ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: What Iran can teach American about the fight for LGBTQ rights.

When Donald Trump reached out to LGBTQ people in his speech to the Republican National Convention in July, he offered them protection from a “hateful foreign ideology.” Taken with his other remarks about Muslims and Muslim communities, he seems to believe that violent repression of LGBTQ people is a feature of the Islamic faith, But Iran was Muslim before it began to target people for deviating from religious law. Today, thinking about the fragility of the 1970s gay rights movement in Iran fills me with dread, because a drastic change in government is happening here in the United States, and forces of hatred and conservatism are on the rise. Iranians are no more evil than Americans, and conservative Christian fundamentalists are just as eager to punish and repress queer people as conservative Muslim fundamentalists are.

Related: Richard Grenell takes up duties as US ambassador to Germany.