Court Hangs 2 Gay Teens

I have seen some nasty shit in my life. As a prosecutor I've had to attend autopsies of suspicious deaths. I've been to brutal murder scenes. I've seen the broken bodies of victims of violence and hate.

I have evaluated defendants and recommended punishment for their crimes. I have stood in front of judges and asked that young men to prison for decades for their crimes.

But the sight of those young men with blindfolds and nooses around their necks turned my stomach.

They were executed for a consensual crime--what they did was not harming anyone. Punishment should not be in excess of the crime and the death penalty is a brutal punishment that should be reserved only for the most heinious of crimes, and even then I rarely approve of its use. These boys did nothing to harm anyone yet they are having their lives taken from them--and their families are being punished by having their son/grandson/nephew/cousin executed and taken from them.

How fucking sick those fucking self-righteous bastards are that sentenced these boys to death!!

After seeing that picture, I'm going to allow myself to briefly think irrationally that there just aren't enough nuclear bombs in the world.

I'll not feel like this in five minutes.

But just let me sit here and allow my cold black rage rip wide open for a minute.

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Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

But the sight of those young men with blindfolds and nooses around their necks turned my stomach.

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That's what they want. They want people to be sick to their stomaches and fear death when thinking of homosexuality. Fear is effective.

We don't need to use this act to vilify their culture... if so we must vilify our own. No matter what our laws say... people in our culture feel it's ok to tease, torture, and kill homosexuals.

Never forget:

http://billandkent.com/albums/matthe...ard/matt46.jpg

http://www.biashelp.org/eQuality/alb...tt_shepard.jpg

http://www.wm.edu/law/lawlibrary/mov...oysdontcry.jpg

We should work on changing our own society before ridiculing other societies.

These two Iranian boys should be made icons in our Gay culture as examples of how far we still have to go in the world to be treated like human beings. If their is a God.. God bless them all.

Kinda blows the Bush administration's claim that our involvement in Iraq was to liberate the people from a brutal dictator. I bet Bush never mentions this once.

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Originally Posted by mardigras

Kinda blows the Bush administration's claim that our involvement in Iraq was to liberate the people from a brutal dictator. I bet Bush never mentions this once.

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Um, I think this happened in Iran, and so far we haven't invaded them yet...

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Originally Posted by tombarr

Um, I think this happened in Iran, and so far we haven't invaded them yet...

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I think I see where he was coming from on his statement "Kinda blows the Bush administration's claim that our involvement in Iraq was to liberate the people from a brutal dictator. I bet Bush never mentions this once."

I think his point was that, culturally, those in the middle east live in a violent culture.. and that a brutal dictator isn't the reason we needed to goto Iraq. It seems.. dictator or not... they are still barbaric. :shifty:

Let me just clarify.. I don't mean they are genetically barbaric, or bad people. When you grow up with violence & abuse in a society you copy what you know.. your father, your grandfather, etc. Over time people raised in violent societies can live normally.. it takes time though and sometimes a couple generations. All we need to do is look at our own countries history as an example.

Anybody remember the story where they forced the girl who got RAPED to marry the rapist ?

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Originally Posted by Jasun

This is NOT the belief of the majority.

The election you're talking about was ridiculous... virtaully all of the candidates were disqualified for being "too liberal".

These people did not and could not choose that government.

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Well that's only part of the story.
Rafsanjani, who lost the presidential election, had been president for 8 years awhile back. He should have been in a pretty good position to win the election, and he's a relatively progressive individual who favored a certain degree of increased relations with the West. Sure, many other reformist candidates were disqualified from running, but that could very well have ended up in reformist elements all uniting under the remaining, most progressive candidates and made them even stronger, their vote tallies even higher now that progressive votes would not have been split up among various factions, allegiances fractured and what not.

The problem was, the progressive candidate (Rafsanjani) also has a reputation for being corrupt. No one could trust him. Even the reformist voters in Iran couldn't be bothered to vote for him because of his being anything but inspirational. His policies aside, his personality didn't inspire turnout among those most likely to support him (or, at the very least, oppose his opponent). And so the hardliners won.

It all came down to voter turnout, where the progressives just weren't motivated enough about their candidate to bother showing up at the polls, whereas the conservatives voter mobilization efforts got them to show out in full force and push their candidate to victory.

Those of us here in the US could definitely empathize with that situation and see how it works. Indeed, if there's anything the last 2 presidential elections here in the US have shown us, it's that the conservatives have been way more able to mobilize voters than the liberals have, irrespective of how peoples ideologies break down in the population as a whole. It's not a question of "Liberals vs. Conservative", it's a question of "Likely voters vs. Unlikely voters" and actual Voters vs. Those That Didn't Vote.

Sorry. Middle East politics give me a boner. =x

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Originally Posted by BDBionic

the conservatives have been way more able to mobilize voters than the liberals have, irrespective of how peoples ideologies break down in the population as a whole. It's not a question of "Liberals vs. Conservative", it's a question of "Likely voters vs. Unlikely voters" and actual Voters vs. Those That Didn't Vote.

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Yeah it's called church. When churches were promissed big "payouts" if Bush was elected.. they "spoke the word of God" to the flock. Low & behold they showed up, hell or high water, to vote. Little did they know Bush was a wolf in sheeps clothing (see graphic below.. not very churchlike is it?)

http://www.theonlinenews.com/bush.gif

C'mon now, Squirt. In American Sign Language, it's the middle finger that's used to say "Jesus" (by alternately touching the palm of one hand with the middle finger of the other, symbolizing where the nails went to hang him on the cross). They middle finger has many roles in Catholic mass and reference to Jesus.

That .gif doesn't have sound. If it did, you'd see that what Dubya's actually doing is saying "Jesus is up there" and pointing to Heaven. :)




... ok I think I got way too complex with that joke for it to be funny =\

You should expect the middle east to have barbaric views towards homosexuality when not even the liberal western world has accepted it.

It may be tolerated (in certain areas) in this part of the world, but it's certainly not accepted with open arms yet.

Until we are at the point where gay relationships are so casual and accepted that it's not even a newsworthy issue any longer, don't expect even minimal toleration to rub off onto the middle east.

So in a way even people like pride event protesters have those two boys blood on their hands.

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Originally Posted by Matt 26z

You should expect the middle east to have barbaric views towards homosexuality when not even the liberal western world has accepted it.

It may be tolerated (in certain areas) in this part of the world, but it's certainly not accepted with open arms yet.

Until we are at the point where gay relationships are so casual and accepted that it's not even a newsworthy issue any longer, don't expect even minimal toleration to rub off onto the middle east.

So in a way even people like pride event protesters have those two boys blood on their hands.

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The men responsible for the death of these young men are self-righteous state-sanctioned religious zealots. I will criticize any government that systematically silences opposition--even my own. I will not blame the state-sanctioned murder of gay men on anyone other than the state that put them to death. I will not try to shift the focus from brutality and murder done in the name of religion to the Western world that never seems to do enough to appease a small bunch of whiny complainers who constantly criticize the United States but run to the US market like hogs to a feeding trough when they have goods to sell.

These boys were murdered by their own state which they should expect to protect them. The gay men and women living in Iran must be living in fear of their lives because of the sexual orientation that they did not choose and can do nothing about other than hide. I grew up in fear of being exposed for being gay and being ridiculed. I cannot imagine what it is like in Iran, fearing death for peeking out of the closet. So not only were these two young men murdered, every gay man and woman in Iran was given another strong message to stay the fuck inside the closet.

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Originally Posted by chadknowslaw

These boys were murdered by their own state which they should expect to protect them.

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That's a great point. In the U.S. homosexuals are teased, tortured and murdered for being Gay.. the state doesn't condone this and their actions are considered crimes.. crimes which they will be punished for.

What do you think we should do Chad? Should we continue war against extreme muslims simply because our beliefs are different? I personally think moral beliefs are at the core of why anyone would goto war.. and I would personally fight and die for my beliefs.

If so.. let's at least be honest as to why we're going to war. We are occupying, fighting, and killing, for our moral beliefs, not to liberate a country, but to fundamentaly change the way the people of that country see the world.. right?

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Originally Posted by Squirt

That's a great point. In the U.S. homosexuals are teased, tortured and murdered for being Gay.. the state doesn't condone this and their actions are considered crimes.. crimes which they will be punished for.

What do you think we should do Chad? Should we continue war against extreme muslims simply because our beliefs are different? I personally think moral beliefs are at the core of why anyone would goto war.. and I would personally fight and die for my beliefs.

If so.. let's at least be honest as to why we're going to war. We are occupying, fighting, and killing, for our moral beliefs, not to liberate a country, but to fundamentaly change the way the people of that country see the world.. right?

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I wish it were such lofty principals. My personal OPINION is that Bush lead the US into war with Iraq for his own personal political gain and to stoke the coffers of his friend's companies.