Yes, we have no bananas

The famously compos mentis President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured here with his friend Evo Morales), created considerable bemusement at Columbia University with his claim that there were no gays in his country: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals. In Iran we don't have this phenomenon. I don't know who has told you we have it."

Perhaps the fear of being tortured and hanged from a crane, as teenagers Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni (who were only fourteen and sixteen at the time of their arrest) were in 2005 provides sufficient deterrent. Or perhaps Mahmoud was of the opinion that homosexuality is a Western construct, part of the decadence against which he is so valiantly (and, at the moment, successfully) struggling. In which case, he might care to look into the fine tradition of Persian erotic poetry, much of which is at least implicity homosexual.

Or if he's too busy plotting the destruction of Israel, this image, an 18th Century miniature from Isfahan, might give him some inspiration.



Is that a man or a woman? Perhaps it's a eunuch.