Stoning adulterers: Iran mother of 4 due to be stoned to death soon

Aug 1

Lawyers and human rights organizations are pleading for the life of Asharf Kalhori, accused of adultery and condemned to be stoned. The regime aggravates cruel death penalties to create more tension with the west.




Teheran (AsiaNews) – The lawyer Shadi Sadr in Iran and Amnesty International have launched an urgent appeal: Asharf Kalhori, a mother of four children aged between nine and 19 years, could be stoned any time now for adultery. At the moment, the woman is in Evin prison, where people like the dissident Jahanbegloo and foreigners, Lherbier and Klein, accused of “spying” are also imprisoned.

Asharf must die because she committed adultery. According to international law – and Iran has accepted to submit to this rule – the use of the death penalty, if not abolished, should be reserved for the most serious crimes.

In December 2002, ayatollah Shahroudi, head of the Judiciary, sent a note to judges calling for the suspension of executions by stoning. This measure was presented as the fruit of dialogue on human rights between Iran and the European Union. But it was merely suspension, not abolition: Shahroudi’s plan was to give the Supreme Guide Khamenei, some time to modify the law that called for, and continues to call for, death by stoning in cases of adultery.

In September 2003, the official Iranian Gazette published the wording of a law entitled: “Rules of application in sentences of retribution, stoning, killing, crucifixion, execution and flogging”. The wording is so crude that it evokes the barbaric tendencies of past times, horrifying Iranians as it would any other human being, especially Christians meditating the Via Crucis. The West then behaved like Pontius Pilate, wanting to hope in the presidency of Khatami, thinking that it would be enough to give Iran time to reform...

more...

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=6858

:grr:

The cops took sheets, ripped them up and blindfolded us, threw us into a van, and took us to a holding cell in Interior Ministry headquarters -- they knew us all by name,” Amir recounts. Iranians live in fear of the Interior Ministry, which has a reputation like that of the former Soviet KGB’s domestic bureau, and whose prisons strike fear in people’s hearts the way the infamous Lubianka once did. Amir says that, “I was the third person to be interrogated. The cops had seized videos taken at the party, in one of which I was reciting a poem. The cops told me to recite it again. ‘What poem?’ I said. They began beating me in the head and face. When I tried to deny I was gay, they took off my shoes and began beating the soles of my feet with cables, the pain was excruciating. I was still blindfolded. They had found dildos in the house where the party was -- they beat me with them, stuffed them in my mouth. When I told them my father was a martyr they beat me up even more, and harder. They took away my card and said they’d tell the local university, where I was studying computers.”

At the same time, Amir continues, “They went to my house, seized my computer, found online homoerotic pictures of guys in it, and showed them to my mother. That’s how mother found out I was gay. Eventually I was tried and fined 100,000 tomens . At the time he fined me, the judge told me that ‘if we send you to a physician who vouches that your rectum has been penetrated in any way, you will be sentenced to death.’”

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8782

we do have plenty of people right here in River City who would do it if they could get away with it.

And on Sundays they claim to worship the Prince of Peace.

Isn't it ironic?

There's a long tradition of burning people in the West.

As recently as a few years ago executed prisoners in this country were catching fire during electrocutions.

Isn't this what the Bible recommends?

It was OT, Jewish law. So maybe you should have said 'That was mighty jewish of them' instead. LIke to see someone get away with that one here...

1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208:1-11;&version=31;

and their people seem to be for it too.

Let them stone each other to death and then Israel won't have to be paranoid anymore.

America needs improving, yet we keep hearing these stories about other countries. I feel for their plight, but let the Iranians change what they feel is undesirable.

We already tried that lovey-dovey maudlin ersatz-empathic approach with Iraq, pre-2003. I don't think it worked...

Unless Iran is hell-bent on annexing the US into their own petty empire, let the UN deal with it.

It's hard to argue that the burning of witches in antebellum* America justify killing of gays or stoning of adulterers in the twenty first century.

*antebellum-hell-that precedes the Civil War and Revolutionary War.

(See my direct response below.)

These articles poo-pooing the governmental acts of another country only incite false morality.

Worst of all, what sort of articles are being printed about America these days? Not that it matters, the world will want to get rid of Iran first. Half-understandably, I might add, but still... America needs to work on its own. Like we have continuing to be over the last 300 years.

but we don't stone adulterers and we don't kill gays as a matter of governmental policy.

perfectly to that music. It was even coordinated perfectly.

sorry, that's one of my pet peeves whenever I see it.

The difference is, Americans have kept improving since. We didn't need outside influence... though britain did abolish slavery before America, noting America's Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and all...

At least Americans have been improving. Without asking other countries to come in to help. Or having uninvited guests to help us for us, which really sounds wimpy...

What's the excuse for Iran?

Well, maybe "free" isn't the word, as getting over religious opposition was often a chore, but the point is that they missed out on the slow but steady liberalization of stringent religious beliefs. This held their culture back not only in terms of individual rights and freedoms, but also scientific advancement.

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/09/AR2006050900878.html

after the spread of Christianity sort of revised Western civ, Western civ looked back to its roots, which *wasn't* Christianity, and scholars and clerics revived classicism. Zeus, Demeter, Athena--in Greek or Roman garb. It was the Renaissance and Baroque, the direct precursors to the Englightenment: shifting the paradigm from revealed-text-based answers to empirical answers, "why?" didn't involve metaphysics, but simply pushing the mechanisms back a step.

Oddly, after about 1300 years or so after the spread of Islam sort of revised Middle Eastern civ, Middle Eastern civ looked back to its roots. To shari'a and the text of the Qur'an, as interpreted. Everything before Islam was destroyed, and instead of building on the intellectual foundations, they were replaced--and if they weren't replaced, they were interpreted as always having been the current interpretation.

Gee, that's not a really cheery thought, it it?

of their democratically elected government in the 1950s? If Mossedeq had stayed in power, none of this probably would have happened. But the US government could not stand Iran nationalizing its petroleum resources, so the petro-elite installed the Shah as their proxy. From Shah to Ayatollahs, not a far reach. And so onto today's barbaric news. Blowback is a bitch.

How far do you want to go back to figure out who fucked who?

what I was pointing out- in a way, the US gov. is responsible for the current regime in Iran. If Mossedeq had been allowed to stay, there would have been no Islamic Revolution.

As to the Crusades, think- PNAC melded with the Vatican and the Byzantine Empire. Alexius I Comnenus appealed to Pope Urban II in 1095 to send an expedition to liberate the Holy Land, hoping that on the way, the fighters would help regain for the Byzantine Empire turf lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Crusaders were offered remission for their sins, and not so incidently, access to booty from their adventures. (Why does this sound so...modern?)

...and now back to our regularly scheduled discussion.

medieval history geek mode /off

...the invasion of France, and the conquering of Italy and Spain prior to the Crusades were just isolated incidents, not something that offended the West in to action? Give me a break.

Indeed, history would have been different if we didn't agree to Britain's strange plans for Iran. But we can only guess what that history would be. What matters is what's up now, IMO.

They do remember the Crusades, the Iranians never really forgave us for meddling in their politics, and our way of forgetting the past is foreign to the entire Middle East. Trying to project Western ideas of history on other cultures has always come up short. They have completely different ways of thinking about the world. When you live in a country that is over 2500 years old, the US is a mere upstart.

How would you accomodate that?

Yes, our improved "killing machine" toys can kill hundreds / thousands at one show.

We are oh so much more moral than those savages ... with our smart bombs. :puke:

one shot.

Oh how we have evolved ... NOT!

Anyone who gives a shit about womens' rights has every right to speak out against such barbaric punishments. And don't give me any crap about using the word barbaric- it's been used a dozen times today about the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, a pronouncement I don't have a problem with, but this is fucking barbaric as well.

You've not ever replied to one of my posts in a kind manner.

How about consider just leaving my posts alone as I do yours?

This is getting old - for everyone. :(

Hardly a parallel to 21st Century Muslims who claim, after all, to be more progressive in religious terms than the New Testament.

Imagine having this "culture" as not only your neighbor, but your neighbor who wants to make sure YOU live in that insanely cruel and backwards culture.

maybe they will quit breeding? Sounds like a Bush family value.

responsible too. I wonder how much this law is enforced though. No mention seems to be made of the male adulterer.

Because in Islam a man can have more than one wife so how could he commit adultery


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=islam+and+polygamy&spell=1


on edit-added google link

If she was already married it would be adultery because then she would have two husbands and in that double standard society, it wouldn't be allowed.

I'm not familiar with the laws, but I remember a movie from years ago called "Death of a Princess". It was a true story about a Saudi princess who was forced into an arranged marriage. She already had a boyfriend and continued to meet with him covertly. When they were caught her lover was beheaded. I can't remember if she was stoned or beheaded too, but she was wacked as well.

to throw the first stone?

I'm going to condemn this system and the people imposing this punishment without comparing them to our own Christians. I think they suck, and I won't soften my judgement by saying things like this happen in America, or would if we gave some people the chance. The fact is they don't, and nobody that wants to do this is going to get the chance to legally do so in America.

Iran needs to modernize, and get out of the fucking dark ages.

According to the Gospel of John, the Pharisees, in an attempt to discredit Jesus, brought a woman charged with adultery before him. Then they reminded Jesus that adultery was punishable by stoning under Mosaic law and challenged him to judge the woman so that they might then accuse him of disobeying the law. Jesus thought for a moment and then replied, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” The people crowded around him were so touched by their own consciences that they departed. When Jesus found himself alone with the woman, he asked her who were her accusers. She replied, “No man, lord.” Jesus then said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.”

And thanks for your post, I think you summed it up pretty well.

But I think it has evolved since Christ's time.

My point was people keep saying things like 'well, christians think it is OK for x/y/z' when most of that was OT law and not under new covenant. Do some christians feel bound by both? Yeah for some reason they do (ignorance). But generally christianity was founded with a lot of rejection of such things, Jesus was a rebel with a cause :)

They are no different than Islamic extremists.

They don't have control of our government and legal system. They have to fight like dogs just to try to get the 10 Commandments to hang out in a Courthouse, and mostly fail while doing so. Divorce is legal, as is sodomy. Open homosexuals enjoy safety from legal prosecution, and American women enjoy spectacular legal rights.

Where's the comparison?

In your initial post, you didn't say a word about government, you made the assumption that the Christian extremists here don't have extreme thinking. I was not talking about government, I'm talking about the Christian extremists and their similarities to Islamic extremist.

But in Iran, they run the show. That's a pretty significant difference, and certainly one worth mentioning. This was the point of my post.

and have had a modicum of success in some areas. We have legislators who jump as high as they are told to by this group.

They've got light years to go before adulterers are being stoned down at the police station. Wouldn't you agree?

have control whether they can choose to use birth control. And when that happens it's open season. There are people here who think that women shouldn't have the right to vote. Oh, we aren't that far away from the edge.

I take it you are a male.

...and not access to abortion or the pill.

You see the rocks flying in our forseeable future, do you?

such as stonings or right to consent to marriage/petition for a divorce or controlling a woman's reproductive life are all part of the same type of thinking--that women are of less value than men and not worthy of equal status in society. I don't see that splitting hairs over the actual practices makes the bigger issue less true.

In America, I see advertisements for birth control and condoms on TV. I see gay pride parades. I see women marching in the streets for their reproductive rights, and a whole variety of religions competing for attention. I see a healthy liberalism everywhere, to the point that some corporations are even accomodating their employess with transgendered bathrooms.

In Iran, I see stoning of (women) adulterers, the drawing and quartering of homosexuals (and no gay pride parades, to say the least), and a whole host of other brutally oppressive tactics designed to keep society both unjust and monotheistic. And just try asking for a transgendered bathroom there.

To compare that system to modern America is not only wildly inaccurate, its downrright insulting. Open your eyes.

Look I was living in Iran during the time women had their modern rights stripped from them. I remember the social climate then and how you could feel it slip away. Fundamentalism is the same regardless of which god is served, and I see it has reared its ugly head here. No not blind, but on guard. I think it is insulting that you would assume that our rights here are so set in stone, given how many have been taken from us here over the past 5 years. And it's just not a matter of degree or practice, but of real possibility. Modern America, with these people in power, is on a slippery downhill slope that all should be concerned about.

Not blind, but vigilant.

But to say that what goes on in Iran is in any immediate danger of happening here is total folly. Our extremists are openly ridiculed as much as anything else.

Fighting a religious influence on American politics is a just cause. But to bring it up on a thread about the sheer brutality of the system in Iran serves to diminish what is currently happening there, by drawing parrallels to something that just isn't even close.

There is no American equivalent or potential for the current system of state-sanctioned religious brutality in Iran - period.

I don't care how brutal it is or is not...that ANY state would see fit to make women second class citizens is wrong. And, like it or not, much of this type of thinking flows from religious traditions, not all necessarily Islamic. Yes, women in the Islamic world are treated very badly, but women are treated badly all over the world. Until men learn to value women as partners and not chattels, this is a human rights issue everywhere, even in the USA.

They're night and day. Light years apart.

degree.

If you're really going to compare some pathetic and doomed-to-fail efforts for rural states to restrict abortion or birth control to Iran's state-sanctioned stoning of (female) adulterers or the brutal assasination of homosexuals, then I don't see how we can have any common ground in this discussion.

of her children in a divorce there? Children go to the father, and are only given to the mother if the boy is 2 or under and the girl is 7 or under, then they are given to the custody of the father. This is when the man just chooses to divorce the woman because he wants to. He doesn't even really have to file papers with a court. All he needs to do is say three times that he is divorcing her in front of witnesses. Women can only sue for divorce if the man has committed a serious crime, is a drug addict, or committed some affront to the faith. It takes the testimony of two women to equal the testimony of one man in the Islamic court there. Been there and done that (not adultery, but I did win a successful divorce in the courts there). I won...something women rarely do.

It takes 2 to tangle.

http://www.law.emory.edu/IFL/legal/iran.htm for Divorce law

http://www.learningpartnership.org/resources/legislation/nationallaw/iran for punishment for adultery

and other punisjment such as FLOGGING...I wonder about those guys who wrote them....Damn.....

friends the Saudis? Isn't Prince Bandar the defacto President that pulls Bush's puppet strings? What strange bedfellows our leaders have.

Hopefully there will be high quality video of this and it will make the M$M so the rest of the world can see how vile this is. There are websites out there with clips but they are of too low a quality for broadcast use.

Those who equate Falwell with the Islamofascists haven't got a clue.

about the treatment of women. The way women are treated in that area of the world is the result of codes based on the cultural traditions of the tribes and clans, who did not want to give up those practices.

Are you from Iran? I had a lot of Iranian friends and an Iranian girlfriend. They were cool and secular as can be.

kids are half-Iranian. I lived there for 10 years from the mid 1970s to mid 1980s. I've know lots of very good Iranian people, who had no use for the Shah or the ayatollahs. I'm sorry to see so many people in these nations be demonized and belittled because the fringe groups have power--just like here in the good ole USA.

Just criticizing the governement's treatment of women and gays.

allies are trying to do by trying to paint every citizen in Iran as a terrorist, just like they are doing with the Lebanese and have done with the Palestinians. There are lots of good people who live in these territories who just want to live a peaceful life.

I dated an Iranian young woman and a Malaysian young woman. We believed Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all People Of The Book.

I want peace and justice for all the people in that land.

Iran. They also believe that these groups are People of the Book.

Too bad so many don't rememeber that when it comes to daily life.

My step-father is from Iran, many of my relatives still live there and I lived there for the 70-71 school year (Tehran American School). They just want to live normal lives, without the religious nuts, either Christian or Islamic, messing up their lives.

Something people may not know about the Middle East- there is still a lot of illiteracy there, and like the simplistic "Christians" in the US, they are easily lead by "authority" figures. One of the few good things the Shah (or actually the Shahbonou, his wife) did was to push literacy and reading. At the time, there were many people out in the countryside who were completely illiterate. I am sure there are fewer now, but enough to make a difference.

As to Islamic culture in general, it stopped progressing somewhere in the 15th-16th centuries, when the Ottomans took over much of the area. It is having a difficult time transitioning from their late Middle Ages to the 21st century in less than a century.(Think being dragged kicking and screaming out of the Medieval period into the modern world...) Just see how difficult it is for US fundamentalists to deal with modern times, and they are only 100 years behind.

And yes, the legal system in Iran is barbaric.

wives was a warrior. I remember a Muslim scholar tossing that statement out in an interview when we invaded Afghanistan as there was a lot of discussion about our American women soldiers. The trouble is I haven't been able to find out much about it since then. Maybe somebody here knows more about it.

up everything exotic and beautiful. I thought Empress Farah Diba was the height of class and regalness.

I'm reading a book by Agatha Christie titled "They Came to Baghdad", chock full of the allures of the "mysterious East".

I've spent wonderful vaction days in Morocco and Muslim erstwhile Yugoslavia.

WTH HAS HAPPENED?

ETA: I radically revised this post. But the post below refers to my removed sarcastic remark that modern Muslims could use a better translation. I said this BECAUSE when on DU I once quoted the translation recommended by the World Islamic Council, I was taken to task for STILL not getting it right.

So if modern Islam as practiced is "at odds with" the Prophet's Quran,....

As for modern Christians, say what you want about them. A church-goer, I'm not.

Bible too, haven't they? I'm sure that radical Jews have done a number on the sacred writings of that religion too. When men try to tell other men they know the mind of God, this is what happens.

I would venture to say there is much more good to be found there than people are willing to look for.

The threat here is very real and getting more and more real everyday.

and I feel no compunction to explain why, as it's been explained well upthread.

we have people in the religious right who are very extreme and would take us back a century at least.

one country with the Christian equivalent of Sharia.

exists a potential to head down a path toward creating a theocratical society right here. Do not discount that possibility. We have citizens who are actively working to dismantle parts of our social structure that give women and children the status that was so hard fought for and won.

the cultural and historical past when considering possibilities for the future. It's quite unlikely that the U.S. will succumb to a theocracy without a literal civil war that would make the first one look like a tea party. You'd have to ditch the entire Constitution. We really don't have enough of the cultural underpinnings to make transition to a theocracy likely.

damn about the Constitution and is in the process of undermining it now. They are affiliated with and supported by those with theocratic yearings. I don't trust that there will be such an uprising, given how much has been let go without a whimper thus far.

to disagree. I find all the hysteria about a possible theocratic takeover of the U.S. to be simply more fear mongering.

I just know that I've experienced this scenario once in my life and I don't want to see it again. I want my daughter and granddaughters to be seen as equal under the law.

These people might not run the government here, but the point is there is a large number of christian extremists here who think some pretty crazy things. And there are a few people in the government who want to put religion in the law.

I'm reminded of Star Trek's "Prime Directive." The improper introduction of advanced technology and the misapplication of modern thinking within primitive societies. With all the gadgets and technology, essentially Iran is still a primitive society with barbarians wielding advanced weaponry supplied largely by the US and western countries. All we want is the OIL.

All religions are primitive. And while they may hold "truths" within them, no more so than non-religious understanding has achieved. Believers continue to try and define the modern world and our reality using these ancient understandings and definitions -- and we will always come up short. We will continue to have a disconnect with our world and modern viewpoints. And that is simply because those words and those beliefs and understandings were intended for ancient mankind of 2,000, to 5,000 years ago.

I can never understand how, nor why we have allowed our thinking and understanding in this one area to become LOCKED in antiquity. As if everything else around us can evolve and improve through our understanding, but not religion and its beliefs. Whether WE continue to stone people or not. Modern societies like the US stone with words and the denial of full and equal rights.

Stoning is barbarity at its worst. It harkens back to our most primitive selves, when all we had were sticks and stones to do battle with nature, wild animals and each other. From the time when we still lived in caves. It's codification into religion is a solution concocted by barbaric desert-dwelling tribesmen of patriarchal societies. Another means to control man's chattel -- women. At least in Judaism, BOTH adulterers were to be stoned. In Islam, there is no such equal "stoning" opportunity for men. They believe that men are held hostage to the wiles of women and only chastity and the constant protection by other male family members can keep their primitive lusts at bay. That is why women are required to wear burkas in desert heat, to shield men from the demons within themselves. Demons that only a woman can release with her beauty. Its the perfect male system of denial. "Her breasts made me do it."

In spite of our "improvements" back here at home, we can and should condemn these heinous acts for what they are. Brutal thugs committing atrocious acts of violence against helpless victims. They are cowards whose proof of power and manhood can only be confirmed by the domination and threat of death against those weaker than themselves. They are bullies. Meting out a kind of judgment that all these religions claim to be reserved for God. Islam claims that Jesus was an Islamic prophet. Apparently they missed His message about love and forgiveness......

Half their pop. gone when it could have all those brains to use. That alone should wake up the Middle East. They are behind in the world and about the only people that cut out half their good people. Even Saudi is seeing the errors of its ways. Their educated men want educated women. Most of their normal people can see this but it is the crazy zealots who have so much power keeping them so back wards. And the zealots always seem to have the guns and like to kill people.

From Deuteronomy

22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel. If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die.
22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; (22:23-24)
City Rape
If a woman is raped in the city and doesn't cry out loud enough, the men of the city must stone her to death.
Does God approve of capital punishment?
What the Bible says about capital punishment

Rape
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

but most Christians do not follow old Testament law, and in any case, there is no country that i'm aware of that has the equivalent of Sharia.

Homosexuality, abortion, co-habitation, etc. Adultery is still illegal in 7 states. Though those laws are rarely and selectively enforced.

Here in my "liberal" state of Washington, our Supreme Court, just upheld the "Defense of Marriage Act" that passed here by a large majority.

I'm certainly not defending Sharia Law, but pointing out that Judeo-Christian law is based on the same anti-woman themes.

is still an exceedingly bad one. (btw, I don't consider Washington, particularly liberal) And believe it or not, American law is not biblically based.

"Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian." - United States Supreme Court, 1892.

While I agree that our country has come a helluva long way from it's alleged "Christian Nation" roots, it still has laws based on Judeo-Christian concepts.

Do you really believe that the laws, in various state, banning same-sex marriage, the incremental laws against abortion rights, are not based on religious grounds? Does capital punishment have no basis in the "Eye for an Eye, tooth for Tooth" concepts of the Bible?

Somehow, I don't think those laws exist because the people who support them are agnostics or athiests.

Just because repressive laws are not codified with reference to the bible, as they are in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc, with reference to the Quran, doesn't make them any less religious based.

so how can consenual sodomy be illegal in seven states.

I can sleep with whomever I please in the United States.

People have fought hard for that right. To say it's not a right in seven states demeans their struggle.

But, I was wrong. It's 20 states, not seven, in which laws against adultery still exist.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20031216.html

According to a report in the Washington Post, a man in Luray, Virginia recently pled guilty to adultery, a crime for which the maximum penalty is a $250 fine. Ironically, it wasn't his wife who complained; it was apparently his lover. (He reportedly has reconciled with his wife.)

This case is a potent reminder--particularly for the man charged--that adultery is in fact a crime in more than twenty states. Though the laws are seldom enforced, their existence still affects the way people behave.


You may be able to sleep with whomever you choose, but you can't marry them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States

Twenty states have constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage, confining civil marriage to a legal union between a man and a woman. Forty-three states have statutes defining marriage to two persons of the opposite-sex. On May 18 2006, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would prohibit states to recognize same-sex marriages. The measure passed in committee by a party line vote. The measure was subsequently debated by the full United States Senate, but defeated in a 49-48 vote on June 7, 2006. <1>

My point being that condemning Sharia law is all well and good, but we "enlightened" westerners have more than a few
holdovers from "biblical" law that we can hardly be proud of.

Unless you believe that the laws against same-sex marriage, abortion, etc, have nothing to do with the power of our own religious fundamentalists in this country.

as well?

And why am I sure the man she supposedly committed this awful crime with isn't under the same penalty?

These people need to be stopped -- these women-hating fundamentalists of all stripes.

Photo : this woman is burried up to her waist in preparation for her stoning to death.

Damn....