Iran’s interventions on the LGBT community

Revolution of Islam

In the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his government started actively oppressing homosexuals upon taking power. Thousands, including homosexuals, were easily and publicly executed by the new government. The first “supreme leader” of Iran, Khomeini, justified killing gays as required to eliminate corruption, comparing them to gangrene, and arguing that the condemned people would contaminate and spread otherwise (A. L., 2018).

Punishment and criminalization

The legal framework of the Islamic Republic, including its Islamic penal code, is built on a harsh interpretation of Islamic law. According to the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2019, Iranian security forces harassed and arrested individuals suspected of being LGBT, in some cases searching their homes or tracking their internet activity to gain information on their people’s sexual orientation. Individuals convicted of sodomy were subjected to trials where basic proof requirements were not upheld and were forced to undergo invasive exams while in regime detention, listed as possibly constituting torture by the United Nations and World Health Organization (A.L., 2018).

Iranian media announced that a 31-year-old man was publicly hanged in the southwestern town of Kazeroon on the grounds of criminal allegations of abduction and same-sex rape charges. The executed man alleged that his testimony was forced by the regime’s security forces under torture (Iranian Lesbian & Transgender Network, 2015). Another example is Rezvaneh Mohammadi, a gender equality activist, who received a five-year prison sentence for the unprecedented charge of “collusion against national security by seeking to normalize homosexual relations.” The verdict, issued by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, came after Mohammadi was held in solitary confinement at the famously harsh Evin Prison for weeks. Her captors were attempting to compel her to admit that they were collecting funds to overthrow the government (Bolcer, 2011).  

Medical interventions 

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed concern about allegations that LGBT children in Iran have been forced to undergo forced therapy to alter their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, including the application of electric shocks, hormones, and psychiatric drugs. The number of private and government-backed psychiatric clinics engaged in “corrective treatment” of LGBT Iranians grew in 2018, according to the Iranian LGBT activist group 6Rang (Cassell, 2020).

30 years ago, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini released a fatwa (legal opinion) legalizing surgery for sex-reassignment. Consequently, the Iranian regime permits certain procedures and partly subsidizes them. However, since Tehran criminalizes and harshly punishes same-sex activity and considers same-sex attraction as a disorder, the transgender policy of the regime results in the authorities and mental health practitioners and families forcing Iranians to undergo unwelcomed surgery to be able to enter into same-sex relations without fear of arrest and punishment (Bolcer, 2011)

Censorship and legal protection

Discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is not prohibited by Iranian law. No same-sex marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are recognized by the state. The regime censors websites, including Wikipedia articles, and other outlets that deal with LGBT matters. Unfortunately, the censorship and lack of legal protection are worsening the circumstances for the community (Virtual Embassy Tehran, 2020).