Social networks in Iran have been flooded with compromising footage featuring several known ultra-conservative officials engaging in homosexual activities. While homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, the Iranian regime has attempted to deny the videos and cover up the scandals. We spoke to a former religious authority who says authorities are trying to “save face” by refuting the wave of videos.

  • girlfreddy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    First thing I thought was that’s a huge double-edged sword.

    I was glad to see this very close to the top of the article.

    “We should be careful not to label a homosexual relationship as a vice or any other label that the Islamic Republic attaches to homosexuals. We should not repeat their behaviour and condemn what happened. The problem here is not Seghati’s sexual relationship with another man, but the lies, hypocrisy and deception,” this tweet reads.

    • 520@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Absolutely right. I don’t care what you do in private but the moment you start depriving others of life and liberty for those same actions, well…I won’t weep when the axe falls on that person

      • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Except really I think these kind of reveals will slowly lose their relevance since we are getting tools that make it far easier to do “Deepfakes”. So it will just become the goto answer. In some ways its liberating, in other ways horrific since it will mean accountability is far harder. Hell we already have the trial run with this whole discussion of “Fake news”.

      • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think consequences accruing to bad people for the wrong reasons are still worth concern, personally.

    • Solarius@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      it’s almost confusing this has to be said. the whole point is obviously the criticism that the people in charge of jailing/killing gay people are indulging themselves. I feel you’d need to be pretty dense to not get that, yet I see it mentioned a lot.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I feel you’d need to be pretty dense to not get that, yet I see it mentioned a lot.

        You must not live in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death then. I think it’s a pretty important point to make when you might have readers who have had that idea reinforced their whole life

  • dan1101@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The world will be a better place when leaders are subject to the same rules and treated the same as citizens.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Imagine being an ultra-conservative Iranian authority who hasn’t been having homosexual sex. Now you have something to brag about and get even more conservative.

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t this literally pretty much the plot to the second book of the handmaids tale or am I losing it. Would make sense, hypocrisy is a big thing amongst the far right I guess

  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    In Iran it is commonly known that the religious elite are, like the Catholic hierarchy but probably more brazenly due to their political dominance in Iran, filled with sexual predators.

    It’s a practice, for instance, to engage in ‘temporary marriages’ (which the Iranian religious establishment thinks is justifiable based on tradition) with women (and young girls) at what are in practice brothels, which are then protected by religious law in virtue of being technically temporary marriages.

  • Drinvictus
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    1 year ago

    I am convinced that any person who is homophobic is gay deep inside

    • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      They could just be intolerant bigots. There are any number of reasons someone might hate someone, and the logic of “they must just be gay” doesn’t really work for other types of bigotry and racism.

    • aegisgfx877@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Reminds me of that meme where a cartoon character is in the fridge stuffing his mouth and the top caption reads “anti-gay preachers when no one is looking” And then the bottom caption reads “COCK”

    • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t really like this- for one, it’s based in the fact that homophobic people who also engage in queer behavior in secret tend to be outrageous in their hypocrisy. Thus, because it’s such juicy news people tend to assume it’s more common than it actually is. This is called the availability heuristic.

      For another, it individually pathologizes the condition of being homophobic as being rooted in psychological reaction formation- thereby denying that homophobia is something encultured by the broader homophobic social system that we live in. The condition of being a gay homophobe isn’t a psychological one but a sociological one- it’s not (just) shame but a very real fear of the very real consequences which recruit them to uphold the very system that oppresses them.

      • Someology@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You are using the terms sociological and psychological a bit incorrectly. Sociological phenomenon definitely feed into individual psychological phenomenon. Sometimes (actually commonly) an individual uses a psychological coping mechanism as a means to survive their sociological setting. Sociology affects Psychology of individuals, but that does not mean the individual psychological phenomenon do not exist on an individual level or that those things are solely Sociological.

  • Twink [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago
    1. Blaming homophobia on gay people is very dangerous. People in the comments, please don’t do it.

    2. I would be happy to read on correlation between homosexuality and anti-gay politics. One may claim it’s done purely out of survival but I wonder if there’s more to it.

    • JoBo@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      On 2:

      We hate what we fear. Study Finds That Homophobic People Are Actually More Likely To Be Gay

      Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex and the study’s lead author, said that these individuals “may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves”.

      There are a bunch of studies like this. I don’t know if anyone has done a systematic review to bring them all together in one read.

      It’s important to note that there is no implication that every homophobe is secretly gay, just statistically more likely to be than less performatively toxic individuals. Some homophobes are insecure in their masculinity (or femininity) for other reasons and so hide behind a parody of what they think masculinity (or femininity) is.

      The other important (and AFAIK, consistent) aspect of these studies is that they were taught to hate themselves:

      “Those people who have such discrepancies, who have really a split between their unconscious attraction and what they consciously say about themselves, are more likely to come from authoritarian homes.”

      “If you are a parent who really believes your child should be straight, and when you use whatever means you can to convince them them that they’re only good and worthy if they are, that would be very controlling and it creates a lot of conflict in the child.”

    • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Point 1: absolutely agree, however

      There has been too many verified accounts of loud homophobes engaging in homosexual behavior to just brush off as a coincidence.

      We should be able to talk about that without getting into dangerous territory. How? Not sure.