Larry King has a well-earned reputation for launching soft balls to his interview subjects, but not so when it comes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was in town addressing the United Nations.
While some mainstream media types avoid getting into gay speak, King grilled Ahmadinejad about his country’s homophobic human rights record.
[Gay action starts at about the 1:43 mark.]
Iran has strict laws against homosexuality and, the government has repeatedly – and publicly – executed those suspected to be gay, although the government would never admit it. Just last year, Ahmadinejad dismissed the very idea that gay people reside in his country.
And he employed very similar tactics during his conversation with King:
KING: By the way, you mentioned human rights in Israel. Don’t you have some human rights problems of your own in Iran?
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): What do you mean by human rights problems?
KING: People protesting that they don’t have the same rights as other people? Homosexuals — you said last year, you denied there were homosexuals. There’s homosexuals everywhere.
AHMADINEJAD (through translator): I said it is not the way it is here. In Iran this is considered a very — obviously most people dislike it. And we have actually a law regarding it and the law is enforced. It is a law that was passed. It was legislated. And it is an act that is against human principles. A lot of things can happen. It can cause psychological problems, social problems that affect the whole society. Remember that God rules are to improve human life. In our religion, this act is forbidden and the Parliament has legislated about it.
King went on to press the matter, to which Ahmadinejad snapped:
Are you concerned for 70 million Iranian people or a few homosexuals? Let’s assume in Iran — let’s assume in the United States that 200 million people drive cars and a million violators are rounded up and they just basically violate driving laws. Should we be worried for the 199 million people whose safety you must be concerned about or the one million violators? The law is the law. It’s law. And it must be enforced, of course.
The President went on to insist his government doesn’t meddle in people’s private lives. Except when they hang sixteen year olds suspected of being gay. Then they’re just doing their so-called duty.
Cody
Is it wrong to think that he’s a tiny bit hot? A fucking nutcase…but just a tiiiiiny bit hot…
Woof
Cody…WRONG VERY WRONG
Cody
Physically!
Darth Paul
I can support that, Cody. I don’t personally find him hot, but I can see why you’d think so.
Not Hot Yet
Hot only in the sense that he will burn in hell when the MOSAD gets their hands on him.
mds
If Bush had of went into Iran instead of Iraq I might not have such a problem with him. This country does horrible things to gay people such as hang them publicly, encouraging citizens to attend and watch, and chant “death to America” as they pull the floor out from under their victims. This man is as evil as Hitler. its a nation that has no purpose or benefit to this world. Why did we have to waste our time and money, well debt, on Iraq when we could have at least took these idiots out. Oh yeah, I forgot, Mr. Bush had a vendetta against Hussien cause of his fucking daddy, and I guess Dick Cheney and Haliburton saw Iraq as a place with more money making opportunities.
mark
I give Larry King credit for having Akmi-dinnerjacket as a guest, because watching this cold blooded motherf*cker as he speaks, makes his danger visceral.
Repub Dude
The guy spoke more logically than Bush. This guy talks diplomacy and people talk war or bombing….who sounds more evil in this context? Everything he said had some validity…he of course should have held his tounge concerning Israel…but then again, the fact that he spoke his mind concerning his controversial view may indicate he does speak his truth; if this is the case then we are the bigger assholes in threatening attack on Iran. Even though some of his statements concerning Israel made me cringe…through the ugly words there is some truth that we have been unwilling to speak, acknowledge, or dicuss. Maybe we should focus on fixing the US, maybe that will fix a lot of things.
The Dude
Here are a few of King’s hard-hitting questions: (He even compliments the Hitleresque “president” of Iran for his good looks)
I know they limit your travel in the United States. If you could go anywhere, what would you like to see in this country?
How many children do you have? Boy, girl, what? How old? You don’t look old enough to have married children.
Would you like to meet with Senator McCain or Senator Obama?
You would agree that you are, for want of a better word, a controversial figure, are you not?
erin
oh man i really thought that was patrick dempsey
Trenton
The guy is less influential in his own country than you may think; just a firebrand figurehead that even many Iranians think needs to STFU. I don’t see Iran as a whole, as any kind of real threat at the moment…except maybe to their own people.
And to everyone who thinks that they are slaughtering gays wholesale…No. Not the case. Saudi and Dubai are still worse than Iran. It’s an incredibly complicated issue there because of so much religious meddling. For a better look at the dynamics and the negative view of homosexuality from homosexuals themselves in Iran, I highly recommend the documentary “Be like others.” It’s highly depressing, but it clarifies the extent of the violence against gays (the most potent forms being mental and emotional).
CitizenGeek
I really, really like Larry King. He’s truly pro-gay and I doubt many other interviewers would have taken Ahmadinejad on over homosexuality.
CHURCHILL-Y
No wonder blacks and wacko liberals like Ahmadinejad so much. If you took his name off this interviews and didn’t show his face or mention the country he would sound like any of your run of the mill african or black Caribbean nation or african American religious/political leader including Obama (taking away the law violation and execution thing of course):
“Are you concerned for 70 million Iranian people or a few homosexuals?”
Take away the Iranian word and it sounds just like something he or any black including those GLBT would say.
“Remember that God rules are to improve human life. In our religion, this act is forbidden”
Again sounds just like him and uses the same reasoning Obama uses to deny same sex couples the right to marry.
Barack Hussein Obama/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Lovely!
Trenton
“No wonder blacks and wacko liberals like Ahmadinejad so much.”
And we stopped reading there… 9_9
There’s only one way to counteract malicious nonsense of that magnitude: with humorous nonsense of equal magnitude. For your edification: morbid Japanese cartoons!
Although, one must entertain the idea that the pigs and tanuki are representative of gays, brutalized by those fascistic Japanese cats…
John
Lets just it put it this way, Churchy.
I’d rather vote for a Willie Brown, David Paterson, Carol-Mosley Braun, Nelson Mandela, or Barack Obama on their worse day — than you on your best.
You have more in common with Ahmedinejad than Obama ever will.
Darth Paul
Crotchill-y got served. Again. She must live for that.
My View
Latest about Obama and Palin:
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr09-03-08.html
🙂
marcus
Trenton, I don’t how you became such an authority on Iran but the fact of the matter is over 4,000 gay people have been executed in Iraq since the mid 80’s. I live in Canada in the middle of a gay ghetto, I have shit loads of gay, Iranian friends who affirm this. I find you to be a bit “pro” Iraq and may I ask you why?
msim
Well said, John (No.15).
On Ahmadinejad: the man is simply the eastern version of Bush; nothing more, nothing less.
Trenton
Marcus, you switch up Iran and Iraq twice, and now I don’t know to which you are referring, but I will say this: I have no friends who are from (or even who have lived for an extended period) in Iraq, so I won’t pretend to know anything about that. Nor will I say I am an authority on the matter. NOR will I deny that Iran is run by a monstrous theocracy and that the state religion (even when law does not get involved) creates a horrific and destructive world for queers. I will say that my friends, acquaintances, and business contacts from that region (including Saudi and UAE) and I mostly talk national politics, not queer issues. The young ones are very tolerant, and the older ones are respectful at least (as much as one might expect from conservatives from our own country).
There’s my prolepsis. My point is this: The execution (murder, really) of convicted queers is not a wholly queer issue…it stems from a vicious system of law that imposes capital punishment on many different “crimes” such as being the victim of rape (straight or gay), so the criminalization of queerness is horrific and leads to the greater horror of torture and death, but that torture and death is a problem that affects the whole society. I don’t wish to conflate the two, because they should be addressed as two different things. That is, we should like to say 1) stop criminalizing homosexuality and 2) stop killing people for A, B, C, D, E, and F, including homosexuality. Unfortuntely, we can say it ’til we are blue in the face, but it won’t make much of a difference. That’s extreme Muslim law for ya…which I find the most abhorrent religion to have ever existed (though not such a far cry from certain forms of Christianity).
I don’t know exact numbers of executions. It would be helpful to know, so if you have sources comparing the various countries I’d love to see them. However, I am almost positivethat you will find that Saudi has the worst numbers by far (assuming that they are even properly reported, for many of the “executions” occur without legal proceedings there). In any case, the one sign of hope in this mess is that Iran has moved forward in accepting transexuality whereas many other countries have not. Transexuality is permitted, and many homosexuals become convinced that they are trans and undergo operations to legalize their love/libido (so to speak). It’s a warped and meager step toward a cultural awakening…or perhaps its even a step back, in sweeping it under the rug. In any case, I only make all these points to show that the systems at fault are not created explicitly to hurt/maim/kill queers ad only queers. It’s just a screwed up system in general.
So I’m not pro-Iran. I just want people to keep a clear head and realize this is a full-scale human rights issue, not one targeted specifically at us. And besides…we should save our ire for the enemies who are already standing at our gates, within our own borders…protesting funerals…
seitan-on-a-stick
I thought that the pic of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an age-enhanced pic of Sarah Palin’s Down’s Syndrome child (she apparently birthed instead of her daughter and that redneck) “Oh no he di’int,” hisses shoeshinesall-y!
CHURCHILL-Y
No # 21 Sitting-On-You-Shit, Obamadenijad is actually the bestial byproduct of the zoosexual relationship Ann Dunham had in her youth :
http://www.postmodernclog.com/rop/archives/ahmadinejad_lg-14_002.jpg
National Geographic never lies!
Barack Hussein Obama/Obamadenijad same thing.