Shia Islam is like Catholicism in that religion is interpreted by man instead of laid down in stone by God in books.
The Vatican is actually there to keep Catholicism a living religion that evolves along with society and modernizes with the times. The Vatican even has its own astronomer, and the Popes have said that both evolution and extraterrestrial aliens are compatible with Catholicism.
Protestantism instead has no central authority, so it falls victim to fundamentalism a lot more than Catholicism.
Likewise with Shiism.
Sunnism is Protestantism. It was all laid down in stone either in 700 by Mohammad or in 60 by the first church or in 1550 by Luther. We can’t change anything after that.
Even Khomeini believed in the living religion theory. The Ayatollah examined both male homosexuality and transgenderism and became convinced that transsexuals were made that way by God. True transsexuals do have very different brains that are shifted in favor of the opposite sex, so it makes some sense. He decided that gay men were just deciding to be that way, which is probably not true, as true male homosexuality looks very biological, and science has proven that male sexual orientation cannot be changed after age 15.
Anyway, the Ayatollah decided that, as transsexuals were created by God (or Nature really), they were not at fault for their condition, and they needed to be accepted as part of God’s (or Nature’s) creation. Hence the legalization of transsexuals in Iran.
Anyway, transsexuals have been legal in Iran since the days of the Revolution. A very prominent mullah, high up in ruling circles, is a transwoman and has been one for many years. I guess no one cares.
In contrast, Iran is very cruel to homosexuals, worse than most Sunni countries, which typically take a more progressive stance, as it’s so rife in their lands anyway. 6,000 gay men have been executed in Iran since the Revolution.
Many gay men in Iraq have been extrajudicially executed.
In Hezbollah’s Lebanon, they are kinder. All they do is gay bash or beat up gay men.
It’s a doctrinal thing and has nothing to with conservatism or progressivism, as Shiism tends to be more progressive than Sunnism.
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