COLUMBIA QUEER ALLIANCE
"These are the views of the Columbia Queer Alliance executive board and those members present at the meeting in which this matter was discussed. CQA is not the collective voice of the queer community; we do not claim to be expressing the views and opinions of all queer-identified individuals affiliated with Columbia University. However, as student leaders of a progressive activist organization, it is our responsibility to be a part of this discussion.""We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women."
"We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely."
"Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology."
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