US Booting Gay Iranian?

Iran may be getting a homo. Doug Ireland reports that the United States government seems poised to deport a gay Iranian national named Hassan Parhizkar.

Since November 7, this mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

The fuzz snuffed out Parhizkar’s freedom earlier this month, when he and his lawyer paid the immigration office a little visit. It seems the man hired a fraudulent lawyer in 1992, which did nothing to help a 1999 deportation order, which Parhizkar didn’t know about until 2001, when he was pulled over for a traffic violation.

The government would have deported him, but the Iranian government refused to have him. So, Parhizkar’s been living under probation, a probation he claims to have followed to the letter. Regardless, the man’s future hangs in the balance.

The Canada-based Iranian Queer Organization has organized a petition to keep Parhizkar in the United States. Whether the government will listen or not remains to be seen. One thing’s for sure, a return from sexual exile could spell doom for Parhizkar.