Iran News Agency Mehr's coverage of a public hanging. Photo: Amin Rahmani / Mehr.

Daily Beast – The tragic hanging of two “sodomites” in Iran may seem, in theory, like an obvious cause for U.S. concern and U.S. action. (Sign a petition! Demand human rights!) Yet in practice, those most attentive to LGBT concerns may be the least eager to pick this fight.

As Nina Strochlic reported in these pages Sunday, the two men, Abdullah Ghavami Chahzanjiru and Salman Ghanbari Chahzanjiri, were hanged in southern Iran on Aug.6, possibly for consensual sodomy. Their deaths are part of a wave of executions in Iran, with more than 400 in the first half of 2014 alone, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights.

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