Jan 13th, 2009 – Khabar (Farsi word for News) Online, one of the major Iranian news websites working inside Iran and under the laws of the country, published a report under the “Ills” (problems) section of its “Social” page.
The report written by Farnoosh Safavifar states that according to a study, “the mere fact of having a religious family doesn’t have much effect on the members of the family engaging in dangerous sexual activities.”
“While many of the authorities are ashamed of even naming sexual disorders, sexual health and things alike and their main response is to deny sexual issues and disorders, studies show that our society too, has not been safe from ills that all societies throughout the history have suffered from.”
Safavifar goes on to explain that a study done by the medical school of an unnamed university, located in the west of Iran “has come up with results about the commonness of sexual disorders [in Iran], that is worthy of attention.”
The results of this research, done by Parvaneh Abdolmaleki, were released on the third Family Health Congress meeting. The research found that 24 percent of female and 16 percent of male participants have had “a homosexual experience.” Among the same people 26 percent of women and 73 percent of men have experienced masturbation.
According to this article; “the research, with the objective to analyze the effects of religious beliefs on sexual health and related behaviors shows that 8.40 percent of the people who have masturbated, 4.16 percent of the people with a homosexual experience, 86.18 percent of the people who have illegitimate (extramarital) sexual relationships with the opposite sex and 76.55 percent of the people who watched immoral films claimed to have been raised in religious families. However; it should not be forgotten that these families lack religious depth and usually have none-religious children.”
Safavifar concludes that “having religious families alone, cannot prevent sexual disorders. Researchers believe that this conclusion must be approved by credible statistical tests. But these numbers alone show the high and disturbing rate of sexual disorders that we are facing. Treating these not only requires moral advice, but also requires aggressive multispecialty treatment plans.”
She suggests that a plan “engaging cultural and educational foundations and also sexual-health specialists, physicians and counselors” is needed and “specialists believe that lack of attention and denying the issues will only result in an increase in the cases and makes treatment more difficult.”
She also notes that the statistics used by her in the article are exactly taken from the summary handbook of the third Family Health Congress meeting.