Via Glenn Reynolds, GayPatriot, and Michael Demmons comes word of more sickening Islamic atrocities: the hanging of two gay teenagers for the "crime" of having sex. They were also tortured by their savage captors (who have no respect for the most basic laws of civilization):

LONDON, July 21 – Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No. 19.

Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.

One youth was aged 18 and the other was a minor under the age of 18. They were only identified by their initials, M.A. and A.M.

They admitted – probably under torture, London-based gay human rights group Outrage! suggests – to having gay sex but claimed in their defence that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death.

Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes.

Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16.

Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer of the youngest boy (under 18), had appealed that he was too young to be executed and that the court should take into account his young age (believed to be 16 or 17). But the Supreme Court in Tehran ordered him to be hanged.

Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.

Gay Patriot asks some damned good questions:

Now wait just a minute.... the Human Rights Campaign and National Gay & Lesbian Task Force have drilled it into my head that the biggest immediate threat to my safety and security is President Bush, Dick Cheney, Rick Santorum and the lack of gay marriage in the USA!!!

You mean they don't know that the Islamist terrorists are waging war against Western society? Why haven't they told me that Islamists hate gay people? What is their position on the War on Terror aside from marching with anti-American, anti-Western, anti-war groups like A.N.S.W.E.R.?

Someone explain to me why the international gay community has, by their silence and opposition to the efforts to combat the War on Terror, joined in partnership with the Islamists in at least the public relations side of the War?

Will it take a Muslim attack on a gay bar to wake up our so-called leaders? Log Cabin Republicans needs to take some leadership here, step up to the plate and publicly discuss the fact that gay people are targets for the Islamist terrorists whose even 'moderate' leaders conduct the hanging of gay people.

I've complained about this before, (as have Charles Johnson and Roger L. Simon) and I think what I said bears repeating:

Hmmmm.....

Whatever happened to the slogan "SILENCE = DEATH"?

At least I can trust that gay gun nuts like my blogfather will refuse to live under this deadly veil of silence.

Lastly, I have an idea. An old idea, really. But I think it's right for the times. I don't want the Islamic bigots and their supporters to imagine that the Pink Triangle can ever be used the way the Nazis used it.

So I offer a modest revision.

This led to a bit of a reader contest, with these winning designs from Sol of Solomonia:

First, the all-American colt version:

And next, the Israeli Galil:

The cowardliness and spinelessness of the so-called "gay movement" in refusing to condemn Islamic anti-gay bigotry never ceases to amaze me, and I wish I had more time to devote to this post. But I'll say this: especially right now, whichever swinish professional gay cowards refuse to condemn these latest Iranian atrocities, they will have shown themselves to be morally bankrupt and unworthy of leading anyone.

There's a war going on against civilization, and it's clearly also a war against gays.

How on earth could anyone considering himself a gay leader not be on his own side?

UPDATE: Nick Packwood is none too happy about this either:

The next time anyone tries to defend the Iranian "revolution" around me I am going to punch them in the nose. I could care less what your "tradition", "religion" or "culture" has to say. If you are going to imprison, torture and execute people for being gay you are a monster and your tradition, religion and culture must be ruthlessly suppressed.

According to a "religious" decree, virgin women prisoners must as a rule be raped before their execution, "lest they go to Paradise." Therefore, the night before execution, a Guard rapes the condemned woman. After her execution, the religious judge at the prison writes out a marriage certificate and sends it to the victim's family, along with a box of sweets. In a written confession in January 1990, Sarmast Akhlaq Tabandeh, a senior Guards Corps interrogator, recounted one such case in Shiraz prison: "Flora Owrangi, an acquaintance of one of my friends was one such victim. The night before her execution, the resident mullah in the prison conducted a lottery among the members of the firing squads and prison officials to determine who would rape her. She was then forcibly injected with anesthesia ampoules, after which she was raped. The next day, after she was executed, the mullah in charge wrote a marriage certificate and the Guard who raped her took that along with a box of sweets to her parents."

UPDATE: There are now conflicting reports emerging about this story, and apparently the Iranians are saying this case involved homosexual rape. If that is true (I don't know how to find out whether it is, as there are also allegations that the two were tortured into confessing) then it becomes a very different matter than consensual gay sex.

According to the last link from Sed, the official story from Iran has been changed:

A later news story by Iran In Focus, allegedly based on this original ISNA report, claimed the youths were executed for sexually assaulting a 13 year old boy. But the ISNA report does not mention any sexual assault.

A report of the executions on the website of the respected democratic opposition movement, The National Council of Resistance Of Iran, also makes no reference to a sexual assault.

The allegation of sexual assault may either be a trumped up charge to undermine public sympathy for the youths, a frequent tactic by the Islamist regime in Iran.

All that can be said with certainty is that:

Not enough to pass my smell test.

MORE: In yet another account sent to me via an email from an Iranian activist, the same two youths were said to have been executed for "theft and inciting public disorder":

The bloodthirsty regime of the Islamic Republic, yesterday public executed two young men in the city of Mash'had. They were charged with theft and inciting public disorder!

In the top photo, taken minutes before their execution, the two innocent youths are seen sobbing in fear. One of them lamented that their environment was always unsuitable; corruption and deception was rampant and this laid the grounds for our present situation.

UPDATE: More discussion here.