Although some reports have claimed otherwise, gays in Iraq are being "executed in batches," convicted for the crime of homosexuality. According to Reuters, "Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum...and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality." These killings reportedly happened last Thursday. Before the executions -- wherein hundreds of Iraqi gays are currently eligible, if you will, for execution -- sermons "condemning homosexuality were read at the last two Friday prayer gatherings in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum of some 2 million people." A Sadr City Shi'ite cleric official noted, "this (homosexuality) has spread because of the absence of the Mehdi Army, the spread of sexual films and satellite television and a lack of government surveillance."