On June 8th, 2014, “Dana”, a hardliner website, affiliated with the more extreme elements of the Iranian Islamic government released an editorial, warning about the production of LGBT themed literature and the fact that some of the stories and poems are done inside Iran and published in Canada and Germany. The story contained screenshots of “Gilgamishan” website which is the literary arm of the Iranian Queer Organization that publishes the work of the Iranian LGBT writers and LGBT themed books that otherwise would not have the chance of being published. It also contained images of two book covers from a famous young Iranian poet and writer who also is gay, Payam Feili, who has refused to leave Iran despite very heavy pressures and serious threats to his wellbeing. Feili has not been able to get permission to publish any of his work inside Iran for a long time and Gilgamishan has published electronic versions of some of his books on its website.
The story also uses an antiwar Facebook post by Payam Feili that reads “I am not ready to die in your war. Israel-love-Iran” and tries to insinuate that it is an evidence of a link between Israeli government and Iranian LGBT writers and poets.
Here is the English translation of the full text of the story:
Dana.ir: a creeping trend of content development for promoting “homosexual acts”
In publishing the contents related to homosexuality, a publishing company has been assigned to it in Canada. Some of the produced contents that we witness, have unfortunately been produced by notorious individuals inside Iran and published there.
According to Dana information network and recounted by dideban.ir, one of the main goals of the anti Iranian media in opposition to the Islamic government in a systematic and organized way is discovering, attracting, and using people who are susceptible to cooperating with them. In this procedure the issues of producing contents and using poets, authors, or those who write stuff and are capable of producing written content are important.
Considering the way these subjects are shared between the opposition [against the Islamic Republic government] media, the issues of the way of life and promotion of inhumane activities like homosexual acts or portraying the existence of these people in the Iranian society are among the constantly recurring subjects on the anti-Iranian networks, affiliated [to foreign governments].
Producing news, reports, short stories, novels, etc. related to these issues can be seen abundantly on these anti-Iranian media outlets.
What looks important is the unconditional coverage and support for the individuals who are active in these fields. The publication of the homosexual content has gone so far that they have assigned a publication in Canada to the publication material that unfortunately we sometimes can see, have been produced inside Iran, by notorious individuals to be published there.
It is interesting to know this trend began in 2009 and now we see a variety of books with the same theme, published in Canada and Germany.
The interesting thing is the connection between this creeping literal movement with the anti-Iranian movement in Israel, examples of which are seen in various works.
