'We don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country,' Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter in response to a question from the audience at Columbia University forum. 'In Iran we do not have this phenomena. I don't know who has told you that we have it.'
The comment was one of many that brought hoots of derision from the audience during the two-hour event on Sept. 24. Executions of gays in Iran have sparked worldwide protests.
University President Lee C. Bollinger had greeted Ahmadinejad with opening remarks in which he said to the Iranian, 'You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. … You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.'
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president Joe Solmonese called Ahmadinejad's comment on homosexuals 'simply absurd were it not for the fact that international human rights watchers have long documented some of the most horrific acts of persecution and violence committed against gay people in Iran…[His] denial that there are gay people in Iran shows the extent to which he devalues the lives of the many citizens his government has and continues to violate.'
Gay pundit Andrew Sullivan at first did not comment 'because it seems superfluous.' He then added, 'If there are no gays in his country, why is he hanging so many of them?'
Sullivan also wondered, 'Would Columbia ever invite a right-wing extremist with the same views as Ahmadinejad on women, gays, Israel and the Holocaust? Or do you have to be a brown-skinned, terrorist-enabling, nuclear proliferating, certified nut-job to get the invite?'
San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis has been among those calling attention to the often-dire plight of gays in other countries, particularly within the developing world. He took pleasure in the grilling Ahmadinejad got at Columbia and added, 'When was the last time Bush or Cheney faced a similar questioning from a less-than-friendly audience?'
Then he turned his guns on the Solmonese. 'I had no idea HRC could be diverted from its main task these days—electing Hillary Clinton to the Oval Office—to pretend it gives a damn about gays beyond America's borders.
'The HRC PR machine pumping out a release on the Iranian president's obscenely ignorant comment that there are no gays in his country cannot obscure the fact this group's leaders and members have done nothing of substance for Iranian gays since two gay teenagers were hanged in the Islamic Republic in 2005.'
'Occasional releases on global gay matters are not enough. Let's see some HRC pickets for international solidarity at foreign embassies in Washington,' Petrelis said. 'Our gay brothers and sisters in Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria sure could use HRC's assistance in fighting their governments, as they fight for equality and fairness in across Africa.'