KLM, the airline you fly across the Atlantic when you don’t want your bags to go missing on Delta, is refusing to let gay flight attendants skip stops in Iran, fearing the country’s homophobic ways (and, frankly, criminalization of their sexuality) could get them in trouble.
Flight attendants of the Dutch airline often must spend the night in Tehran as they await their next shift, where they could be arrested for fraternizing with the same sex. It’s a reasonable request for any employee to make of an employer: Please don’t forcibly subject me to situations where I could be arrested for simply being who I am.
Then again, in the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Land, gays don’t really exist. Unless KLM imports them.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
View these pictures of what those savage scumbags in Iran did to two Gay teens who were 14 and 16 when they were arrested………..
http://www.queervisions.com/2005/compassion-for-iranian-gay-teens-lost-to-religious-insanity/
I would have a bit of concern spending the night in that cesspool myself……………
DR (the real one, not the guy who made post #12)
They really need to let these guys opt out. I realize that this could, in one respect, be solved by not running around Iran openly proclaiming your sexuality, but if KLM is willing to make concessions for women who are offended by wearing headscarves, it ought to make concessions for folks who could end up in jail (or worse) for being gay.
Andy
KLM can’t let the gay opt out because then there’s no one left.
Dan
There are literally millions of gay people in Iran. They simply need to stand up to the clerics. Gay Iranians vastly outnumber the clerics and can deal with them in a single day. You’re talking millions against a few thousand. Clerics in some countries will force religion upon people – gay and straight – until stopped.
robert
@Dan:
simply stand up to the clerics? i don’t blame any iranian for not standing up to the clerics and government when this is the reality they face. it’s not a coincidence that gay groups focused on the middle east DO NOT set up shop in the middle east: there isn’t a simple solution that only requires people to speak louder. look at the protests around the recent iranian election, for example. far more protesters were involved than any gay related protest would bring — and nothing changed, except for the state-sanctioned body count. i imagine, if there were wide-scale gay protests, people who normally oppose khamenei and ahmadinejad politically would side with them on this issue.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Would everyone please click on this link. I never in my life felt more anger, hatred, towards a group and at the same time wanted to cry as when I first viewed the pictures of these Gay teens being murdered by these islamic fundamentalist scumbags:
http://www.queervisions.com/2005/compassion-for-iranian-gay-teens-lost-to-religious-insanity/
Next time someone attempts to drum up some kind of support for any of those scumbag fundamentalists please direct them to above……..
Fact check
Delta, KLM, and Air France operate a joint venture on all transatlantic flights. So your lead statement makes no sense.
B
Can KLM arrange for their gay flight attendants to spend the night at the Dutch embassy, which (as technically part of the Netherlands) is outside Iran’s jurisdiction?