Those Wacky Heterosexuals

Get Married Or Get Fired

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Single workers at one of Iran’s major state-owned companies have been told to marry by September or they will lose their jobs.

The Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company employs thousands of people, mostly young men, on Iran’s Gulf coast. Being married is a job requirement, apparently an attempt to reduce the number of female prostitutes servicing the heterosexual men in the area, under the assumption that their customers are only single men.

Pars controls Iran’s large network of gas and petrochemical facilities around the coastal city of Assalouyeh.

The company’s directive, according to the Etemad newspaper, says that despite the marriage requirement, “some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single. As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty.”

In the same vein, the governor of the eastern province of North Khorasan ruled recently that only married people would be hired for official posts in that region. Economic difficulties in Iran have led many people to postpone getting married, despite the fact that sex is illegal between unmarried people.