A gay Iranian teenager, whose lover was executed for being gay in Tehran, was initially denied asylum by the British and faced deportation back to Iran, where he faced near-certain execution. He fled to the Netherlands, which denied him refugee status thanks to the “one country” rule which was meant to prevent potential “asylum seeking.” The British have since relented somewhat, but the poor boy still fears being sent to his death in Iran.
Can Europe do no better? I know the U.S. can’t—we are famously hostile to gay immigrants (to say nothing of nettlesome Muslims seeking asylum from, say, the wars we started). So where can the persecuted gays of Iran—who are still denied even the dignity of existence by the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—go, if the supposedly tolerant West will not accept them? Aside from the gallows, I mean.