PhotoDude.com

Mon. Aug 05, 2002

Marriage at the Chastity House

Marriage at the Chastity House – "Loosely veiled and wearing heavy makeup, young women line the main streets in northern Tehran, looking out for prosperous customers in new cars." It’s perhaps the world’s second oldest profession, and it knows no boundaries other than human nature (”Based on official figures, about 300,000 women are engaged in the sex trade in Iran…”). Some countries accept this, like the Netherlands, and attempt to sanction and regulate the prositution industry. Others treat it as a social disorder.

Iran is exploring some very strange middle ground.

They are considering creating places they’ll call ”Chastity Houses,” ”regarded by some religious leaders as a more acceptable version of brothels, to both shelter poor street women and satisfy the sexual needs of men who cannot afford to get married.”

And it won’t be a Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am experience. It will be considered a short term marriage. "Under the scheme, couples would register for a temporary, Islamicly correct marriage and receive a license as well as free contraceptives and health advice. The license would legitimize their relationship and make them immune from harassment by the modesty police, who prowl the streets looking to arrest young couples who are out together but are not related."

What a philosophical pretzel. Prostitution is considered a ”cardinal sin” in Iran, and "Unmarried boys and girls caught together are often lashed if they are proved to have had sex." Yet the government appears to acknowledge the ”sexual needs” of men as somehow legitimate, and addressable by government action. And they do it by saying the problem is the women. ” ’We face a real challenge with all these women on the streets. Our society is in an emergency situation, so the formation of the chastity houses can be an immediate solution to the problem,’ [Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Bojnurdi] told a newspaper. ’This plan is both realistic and conforms to the Sharia (Islamic) law.’ "

Create a sham marriage, in order to satify the needs of men and get problem women off the streets, in a whorehouse given the oxymoronic euphemism of ”Chastity House,” and that complies with Sharia law? It gives the appearance that Sharia law, at least as applied by Iranian Ayatollahs, is similar to IRS tax codes. It’s not so much about right and wrong, it’s about finding (or creating) the right loophole.