Recently St. Petersburg, Russia, passed a law…which takes effect tomorrow…which makes it illegal to make a display of homosexuality that could influence children. The law levies fines on people who or businesses which promote "public actions aimed at propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism among minors".
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both called for the state to halt implementation of the law because of the increase in discrimination against GLBT people it will cause.
We see how the world is changing. We see how blasphemously the standards are being changed, and how the traditional values are vanishing, which our society has and on which our country and all of Europe were built. We don't want for this process to happen in our country. We see how children in some countries are made to sing songs 'I have two dads' and others have to listen to it. We think that it's not right.
--Vitaly Milonov, author of the law
This bill is a thinly veiled attempt to legalize discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in Russia’s second-biggest city.
--Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International
Canada has warned gay travelers who may venture into any of the four cities who have passed the law (St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Ryazan and Kostroma).
Meanwhile the Russian Orthodox Church is calling for the law to become national.
Borne on the ill-winds of this is the following video:
Accompanying the video for me was a heart-breaking guest editorial by "L", a Russian transwoman fighting extradition back to Russia from Sweden. It includes narration of horrendous treatment of L by Russian authorities.
This gave me other troubles, and I’ll only give one example: in October 2007, I was stopped on the street by a police officer, who took my IDs and took me to a police station. So-called “state authority representatives” made me strip nude and began to beat me and to urinate on me, laughing and shouting “fags must die!” When they put my head into the toilet bowl and cried out, “Drink Russian water you queer,” I lost consciousness. Eventually I woke up in an unfamiliar yard, my clothes torn and dirtied with urine and faeces. After this, I attempted to commit suicide. Thanks to my friends with the same problems, they helped me to find strength to withstand. But, I was hiding my real identity again for almost a year, and this was a real torture. I couldn’t stand it.
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That's probably more than enough to cause some triggering. If it did, I apologize.
But it is also reality...a reality too many transpeople experience worldwide ever day.
Finally, a Russian judge has ruled in favor of a ban on a Gay Pride House at the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. Such a Pride House proved to be vastly popular and successful at the Vancouver games in 2010.
The activities of the [Pride House] movement leads to propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation which can undermine the security of the Russian society and the state, provoke social-religious hatred, which is the feature of the extremist character of the activity. Moreover it can undermine the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation due to the decrease of Russia’s population.
Such aims as creating an understanding of the necessity to fight against homophobia and the creation of positive attitudes towards LGBT sportsmen contradicts with the basics of public morality because they are directed towards the increase of the number of citizens of sexual minorities which breaches the understanding of good and evil, good and bad, vice and virtue.
--Judge Svetlana Mordovina