Why Russia is hung up with homosexuality } If we could only speak with a clean conscience on this!
Let's start with a touch of perspective. It's not only Russia where sexual minorities suffer discrimination. In the United States, that beacon of tolerance, there's still a huge amount of bigotry. Some U.S. states still refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. And hate crimes and violence towards LGBT individuals remain a significant problem.
Russia does not have a monopoly on intolerance. However, there is a key difference. In the U.S., officials go to great lengths to espouse tolerant views and behavior. Laws have been passed, and are enforced, protecting LGBT rights. Hate crimes are prosecuted. In Russia, that is rarely the case.
That's not just my view, it's the opinion of Human Rights' Watch, a New York-based rights group.
In their latest report on Russia, titled License to Harm, HRW finds the Russian authorities have not only "failed in their obligation to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence," but have also "effectively legalized discrimination against LGBT people and cast them as second class citizens."
The controversial measure the report singles out is, of course, Russia’s "anti-gay propaganda" legislation. The law bans "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors" and was, according to HRW, one of several anti-LGBT measures adopted or proposed in 2013.
In their report, HRW says the law doesn't actually protect anyone, but does give homophobes a reason to believe LGBT lives matter less to the Russian government.
The report goes on to document various horrific instances of violence and abuse against Russia's LGBT community, including by radical nationalist groups luring gay men on the pretext of a fake date. It makes grim reading.
During the Soviet Union, homosexuality was a crime punishable by prison and hard labor. Homosexuals were regarded as pedophiles or fascists, outside normal society.
Laws explicitly banning homosexuality were lifted in 1993, after the Soviet collapse -- though there was no amnesty for those jailed for sodomy -- but the attitude appears to have stuck.
Even today, LGBT activists in Russia -- like the couple I met in St. Petersburg recently -- are regarded as outsiders, sometimes agents of the liberal West, to be distrusted.
The Saint Petersburg lawmaker behind the controversial "propaganda" law, Vitaly Milonov, underlined this when he told me that any Russians who want a same-sex marriage should move to the West "where they belong."
That's a potent connection in these times of growing tensions between Russia and the West.
Linking Russia’s LGBT community with the enemy taps into old fears of corrupt outsiders polluting Russian purity, and bodes extremely badly for hopes that discrimination in Russia will be tackled.
Matthew Chance, CNN
Russia makes it’s money exporting oil. Thank to the oil Cartel the price of it is the lowest anybody is seen for years. This with the imposition of barriers by the EU under American prodding is having a catastrophic impact on Russia. Now we know like when the Republicans shut the government here it does not hurt them a bit. The same there. The rich in Moscow which would usually work for the government but particularly the higher up do not care if the people can’t get bread, butter or mostly anything else. They have their caviar with imported crackers. The money that Russia have has to go into her military build up and pay her debts. No money for Doctors Medicines education or food. All this with Putin to show Americans and the world that he is got brass balls.
The thing is that the rest of the world don’t care. He has gotten on this pissing contest over Crimea because he thought it was the right time he started taking care of the old agenda. Im sure that if he known what was going to happen with oil he would have left his brass balls on top of his desk.
Now as the oil stays lows he will be pissing with the help of a hanger of something because unless he want his country and the world destroyed he has to back down to Nikita Krushev’s level.
Well let see how well he handles defeat. My fear is that like in Germany instead of the people blaming the fascists and germans they blamed the jews, I hope the parallel does not show up here with the Gays and that they are made to pay for the sins of Putin and the Russians that back him up.
adam@adamfoxie.com
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