Edit: Missed the gay part. It’s more complicated than it looks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Iran . But while I agree there’s official repression, I heard an argument once that a gay person who keeps it private is capable of natural reproduction in iran, whereas in the modern western gay family, they have to go through surrogacy, which is not cheap and outprices some men, not sure if even common. So in this sense the percentage of gays in the US will shrink over time but they have good gay rights. The other is the Iranian government repression rarely comes into action. if a male is known to be gay by those around him, good chance he won’t get reported to government since the punishment is too extreme for anyone to bear it on their conscious, even if the person is truly religious, they prefer to be wrong, and if they are correct, government and the muslim law requires witnesses or conclusive evidence, otherwise defamation. Muslim law bans gays, it "happens" to ban defamation but not sure what is the punishment of the latter. So in this climate the way of loudly claiming gay rights on streets not only embarrasses one’s acquaintances since defiance of norms, it is actually self-sentencing. This is a tight bound, but there’s no law in iran or anywhere else I assume that forces men to marry anyone throughout their lives. There’s formal repression, less rights, but reality is also important.