Investigating the Dynamics of the Iranian LGBT Community from Legal and Religious Perspectives

Abstract

Gender is one of the most important issues the lives of adolescents. It relates to sexual identity and role, sexual orientation, lust, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction. Gender affects people’s thoughts, dreams, desires, beliefs, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships. But gender is also affected by biological, psychological, social, economic, cultural, moral, legal, historical, religious and spiritual interactions. This is the first research conducted on LGBT people in Iran and adds to the existing literature on LGBT people by focusing on the residence of this community. This research integrates phenomenological, hermeneutic, postmodern and psychological approaches to provide a theoretical method appropriate for researching the LGBT experience, while, at the same time, demonstrating the researcher’s perception of study criteria to preserve “objectivity”. This study is highly complex as it views sexual orientation and gender-related ideas broadly as well as in private and public life. This study conducted in-depth interviews with about 300 LGBT people – 60% male and 40% female – in the three metropolises of Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan. This research investigates their challenges in this changing age in terms of gender relations and the quality of interactions from legal and religious perspectives, thus providing readers, universities, research centres, and public and social activists with systematic theoretical frameworks about LGBT people. The main objectives of this research are to understand the sentiments surrounding LGBT people by critically analysing their perspectives and to examine the challenges these people experience when living in religious, class-based, traditional and patriarchal societies that reject LGBT identities.