More generally Ahmadinejad's comments brought up the issue of men having sex with men throughout the Middle East before marriage. He has to be aware that homosexual behavior is not unknown in his nation. What Ahmadinejad seems to have meant is that a public gay identity does not exist in Iran. A few years ago the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asserted that his nation did not have gays as they did in the West.
