Homosexual relationships are banned in Iran, but the country allows sex change operations and hundreds of men have elected for surgery to change their lives.
Sex changes have been legal in Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa - a religious edict - authorising them for "diagnosed transsexuals" 25 years ago.
Today, Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other nation in the world except for Thailand.
The government even provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance and a sex change is recognised on your birth certificate.
"Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open," says Hojatol Islam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, the religious cleric responsible for gender reassignment.
He says an operation is no more a sin than "changing wheat to flour to bread".
Yet homosexuality is still punishable by death.
"The discussion is fundamentally separate from a discussion regarding homosexuals. Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion," says Kariminia. "It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it disrupts the social order.
-Iran's 'diagnosed transsexuals'
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