Russia Batters Gay Marchers In Moscow Parage

[jack]

Gays trying to parade in Moscow yesterday took a beating from the police who broke them up dragging them off. Not nice. Like 1960. Tough stuff. ;(

[jack]

RE: Russia Batters Gay Marchers In Moscow Parade

 

Russians suffer from centuries of revolutions. Today they look haggered and downbeaten. Old cars. Horrible housing. No light in sight compared to, say, China, which is actually emerging into an enconomic democracy today socially and economically through the next twenty years or so.

 

The Russians are a thread beaten people. Always trampled on. And, yesterday was no exception. The young men, whom the Mayor denied parade privileges, were trouced on, sprayed with tear gas, hauled off, just because they wanted to express themselves like everybody else in the world.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

Do you have alink to an article that talks about this? I like to share this info with friends.

[Steven_Draker]

Moscow Police Break Up Planned March by Gay Rights Activists

 

I watched the scene yesterday at the local TV station - two worlds apart x(

 

Moscow Police Break Up Planned March by Gay Rights Activists

By Bill Gasperini

Moscow

27 May 2006

 

 

Russian police prevented gay rights activists from marching in Moscow Saturday, and dozens of people, including the rally's main organizer, were arrested as Russian nationalists confronted the activists.

 

 

Russian police officers detain a gay activist outside the Kremlin in Moscow

Police moved in when gay activists tried to approach a large park near the Kremlin, where they had planned to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But police closed the park entrance, and when the activists approached, they were confronted by Russian nationalists, who carried icons and threw lighted flares at them.

 

Scuffles broke out and police detained about 100 people, including the rally's main organizer, Nikolai Alexeyev. Some anti-gay protesters were among those detained.

 

Moscow city authorities had refused to give the gay activists permission to hold a parade to mark the day in 1993 that homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia. While that Soviet-era law may have been amended, homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness until 1999.

 

And anti-gay feelings still run deep in the country, especially among nationalists and religious groups.

 

Nationalists holding Orthodox icons used a megaphone to proclaim they would not allow "Sodom and Gomorra" in Moscow.

 

Moscow's gay community had wanted to hold a gay pride parade, similar to ones that are held in many cities around the world. They invited gay activists from across Europe to participate in the march and a series of events leading up to it.

 

But Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, reaffirmed the decision to prohibit any parades or rallies, saying people should not be allowed to publicly display what he called their "deviations."

 

Russian homosexuals say they suffer from overt discrimination and even violence, and there have been recent attacks on gays.

 

Some in Russia's gay community opposed the plan to march on Saturday, saying it would only make matters worse for them.

 

But other activists said it is time to demonstrate their determination to change what they see as another example of xenophobia and racism in Russia.

[Steven_Draker]

>Do you have alink to an article that talks about this?

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/28/MNG60J3O821.DTL&feed=rss.news

 

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-27-voa22.cfm

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060527/wl_nm/russia_gays_dc_2

[Guest ReturnOfS]

Thanks

[+ glutes]

Fox News had some pretty dramatic video yesterday, clubbing of just poor guys minding their own business. CNN is in some hot water over showing ONLY a drag queen be beat. (I give credit to Faux in this one, they were really "Fair and Balanced")

[Guest ReturnOfS]

Drag queens shouldn't be beaten either.

[boypayer]

So much for the "liberals" and the generation or two that supported and still support a socialist economy and government. The USSR as a government and socialism as a system is a failure! Did you not hear (and still hear) those that think "can't we just get along?" is the answer? HOGWASH. Trust but verify. Meet force with equal force. Rational self interest (Ayn Rand, circa 1960) is the idea that will result in freedom for the most folks. People do NOT live and work for the benefit of others first. The state (government) is neither grantor nor protector of individual rights. Thinking (not only feeling) people are. Individual intellect, not the collective "it takes a village" ideas, leads to true freedom.

[trilingual]

RE: Moscow Police Break Up Planned March by Gay Rights Activists

 

There was pretty extenisve coverage of the event on BBC World. It looks like the police were pretty rough on the ultras opposing the march as well as on the marchers themselves. There were also a bunch of Orthodox protesters -- they showed heavy old women walking up to marchers and throwing water on them. All in all not a great day in modern Russian history.

 

The ultras, of course, are nuts. Even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia remains an exceptionally heterogeneous country made up of many peoples, ethnicities, races, religions, languages and cultures. The ultras would probably not want to see Russia disintegrate further into yet more independent states (they're fighting a war in Chechnya to prevent that from happening). So they obviously haven't thought the issues through very carefully! They seem to be made up of the same types as the neo-Nazis in Germany: unemployed or under-employed young men without much education who see no future for themselves and are looking for someone to blame for their situation. There are politicians who are happy to exploit their search for scapegoats as a means of diverting their attention from the real political/economic failures of the new Russia.

 

The Orthodox protesters, of course, are no different than our own evangelicals or right-wing Catholics in the West. This afternoon I went to a birthday brunch with my parents and a group of their friends at the Westin hotel in Kansas City's Crown Center. As we left, there was a protest group gathered on the corner, with the men wearing suits in the 93º Midwestern summer heat. As we crossed the street we could read their banners: it was a conservative Catholic group protesting "The DaVinci Code" as being insulting to their religion, calling for a boycott and asking drivers to honk twice if they hated the film! I'm glad to say I didn't hear anyone honking, although they probably get some support here in the Bible Belt.

 

So let's not fool ourselves. Some of the same forces are at work in the "enlightened," "capitalistic" West as the ones in Russia. We should be setting our own houses in order, rather than smugly throwing stones at those of others.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

I'm sorry. You're in the wrong thread. You're looking for the politics section. This topic is about "Russia Batters Gay Marchers In Moscow Parade". {Rolls eyes}

[+ Charlie]

What time warp are you in? This sounds like a rant from the right in the 1980s. Didn't you hear that the socialist system in Russia collapsed more than a decade ago, and was succeeded by raw capitalism? In fact, the oppressors in Russia now are the most conservative nationalists, supported by the church.

[Guest]

Well, for at least some Russian gays, it could be good news and bad news. The bad news is that this incident highlights how much it sucks to be gay in the Russian Federation. The good news is that it should be all the easier to get asylum for those smart enough to leave. My partner got asylum (in the U.S.) from the Russian Federation due to gay persecution, and incidents like this just make it all the easier to convince immigration agents or judges to grant asylum. When our case came up, the U.S. State Department alread noted the situation for gays and lesbians in the Russian Federation to be hostile. It was more difficult to get asylum on this basis under the prior President Yeltsin, but things are getting worse "under the Putin regime" as our judge said. I don't know how difficult it is for Russian gays to get asylum in other countries such as Canada, Denmark, Belgium, or the Netherlands, but if they can get into the U.S., they can say "paka" to Vladimir Vladmirovich. My partner never wants to set foot in Russia again...

[Guest zipperzone]

The thing that struck me the most were the pictures on TV of the members of the Russian Orthadox Church who were there protesting and stiring up shit in general.

 

With their long white hair and beards and dressed totally in black leather with pewter jewelery hangin from their jackets - I swear to god I thought I was watching a local club of Hells Angels.

 

Remember when Bush was all kissy kissy with Putin in Washington a few years ago. I thought that evil looking bastard was too good to be true. (I am referring to Putin, in case you are confused)

 

As this post covers both politics and religion - god knows where it will end up!

[Luv2play]

It is ironic that "putin" stands for "good" in Russian (as Rasputin stands for evil). However, as they say, you can't read a book by its cover. Coming from the KGB, it is not surprising that Putin has veered to the right from Yelstin. It has always intrigued me that in left/right terms, when it came to extremes like fascism and communism, there were few differences in how these guys operated once in power (use of terror, crushing all political opponents, operating concentration camps, stressing ultra-nationalistic values, supressing religion and freedom of thought, etc).

 

The history of Russia is both glorious and depressing (I recently saw the Catherine the Great exhibition in Montreal). Viewed from the perspective of the guy in the street, it is mostly a depressing account. Their role of opposing Naziism was truly staggering, WWII would not have been won by the Allies without the sacrifice that the Soviet Union made. It was also amazing that the USSR energed from the war as a superpower going toe-to-toe with the USA and totally dominating old Europe.

 

As for the prospects for gay rights in today's Russia, I am not totally depressed by the recent events. After all, we can't expect Russia to be where we are today. If we reflect on where we were 40 years ago, things aren't much different between us then and Russians today. In other words it will take time for attitudes to evolve. I for one have not given up on that happening but of course I do have reservations.

[boypayer]

>I'm sorry. You're in the wrong thread. You're looking for the

>politics section. This topic is about "Russia Batters Gay

>Marchers In Moscow Parade". {Rolls eyes}

 

 

The eye rolling and the deliberate ignorance of reality are, in my opinion, just another example of "gay drama". Rainbow flags will give one no comfort if REAL freedom and responsibility are not understood. BTW, what in the world has peacefully protesting the DaVinci Code (NOT rioting about some "offensive" cartoon!)have to do with freedom? Do we not ALL celebrate the right to protest peacefully? I say carefully pick the target for your disdain.

[trilingual]

Good point. Life in the days of "anything goes" laissez-faire capitalism in 19th Century America (or in 21st Century America) was often pretty grim -- just as it is in Russia now. Our system didn't emerge full-blown; it took a couple of centuries of experience as a sovereign democratic nation to evolve to where it is now, and I think we can all agree there is still room for considerable improvement! It's hard to expect that newly democratic nations will do better than we have!

 

Religious extremism waxes and wanes. We seem to be in a waxing phase. To me, it's a reaction against change -- for hundreds of millions of people around the world there has been a frightening onslaught of technological, economic and political change in the past half century or so and it frightens them. They want the lives they had (or think they had) in the "good old days" and find comfort and support in "old time religion," whether its radically conservative evangelical Christianity or Opus Dei Catholicism, ultra-Hasidism, extremist Islam, Hindu fundamentalism, etc. We've been condemned to live in "interesting times." I'm about ready to look for a time machine that could shoot me back to Enlightenment Boston or London!

[Guest ReturnOfS]

???????????????

[+ Axiom2001]

>Drag queens shouldn't be beaten either.

 

 

Agreed! But you do perhaps know why the writer wrote what he did? Many times when it comes to gays in a parade, many in the media think it is time to present an unbalanced viewpoint and show pics and vids and tapes of men in drag, in leather, completely nude, or, as it is in San Francisco, the dykes on bikes contingent of hundreds. (...stereotypes when it comes to gays or the "gay" community.

 

When news is presented, it should be given to us with a balance!

[Guest zipperzone]

>As for the prospects for gay rights in today's Russia, I am

>not totally depressed by the recent events. After all, we

>can't expect Russia to be where we are today. If we reflect on

>where we were 40 years ago, things aren't much different

>between us then and Russians today.

 

There are many groups living just a few miles south of you who would advocate the same actions we saw in Russia this past weekend - if they thought for one minute they could get away with it.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

I know.. I'm actually pretty conservative in the way that I myself dress and look. Thats just my style.. But I have a tremendous amount of respect for Drag Queens and others who are brave enough to look differently. In my opinion, every gay person desrves equal rights no matter how flamboyantly they dress themselves. Its bad how people have to look a certain way just to get the rights that others are born with.

[Jay Ganymede]

This is disppointing. I taught english in st. petty's and it has some of the best gay bars, almost as liberal as germany