Strange and extraordinary opinions about gays in Iran - it is a crime punished by death.

Yet Iranians are so gorgeous. Staggering eye lashes; fabulous skin.

The boys and the girls are often stunning. I think they are generally the most beautiful race on earth - soft skin, slightly brown, not too dark or too light, great bone structure.

No wonder Alexander the Great and others found the Persians so beautiful. Many became lovers.

They are between the Slavic, Arabic, Indian and European races and often, I found, with the best of each.
And their minds, poetry, intellects and emotions combine all the best too.

How sad this is.

Very sad indeed.

Even the strongest and most barbaric political regimes have a relatively short shelf life, rarely longer than a few decades, but when you throw religion into the mix, that can take a lot more shifting.

I firmly believe that the whole world will free itself from the shackles of religious bigotry one day, but fear it could take hundreds if not thousands of years.

The people of Iran need this enlightenment more than most.

Very sad indeed.

I don't really want to politicize yet another incident BUT the Home Secretary has only agreed to "look again" at the request (for permission to stay) from the guy who would face death on his return because over 60 members of the House of Lords wrote to her.

A previous request was turned down - which is why he fled to Holland.

Anthony wrote:

I firmly believe that the whole world will free itself from the shackles of religious bigotry one day, but fear it could take hundreds if not thousands of years.

The people of Iran need this enlightenment more than most.

Let's not forget, Anthony, that it is ONLY 40 years since this counld have led to Life Imprisonment here in the UK (and that in itself was often a death penalty, as many people committed suicide rather than be "outed").

Yes, Iran is behind the times - but NOT that much behind the UK (and other places) to be fair.

It's a bit of a simplistic 'cop out' to blame religion for this kind of thing. A lot of it is just plain human bigotry. Homosexuality is seen as unnatural. It's akin to racism and all the other ism's. Very little to do with religion. But whenever man recognises a problem with his own species he looks outside himself for something else to blame. If we didn't have religion we'd still have ignorance and bigotry. We'd just give them another label and act like they were not of our own making.

Valid point, JC, but I wasn't attempting to blame religion for human prejudices. The point is, there are no secular states which execute people for homosexuality, are there?

I agree with you, ITK. I wasn't coming at it from an angle that Iranians are backward compared to us. We could all benefit from the disappearance of religion, but it just so happens that Iran is currently in the grip of a particularly nasty religious regime that is forcing it to live in the Dark Ages.

well don't hold back JK !..but yes you are right and the current Iranian regime is pretty damn vicious.

I'm disappointed to see the once very liberal Netherlands has gone fairly conservative again.

But isn't it fascinating to see where the USA and it's meddling with other countries affairs can end up. If they hadn't backed the vicious Shah of Iran and helped him overthrow the moderate democratic goverment before him-Iran wouldn't have ended up with the crackpot Ayatollah.