Under the proposed changes, ANY event or act regarded as an attempt to “promote homosexuality” could incur a fine or jail time.
“We propose to generally extend the ban on such propaganda regardless of the age of the audience (offline, in the media, on the internet, social networks and online cinemas),” the head of the State Duma’s information committee, Alexander Khinshtein, said on his Telegram social media channel.
Homosexuality was a criminal offence in Russia until 1993 and classed as a mental illness until 1999. But homosexuality is still disapproved of by most Russians thanks to the Russian Orthodox Church, and same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples and are subject to harassment and violence.
Russia’s laws have received international condemnation from human rights campaigners, and media outlets that even display of LGBT symbols, such as the rainbow flag, have resulted in arrests, and incited homophobic violence, like is documented in the Channel 4 documentary Hunted which followed anti-gay groups as they lured young gay men into traps where they were humiliated, with the footage later posted online.
” “LGBTI rights are human rights. Human rights are universal,” said the caption on the embassy’s Instagram page. “Pride Month is designed to emphasize that everyone deserves to live a life free of hate, prejudice, and persecution.”
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented that they “can’t see the American embassy from the Kremlin,” but said that “any manifestations of propaganda of non-traditional sexual minorities, and so on, is not allowed by law in our country.”
Yesterday millions of Russians took to the polls to vote on a package of constitutional amendments, including one which would enshrine marriage as being between a man and a woman. In March, the country’s Constitutional Court approved the proposal, but noted that it would not remove the state’s obligation to respect differences, including sexual orientation.
We will post the results of the vote when the numbers become available.
The Russian parliament is set to pass a new draconian anti-LGBT law that would ban any and all displays affection between gay people in its latest assault on LGBT rights.
The Russian Duma is set to vote this week on a law that will ban any sign of affection between two gay people in the country – meaning kissing or even holding hands which could lead to a fine and/or a two-week prison sentence.
Putin has recently claimed he condemns homophobia and is targeting what he calls “non-traditional sexual relations” as a corrupting influence on Russia’s morality and society.
In 2013, Russia passed a controversial law that banned “gay propaganda,” public speech or demonstrations equating gay lifestyles to straight ones, saying it may influence children.
Like its predecessor, the draft law is vague and does not explicitly state what acts are forbidden. But Ivan Nikitchuk, a member of the Communist Party and one of the bill’s sponsors in the State Duma, has some ideas.
Daniil Turovsky, a journalist for the Russian-language news site Meduza, asked Nikitchuk in an interview published Thursday. “People are walking down the street, holding hands or kissing. The police walk up and detain them?”
“Naturally,” Nikitchuk replied. “That is exactly what is supposed to happen. We are stopping them from exhibiting their demonic desires, which the West would force on us…” he continued. “Excuse me, this is Russia. We have a country where tradition has always been respected, where people have had and continue to have a conscience, an understanding of shame. And all these kissing bearded men do not evoke anything besides vomit.”
There has been no comment from the United States on the new anti-gay law.
The gay Nazis label was simultaneously an attempt to tie the new pro-Europe camp in Kiev to the hated German Third Reich while also taking advantage of the growing acceptance of gay marriage in the West, particularly in the United States. “Putin has said homosexuality is not our values, and that sense of tolerance of homosexuality is not part of Euroasia,” said Schmidt, who will be in Ukraine monitoring the May 25 elections that are being overseen by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Euroasia is the name for the empire Schmidt believes Putin is trying to construct. Schmidt says Putin is driven by the goal of rebuilding a Euroasian empire with Moscow as its capital. Putin also has written extensively on the subject of Euroasia, which would generally follow the geography of the former Soviet Union. Bringing Ukraine into Moscow’s camp would be crucial to seeing that dream come to reality. Russian media also have called the Maidan square, where protests led to the demise of former pro-Russian Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, the “Gayeuromaidan,” thus tying together Europe and the gay rights movement, writes Yale history professor and author Timothy Snyder in The New York Review of Books.
Pretty rich coming from a murderous dictator who has Neo Nazi gangs roaming the country and beating up foreigners and gays for him.
Don Feder, leader of the anti-LGBT hate group the World Congress of Families, yesterday in an op-ed for the AmericanThinker.com stated that LGBT soldiers, “armed with vibrators” are a greater threat to the U.S. than aggressive action by Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.
The piece, titled “Putin Doesn’t Threaten Our National Security, Obama Does,” posited that Russia’s dictatorial president is not as bad for the United States and the world as a president who is “not an American” in the White House.
Feder pointed to a now-debunked story of LGBT troops performing in drag shows overseas. In “Obama’s life style-friendly military,” Feder said, these supposed troops in drag will be the norm.
“If Putin doesn’t take us seriously, is it any wonder?” he asked. “Perhaps we could deploy an elite unit, armed with vibrators, to the Crimea to counter Spetsnaz commandos.”
Rather than victory, Feder lamented, “diversity is the New Action Army’s most important product.”
TheWorld Congress of Families is one of six anti-LGBT hate groups that are working abroad to undermine the rights of LGBT people around the world. The group has lauded the criminalization of same-sex relations in Uganda and played an active role in helping Russian legislators craft their vicious “gay propaganda” law.
The group is scheduled to have its 2014 meeting at the Kremlin in Russia. There has been no word on whether the far-right organization plans to cancel in the wake of Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.
In the latest string of attacks against Russia LGBT’s by anti-gay fascists in that country whose hate hate has been fueled even further by Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws, a young Russian man in the city of Novosibirsk was beaten and then raped with a bottle at gunpoint “so that he repents for his sins “
“The series of short clips, making the rounds on the mobile phone application WhatsApp show the victim, who seems to be an ethnic Uzbek, being bullied into confessing that he is gay.
He is asked to identify himself and is stripped of his clothes, which are later burned. He is then handcuffed, beaten, insulted, and threatened with a gun. Ultimately, he is forced to sodomize himself by sitting on a bottle, which is then pushed with a bat.
The Uzbek-speaking source, speaking from Russia, confirms that the victim was targeted because he is gay.
“We made him sit on a bottle so that he repents for his sins and comes to reason,” he told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service. “We did this to protect the dignity of Uzbeks. We live and work here, we are in contact with people of different nationalities. There will be no respect for us otherwise.”
Police in Novosibirsk say they are not aware of the case.
These savages are no longer isolated groups of vigilantes. Putin’s anti-gay laws have helped hate permeate the whole culture and the violence against out LGBT brothers and sisters is escalating, and in some cases even encouraged. But STILL American companies, athletes and will sponsor and attend the Sochi Olympics and not make a stand against this brutal treatment of lesbians and gays in that country and the United Nations sits silent.
Last week, controversy erupted over a leading conservative women’s group’s condemnation of Canada’s Foreign Minister, John Baird, for advocating for LGBT rights overseas in the wake of prominent anti-gay laws passed in countries like Uganda and Russia. Except that it wasn’t much of a controversy, the group isn’t really leading anything (not in this century, anyway), and John Baird is a bloody hypocrite.
For it is a well-known fact for Baird himself is gay. Officially, it is still but a rumour, though in a recent election a fellow Conservative candidate responded to anti-gay accusations by opponents by commenting on there being a gay cabinet minister, so the official unofficial line is that Baird is our country’s most prominent closet case.
For a closet case, Baird hasn’t been the worst. He’s not some Larry Craig type, voting against same-sex rights; Baird has consistently voted in favour, whether with or against the majority in his caucus and cabinet, for marriage equality. In a certain narrow way, I can’t quibble with John Baird’s commitment to support LGBT rights at home and abroad. And yet…
And yet, there is Sochi, and Russia, and the trampling of LGBT rights that surely seems worse coming from a country that socially we consider part of the West. It is the very nature of the Russian anti-gay laws that give me pause to think, and to condemn, rather than applaud, the actions of a probably-gay Foreign Minister of Soviet Canuckistan.
Those laws do not make gay sex illegal, as they were (well, weren’t, then were) under the old Soviet regime. Those laws make illegal “propaganda” advocating for “non-traditional” sexual relations, which neatly takes care of the media’s reporting Pride marches and anyone foolish enough to think that the Internet is a safe haven.
Supporters of the non-socially conservative aspect of conservative politics like to point out John Baird as a shining example. No one cares about gay or straight, they argue, since we have a practically outed Conservative cabinet minister. Oh really? Because, if you think about it, John Baird could get off scot-free in Russia. Whereas I regularly “propagandize” on behalf of “non-traditional sexual relations,” John Baird hides behind “national values.” He argues that Canadians support his efforts on behalf of LGBT folks worldwide yet nothing he has done actually contradicts the logic behind Russia’s anti-gay legislation.
I suppose, in a narrow way, Baird’s comments prima facie qualify as offending Russian laws: given his propensity for speaking out on LGBT issues, Baird has earned his due condemnation from both REAL Women (please spell it out, because as women they hardly seem “real”) and the scapegoating Russians. Yet isn’t the point of these laws to muzzle self-expression, and is anything more muzzled than a high-ranking (many think future Conservative Party leader) cabinet minister who refuses to come out?
No matter how many water-skiing, boar-hunting photos that Putin feeds to the press, it would be naive to think that Russia’s upper echelon is gay-free. Gays have this uncanny knack of turning up in an ugly way to all the far-right parties. Think Roy Cohn, think Ernest Röhn…think John Baird. I have no doubt that there are all sorts of Putin-backing gay Kremlinists lurking out there, trying to carefully obscure their own same-sex “propagandistic” ways while propagating the hate.
How easy it is for John Baird, who represents a socially liberal, fiscally conservative riding like Ottawa West–Nepean – a suburban constituency that likely has no issue with its member’s sexual proclivities, assuming he doesn’t figuratively or literally shove it down anyone’s throat – when real activists are getting the shit beat out of them by neo-Nazi asswipes, many of whom look like the ubiquitous Russian boys of international gay porn even as they ensnare, humiliate, and terrorize gay youth through personal ads.
Would we tolerate racist or sexist policies from a supposedly ally? What would we expect from a John Baird if Russia passed anti-Jewish laws? Anti-black laws? Laws proscribing the equality of women? Legislation aimed at persecuted religious minorities? Of course we’d expect a better response than “Canadians support equality.” It’s just that anti-gay prejudice is the one prejudice left that we treat as a matter of opinion, not basic human right.
And all the while, John Baird gallivants around, the ugly smirk on his face screaming to the rest of us that, for a foreign minister, for a prominent member of this country’s Conservative cabinet, for the man who is likely the most politically powerful LGBT person in the entire country, it’s good enough to sit there, smug, lecturing others about their illiberal leanings from the safety of his cabinet seat. For shame.
The vote that could make even talking about homosexuality in public illegal has been postponed for a week. Perhaps a small success?
So far over 180,000 signatures have helped make this petition a voice to be listened to, but it certainly doesn’t mean that the bill won’t pass. If you haven’t done so already, please add your signature.
I just added my voice to this urgent appeal, standing for human rights in Russia and all over the world. Medvedev and Putin’s party is pushing a law to vote this week that would make any mention of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues illegal. Will you take one minute to add yours?
The bill, being introduced as early as this Wednesday, would criminalize any book, article or speech about sexual identity and gender orientation, labeling it “homosexual propaganda”. This is outrageous, and now is the time for key world leaders to speak up, we need every voice.
This is not just about defending gay rights but defending fundamental human rights – the right to freedom, to free speech, to democracy.
Just when we think that the world is making progress on LGBTU+ issues, a supposedly ‘developed’ country slaps us all round the face with a decision like this.
Political leaders in St. Petersburg are about to vote on law that will make it illegal for any person to write a book, publish an article or speak in public about being gay, lesbian or transgender. The ruling party led by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin could make millions of people invisible with the stroke of a pen.
Human rights defenders around the country are doing everything they can to stop it. They are risking their freedom to organize flashmobs and protests, but they are afraid that it won’t be enough. Courageous pride marchers were brutally attacked and detained by Moscow police last summer – for the simple act of holding their heads up high in public. If this bill passes, even the small victories that the LGBT movement in Russia has won will be wiped out – and pride marches, cultural festivals, and even the distribution of leaflets in the streets will be considered illegal.
Right now, the world needs to speak up and tell Russian authorities to drop the bill. Join this call to leaders around the world to reach out to their counterparts in the Russian government – and ask them to reject this discriminatory and anti-democratic law.
Sign the petition. It’s truly fundamental. For the freedom of Russians, of your fellow community, and yourself.
Dear LGBTU+ community,