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Dear Madame Secretary: Iran executed two gay teens on July 19, sparking worldwide condemnation by gay and human rights organizations of these barbaric state-sanctioned killings, according to a story in the Times of London last week.

In light of the outrageous hanging of these gay Iranian teens and our country's commitment to protecting the human rights of all the world's citizens, I believe you have a responsibility to strongly and unequivocally deplore the executions by the Iranian government. [...]

[...] While I am pleased you expressed deep concern for gay citizens everywhere, I am very troubled that you have yet to issue any statements, comments, denunciations or criticisms against Iran over the immoral death by hanging of two gay teens.

Please end your silence about Iran's killing of the gay teens, forcefully condemn the executions and call attention to this despicable behavior by the Iranian government.

Michael Petrelis in Letter to Condoleezza Rice, July 26, 2005

On July 19 in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran, two teenagers, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, were put to death for a crime involving homosexual intercourse. Asgari, at least, was underage at the time of the offense. Before the execution Marhoni and Asgari were detained for approximately fourteen months and received 228 lashes each for drinking, disturbing the peace and theft. Despite appeals from the defendants' lawyers and protests by Iranian human rights activists such as Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the verdict and sentence, which was carried out by public hanging. [...]

[...] There's no question that the executions of Marhoni and Asgari deserve fierce condemnation. And it remains a possibility that this was, indeed, a violation not just of human rights but of gay rights--though it is highly unlikely that the two self-identified as gay. What's worth exploring is how our perception of the case has been refracted through the prism of ideological debates over the nature and danger of radical Islam, and how assumptions about the "clash of civilizations" that supposedly pits enlightened, secular, humane Western society against backward, theocratic, oppressive Islamic society seem to have impaired our ability to get the facts straight.[...]

[...] When asked if HRC would continue to protest the executions if the rape charges proved accurate, Fisher said, "We would be relieved to learn that the charges of homosexual sex were wrong, and that this turned out to be a case of assault." As an organization that focuses "on issues specific to the LGBT community," Fisher said that HRC "does not have a position on the death penalty." In his second post on the hangings, Doug Ireland noted that the controversy around the hangings demonstrates that American gay organizations and media have "little experience or background in evaluating, reporting on, or mobilizing around" the "problems of same-sexers in foreign cultures" and that they lack a "perspective that situates gay oppression within the broader context of the challenge to human rights, or engage with human rights issues that are not specifically gay."

Richard Kim, Witness to an Execution, The Nation, August 7, 2005