Joseph Ward III: A Living Hell: LGBT Iranians and the Islamic State.
Like many gay Iranians, Hamid was pressured by his parents to marry a woman based on prevailing traditions in Iran. But knowing he was a gay man, he and his wife divorced, and he was soon kidnapped by local authorities because of his appearance and beaten half to death in his home. “A man with long hair is not a man,” he was told by an officer of the basij, the Iranian security force. “…Of course [your wife] would divorce you.”