Death penalty at birth? Gay Iranian teenager faces gallows after asylum rejected

Mehdi Kazemi (19) is facing the Iranian gallows after a Dutch court refused to entertain his application for asylum. Kazemi will now have to return to Britain where his application for the same relief was rejected last year. As a result, he will be deported to Iran where his boyfriend was hanged for sodomy two years ago.

While I have the utmost respect for the religions (or atheism) of others, this does seem to go way beyond the ordinary boundaries.

Regardless of whether you believe in God or not, or whether you consider gay people to have chosen their sexuality or been born with it, this can only be regarded as extreme.

My personal view, as I have made plain in my previous posts, is that any discrimination, against gays or anyone else, is unacceptable.

How in this day and age with all the information at our disposal can we hate people simply because they are different from us? To me it is inconceivable.

I’ve even had a look at the progress that the US military was making on the issue of homophobia. Its role as leader of the free world and its approach to this issue was worthy of discussion.

Accordingly, to suggest to me that there is any merit in sentencing a 19-year-old youngster to death for being gay is so horrendous that I’m actually struggling to comprehend it. A death penalty based on your sexuality in 2008?

So if Mehdi sleeps with girls, he can be president of the country, but because he chooses other boys he gets the death penalty?

I don’t believe that in any (rational) discussion on capital punishment that I have ever seen, anyone even begins to entertain such a ridiculous notion — and yet this is the law of certain countries?!

Try saying this out loud: Mr Kazemi, taking into account your youth and otherwise exemplary record, the fact that you are a first offender and a law-abiding citizen, your commission of the crime of sodomy leaves me no alternative but to sentence you to death.

Are you shitting me?

I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but that can never be sold to me as justice or God’s will.

As far as Britain and the Dutch court goes, the fact that — knowing that this youngster’s boyfriend has already been hanged — they see fit to deny him asylum while granting it to thousands of bleeding hearts with half-baked stories suggests to me an urgent need to review those being selected to oversee the process of asylum approval.

Either that, or someone needs to explain to me how a party facing a death sentence for being gay is not a worthy candidate.

Closer to home, and before anyone starts going on about how enlightened South Africans are, the South African Human Rights Commission released a report on “corrective rape” on Wednesday.

This is taking place within our schools as young girls are raped by male pupils in order to “correct” their behaviour and avoid their becoming lesbians.

Makes you stink, doesn’t it?