadh police raided what the Saudi press called a "beauty contest for gay men" at al-Qatif. What became of the five men arrested for organizing the event, is not known. <8>"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia

But we already control that oil (or perhaps that oil already controls us).

:sarcasm:

Nice post, Lex. :thumbsup:

BTW, it's a cultural thing. :rofl:

His country executes gay people. Vile.

I'm so glad people laughed at him during his speech. When I saw the pictures from the executions of gay people in Iran, it made my blood boil.