“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

This jaw-dropping claim was made today by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during a talk he gave at Columbia University in New York. “We don’t have that in our country,” he asserted to a burst of shocked laughter and a smattering of boos and hisses.

“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,” he persisted, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it.”

Perhaps the photo above will refresh your memory, Mr. President.

From the UK Gay News, circa 2005:

Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No. 19.

Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.

One youth was aged 18 and the other was a minor under the age of 18. They were only identified by their initials, M.A. and A.M.

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Welcome, Winston, to the Ministry of Love.

You are afraid, aren’t you? The man with the truncheon by the door is frightening you. Have you been guilty of a thoughtcrime, Winston? Your neighbor’s daughter said she heard you singing in your apartment. Were you singing, Winston?

I told you once before that if we ever met again it would be here. This is Room 101. Sit in the chair. The wires are connected to a terminus that will send volts through your body. The more I turn the dial, the more volts. You are shaking, Winston. You are imagining indescribable pain. We have watched you, Winston. We have heard you. You were singing in your apartment. Are you a traitor, Winston? Have you tried to overthrow Big Brother? Have you made up your own rules? We have the tape: (more…)

Dystopia — that’s a word we learned in high school when we read 1984. It means a society turned upside down, the negative inverse of Utopia, the perfect world.

In George Orwell’s masterwork of totalitarian government, giant televisions watch you. The news is fictionalized and history is contradicted (and then rewritten daily) to prop up the government.

It’s a place where the vision of the future is “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Where it is not enough to acquiesce to Big Brother, one must love him wholehearted too. One must, with one’s own free will, believe that 2 + 2 = 5, or 3, or 4, or all those answers at once — if Big Brother says it’s so. (more…)