Iran bans paper
for gay activist interview

Iran has banned a leading daily newspaper for the second time within a year after the paper published an interview with a woman accused of being a gay activist, according to Agence France-Presse.

Although the ban on Shargh, a popular newspaper among Iranian liberals, has not been officially confirmed by authorities, the Fars news agency has cited on Monday that an informed source within the culture ministry said that the press watchdog had ordered a temporary ban on the paper.

"We had an article which was an interview with an expatriate writer," Mehdi Rahmanian, Shargh's license holder and managing director, told AFP. "They said she had moral problems; they say she is homosexual and promotes that in her Web log. But we talked to her as a poet."

Shargh published a full-page interview last Saturday with Saghi Ghahreman, an expatriate Iranian poet currently living in Canada, under the headline "Feminine Language."

Another publication, the daily Kayhan--well-known for repeated attacks on the moderate press--claims that Ghahreman was the leader "of the Iranian homosexuals organization" and a "counterrevolutionary fugitive."

Shargh lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai claims that the ban is unjustified, as there was no evidence of "vice in [the interview]."

"The reason for the ban is unlawful because the judiciary has not protested against the individual who was interviewed," he said, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency.

Ghahreman never explicitly referenced homosexuality in the interview, but said that "sexual boundaries must be flexible.... The immoral is imposed by culture on the body."

Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, an Islamic republic and individuals convicted of engaging homosexual sex can, in theory, be sentenced to death. However, there is no proof that the crimes are consistently pursued.

The paper responded on Monday by publishing a front-page apology for the interview, stating it had been "unaware of this person's personal traits" and would "avoid such people and movements" in future articles.

Shargh had only recently resumed publication after finishing a nine-month ban in May for publishing a cartoon that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided was offensive. (The Advocate)