Listening to Iran
: on the 'gay' controversy.
September 29, 2007

Geoffrey Hamilton

There is a serious psychological problem within all of humanity which makes listening a very limited hope. The recent visit by Iran's president to the UN, especially his appearance at Columbia University, gives an illuminating example as to how the clearest counter evidence and brightest spotlight cannot deter the thinking patterns of the smartest people.

Before a planned question and answer event could begin President Ahmanidejad of Iran was introduced insultingly for ten minutes by his host Lee Bollinger, president of the university. Bollinger had invited Ahmanidejad but the backlash against this decision (due to the constant US propaganda against Iran) made Bollinger fear for his job. As a result he shot wild insults at his guest, at one time implying that Ahmanidejad was a petty dictator despite his being recently elected and of second rank in Iran.

What was profoundly telling was Bollinger's remark, "Frankly, and in all candor, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will itself be meaningful to us". This was a little later accurately called "vaccinating" and an insult to the audience by Ahmanidejad. This first event set up a mob mentality within the hall.

Iran's president eventually arrived at the podium and was asked a question from the audience, via both a filtering moderator and an interpreter. Regarding Israel, he was asked whether Iran wanted to destroy it. Through the interpreter he said that he wanted all 'Palestinians' - Jewish, Christian and Muslim - to vote on the future of 'Palestine' and let them decide. This received applause from a large part of the audience.

The moderator interjected that the question had been avoided to which a louder part of the hall cheered. The moderator insisted on a yes or no answer. It was very much like Adlai Stevenson's "Yes or no - don't wait for the translation - yes or no?" , because lack of care in the translation was relevant during this incident too. Now, regarding the moderator's demand, Iran's president responded, "You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it", which sums up the whole intent of the event.

After this segment Ahmanidejad was asked about his desire to see the reopening of research into Jewish deaths at camps run by the Nazi's. He answered that he is not denying it happened only that the issue is not closed considering how it is used today to justify many terrible things. He said that even the answers of physics are not absolutes, nor are they a closed subject, and history is even less of a closed book.

He was interrupted by the moderator, asked a rhetorical question which said the holocaust was a well established fact and pushed onto another subject. But Ahmanidejad answered it anyway, "You're free to interpret what you want from what I say, but what I'm saying I'm saying with full clarity….There's nothing known as absolute…." Many other instances of his reasoning showed equal ability and rationality.

As such, when he was asked a vague and leading question regarding "persecutions" and executions of women and homosexuals it is curious that he was so greatly misinterpreted and assumed to be being an absurd liar.

He answered that women are honoured in Iran and executions are for the protection of the people from crime, just as it is used in the US. However, he was again assumed to be avoiding the question and the moderator interrupted him again "The question was about sexual preference and women."

Ahmanidejad, through the interpreter, responded, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country". This immediately drew laughter and boos. Everyone misunderstood him, as was proven later in the news wires and the blogs of the Western world. They all misquoted him as saying 'Iran has no homosexuals'.

At the time he apparently understood the reaction and through the interpreter clarified that the American homosexual "phenomenon" is not in Iran. He was saying that there are cultural differences in how homosexuality is either expressed or understood. This point was not heard even though there was already an opening for such an alternative view as many American homosexuals say there is no such thing as 'a homosexual' but there is a continuum of one's preferences with greater or lesser numbers of instances of actual relations between members of the same sex. They are saying that there is no one that is completely homosexual or heterosexual so any label will be false. Such an idea even has ancient roots. Foucault states it like this, "The sodomite had been {before 1870} a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now {due to doctors} a species". (My brackets.) This could be taken as a basis for the cultural differences he referred to.

Ahmanidejad's final clarification was booed as well. He moved on but the American-led media has not moved on. This subject has now grown to absurd proportions and shows how easily the evidence for anything can be overlooked or ignored even by the most honoured and rational people, like Jon Stewart or Haroon Siddiqui for instance.

To correct this misunderstanding here let me point out some basic and ignored issues. First of all, interpretations are the opinion of the interpreter and five interpreters will give five (often) very different versions of a phrase. Max Harold Fisch put it this way with the more generous time given to translating, "…the revision of translations is best a matter in large part of substituting ways of misleading the reader less for ways of misleading him more." Live events rely on the assumed genius of an interpreter. Listeners somehow believe that these mere human beings can avoid committing what happens everyday to themselves even within the same language - misunderstandings. Despite this obvious failure of insight by Bollinger and company the problem of translating was, and is, completely ignored and no benefit of the doubt was and is ever suggested.

To give one example - Aries Dela Cruz, communications chair of the Columbia Queer Alliance, said after the event that the question to Ahmanidejad had been poorly phrased. "The Western category of gay or lesbian doesn't translate well into Farsi," he said, and added. "That doesn't mean that Ahmanidejad didn't understand the question." Even though Cruz knew the whole category of "gay" was a problem he himself gave no leeway and still only misheard the phrase 'Iran has no homosexuals'.

In addition to issues related to translation are ones to do with cultural values. This year a documentary called "Out in Iran" got wide play on television. The leaders of an Iranian gay rights committee talk about being persecuted. This movement was only founded in 2002, and was the result of an internet surfing experience on Western gay sites by its chief founder, 'Arsham'. His organization is a new, American inspired, political movement aimed at the Iranian government only. Despite this he admits it's Islam itself that says homosexuality is an illness and is the source of the problem.

All the focus in the west on Iran's 'gay rights' is bogus. Such 'persecution' is actually region wide and religion wide. The devoutly Islamic Iranian government is really just the latest target in an American cultural, military and political invasion, one that is difficult to stop. This particular aspect of the invasion, which is calling for Western concepts of homosexuality to be a world standard, is just in its infancy in Iran and is so minor an influence as to be irrelevant and could easily be considered non-existent. Based on this alone, the logical answer to the moderator's badly phrased question would be just what Ahmanidejad did say - the phenomenon is not like in your country.

To pro-Americans this 'gay rights' invasion of Iran is essentially just another happy instance in the world-wide phenomenon of cultural genocide against the languages and societies of the non-English-speaking world - one that they feel all other nations must roll over for. The point is that there are linguistic, cultural, and religious reasons why there are no 'homosexuals' in Iran "like in your country." None of this got through or gets through.

Still, this lack of an ability to listen on the part of highly educated people, or anyone for that matter, is also easily seen and has been so for eons. Francis Bacon wrote this fact down for us long ago, if it wasn't already said before, "…the human understanding, when any proposition has once been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation: and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe, or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions." Bacon knew first hand the accuracy of his observation both at the king's table and from behind prison bars.

Game gene theory offers an update in that to sacrifice the authority of a mistaken idea is to, often times, give up one's whole reason for existence. To really listen often means, afterwards, to having nothing to live for. And you will miss the loss equally no matter how petty the game or life itself is. The gamegene limits the ability to listen through its limiting of options to only one context (or running societal game) at a time. You cannot plug in any information that the functioning context does not allow. The 'vaccinating' by Lee Bollinger was the setting of the approved context for the evening. This happened while, previously, the US government's relentless propaganda against Iran, and the US opposition's lame response, set the allowable discourse for Lee Bollinger. Presently, the game is so set against Iran that any understanding of that country is now met with outrage, just as there was outrage once met out to those who doubted WMD in Iraq.

Finally, it makes no difference to my arguments whether Ahmanidejad actually intended to say that there are no people in Iran who practice same sex sex, all that matters is that the worst was expected and of the two ways to see the statement on gays the worst was universally assumed and this prejudice stopped the ears of Columbia's finest (as it does the world's worst). Perhaps, they could stand to see a little of Rick Mercer's interviews with America's elite academics to see just how ignorant they've allowed themselves to be. Pomposity and ignorance make deadly playfellows.

GRH