TEHRAN — A 1970s building on Tehran’s Enghelab (Revolution) Avenue that ends in Azadi (Liberty) Square has recently been the site for a series of meetings on an unusual subject given Iranian social norms. Every Tuesday, experts and members of the public come together there to talk, sometimes heatedly, about sex.

Since Dec. 4, “Forums on Sexual Crisis in Iran” has been bringing together academics, documentary filmmakers, clerics, journalists, students and women activists to discuss such issues as polygamy, sex education, homosexuality and transsexuality. The participants have also looked at temporary marriage (nikah mut’ah) and semi-independent marriage (in which a young couple officially marry and then live with his or her parents for a while), the pros and cons of Western approaches to sex-related matters and sexuality.

The sessions generally revolve around the so-called sexual crisis in Iran. Most of the speakers interpret the term to refer to the phenomenon of young Iranians turning away from the sexual mores advocated by Islam, namely no sex outside marriage.

The forums have been organized by Safir Films, a company founded in 2010 by a group of students from the Sharif University of Technology. The company produces long-form documentary films as well as video and audio clips. Most of the content on the website, including a documentary Safir distributed called “I am Rouhani,” espouses hard-line views. A member of the company who spoke to Al-Monitor on the condition of anonymity denied rumors of the operation being linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), describing it as “an independent media group.”