Russians hate fags

[Alex Linder]

3 Gay Activists Arrested at Moscow Pride

By ELIZABETH PERRY
Friday, June 08, 2007

Three gay rights act-ivists, including a European who was badly beaten by Russian nationalists despite the presence of riot police, were among the 31 people arrested at a Moscow Gay Pride demonstration Sunday, May 27.

English gay activist Peter Tatchell, a Green Party candidate for the British Parliament, gave the Moscow Gay Pride keynote address at a conference the day before and took part in the protest. In a written account of his attack, Tatchell said he was punched in the eye while talking to a journalist, pushed to the ground and kicked by a man in a camouflage shirt while television crews documented the assault. Then police arrested him.

“I believe some of the violent right-wing extremists may have been plainclothes police officers who were doing in civilian clothes what they could not be seen doing in police uniform—punching and kicking the marchers,” he said.

According to wire reports, a delegation of gay activists gathered in central Moscow to deliver a petition, signed by 40 European members of Parliament, to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to lift the ban on Gay Pride parades. This was the second year that gay activists have gathered to ask Luzhkov to lift the ban and were met with violence.

Russian gay activist Nicholas Alexeyev organized the protest and was one of those arrested trying to deliver the petition. In an e-mail interview with the Blade he put the blame for the violence squarely on Luzhkov, who has been known to refer to gay marches as “satanic acts.”

“His office is responsible for creating this violence,” Alexeyev wrote. “The Moscow police obey the mayor. When the police arrest us, beat us or refuse to protect us, you can only blame the mayor. Here, there is no link with the Kremlin. I don’t think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin thanked Luzhkov for the media coverage Russia got last week.”

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia 14 years ago, but homophobic attitudes are still prevalent among Russian nationalists, skinheads and ultra-conservative members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Scott Long, director of Human Rights Watch’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program, traveled to Russia last year to monitor human rights violations and blogged about his experiences for the Blade.

This year he went to observe, was pointed out by an informer and detained in a police van for 15 minutes before he was released. He said he witnessed “deliberate collusion” between police officers and anti-gay demonstrators. He said three times as many gays were arrested this year in comparison to last year. In his blog he accused the police of encouraging the mass gay bashing by pushing gay activists into the direct path of angry mobs of skinheads.

“I saw a skinhead smash his fist into a young man’s face,” he said. “I saw a band of skinheads kick the victim when he fell, while a woman begged the officers, ‘Why don’t you help?’”

Long said the key to stopping the violence will lay in sustained pressure by both European and American governments.

“Russia needs to amend its law on demonstrations so there is a minimum of state interference with them,” he said. “They need effective anti-discrimination laws and control of the police.”

In other international gay news, Irish political leaders continue to denounce Democratic Unionist Party Legislator Ian Paisley Jr.’s anti-gay comments to an Irish music magazine.

“I am, unsurprisingly, a straight person,” he told Hot Press magazine. “I am pretty repulsed by gay and lesbianism. I think it is wrong. I think that those people harm themselves and—without caring about it—harm society. That doesn’t mean to say that I hate them. I mean, I hate what they do.”

In an article on Gay Community News Ireland’s web site, Social Democratic and Labour Party Equality spokesperson Dolores Kelly said her party has put forth a motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly Business Office to censure Paisley, making sure he will not handle any gay issues.

“Ian Paisley takes the view that a particular minority is harming society,” she said. “Yet he is a minister in a department charged with protecting the equality and rights of that minority and all other minorities, whether he finds them repulsive or not.”

The Ulster Union Party, Sinn Fein and Paisley’s own colleagues at the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister, also condemned his comments, along with the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association, and the Coalition on Sexual Orientation.

James Knox, co-chair of the Coalition, told the Washington Blade that Paisley’s comments violate Northern Ireland’s Ministerial Code, to serve people equally and prevent discrimination. He also said the legislator’s remarks verge on violation of the Incitement to Hatred Act, which is directed at instigators of hate crimes and covers verbal comments that are published or broadcast.

“It’s the difference between personal opinion and a serious issue or possible hate crime,” Knox said. “He is a public person and automatically gets media attention. It becomes a public issue. He’s a smart guy and would know that he is saying was wrong and would be an issue.”

In wire reports Paisley contended he was exercising his right to free speech.

http://www.newyorkblade.com/2007/6-8...ews/moscow.cfm

[Alex Linder]

Why I Never Went Back

By MICHAEL LUCAS
Friday, June 08, 2007

I am disgusted, yet hardly surprised by recent developments in Russia, the putrid country of my birth. For the past two years, attempts by gay people in Russia to hold Pride rallies in Moscow have not only been squelched, but also met by shocking public expressions of bigotry along with calls for anti-gay violence by elected officials and religious leaders.

In May of both 2006 and 2007, concerned political figures from European Union countries traveled to Moscow to show human rights solidarity with the gay organizers there. Their pleas for tolerance were met with barbaric contempt.

In 2006, the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, banned a Pride event being planned by gay leader Nikolai Alekseyev. In response to the ban, gay activists thought to honor the country’s war against the Nazis by laying wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They had planned to then hold a protest near City Hall against Mayor Luzhkov’s ban of their Pride event. When they got to the tomb, they found it blocked by police. Additionally, a vomitous crowd of Russian Orthodox, skinheads and Cossacks awaited them. As they tried to lay flowers by the fence, they were violently attacked. Some made their way to the site of the planned City Hall demonstration, and again were attacked.

The German parliamentarian Volker Beck, who had come in a show of support for enlightenment, was struck by a rock and then punched in the face by a young neo-Nazi. How is that for irony? The Russians in WWII fought off the least humane society ever, one that severely persecuted gay people, only to become infinitely less tolerant than today’s Germany. The Russian who hit Beck was later quoted in The Moscow Times as saying he attacked violently because he was “a normal Russian guy.”

He said it, I didn’t. But let me tell you, “normal” Russians have a mentality that is the absolute pits. They are incredibly cruel and intolerant. Trust me, I lived the nightmare, I know what I am talking about. I left Russia because I understood what I would be in for if I stayed there. One of the reasons I brought my whole family here was that I did not want to have to set foot in that rotten country in order to see them.

THE REACTIONS IN RUSSIA TO A planned Pride event last month was, if anything, even worse than in 2006. That was the case despite expressions of support for Pride from heterosexual and homosexual elected officials all over Western Europe. Mind you, we are not talking about a Fifth Avenue parade. We are just talking about a few hundred gay people wanting to erode the monstrous prejudice against them by showing they exist. Yet Mayor Luzhkov calls such a demonstration “satanic.” His police do not protect gay people, and the religious leaders in his society might as well be foaming at the mouth. By the way, if you think the Russian people have acknowledged that gays were among the soldiers who fought on their side in WWII, forget about it.

A shared hatred of gay people has united the Christian Russians with the Muslim Russians. Moscow carpet-bombed the Chechen Republic because of those two groups’ usual enmities, but when a few hundred gay Russians wanted to show they exist, the Christians and the Muslims couldn’t find enough ways to express their agreement.

I regret having to report to you that the top Muslim leader in Russia, the Mufti Talgat Tajuddin, has made statements that ought to have landed him in an asylum for the criminally insane. For instance, he claimed that “if gays come out onto the streets, they should be bashed.”

I maintain that all religious texts containing anti-gay bigotry should be modified.

You could ask why so powerful, omnipresent a guy as God needs human policemen to take care of those who have supposedly committed a crime against him. The Mufti also said that the Russian Orthodox Church would join in anti-gay protests. Several news agencies attempted to interview the church about his statements, but the church had no comment. Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar got in on the act, too, saying that “sexual perversions have no right to exist.” He did not, however, call for anti-gay violence. While both these men are to be denounced, I imagine the importance of the distinction between them would be apparent to a gay person getting beaten bloody on the Mufti’s orders.

ALL OF THIS WAS HARDLY covered by mainstream American media. This is the face of homophobia. Bush recently chided Putin for backpedaling on democratic reforms, but of course expressed no outrage over Russian violations of gay people’s human rights. Let a single Christian convert in Afghanistan be sentenced to death for apostasy, and Bush mounts an aggressive international campaign to protect that person. On gay rights, he is silent.

I’ve been thinking about pressure that could be put on Russia to grant gays their rights—sanctions, travel limitations on the Russians who come here to buy their Gucci, et cetera. Yet I also think we American gays should be more demanding of presidential candidates if they want our support. Asking Sen. Hillary Clinton to speak up for oppressed gays internationally, for example, would not be too much to request. I’m not holding my breath.

Still, we will have our Pride March down Fifth Avenue the last Sunday of June. Despite Gen. Peter Pace and his comment about “immoral” homosexuality, and despite President Bush, the United States is a far, far better place for a gay person than Russia. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why when the subject of going to Russia arises, I say nyet.

Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com.

http://www.newyorkblade.com/2007/6-8...lucasfiles.cfm

[Alex Linder]

Russian Nationalists Attack Gays, Right Said Fred, and a German Politician

Russian skinheads, ultra nationalists and fundamentalist Orthodox church members make good on their pledge to "clean" Moscow streets of gays. Pop groups like Tatu and Right Said Fred were part of the scattered gay-rights protest, and so was a German politician.

Shouting epithets like "Moscow isn't Sodom" and "Death to Gays," neo-Nazi, ultranationalist and religious fundamentalist counter-demonstrators in Moscow attacked gay rights activists Sunday who were seeking to deliver a protest letter to the mayor of the Russian capital. The mayor had rejected a petition to hold a gay-rights march in the city.

Skinheads, ultranationalists and fundamentalist members of the Russian Orthodox church have recently waged war on gay rights activists in the city, saying they would "clean" Moscow's streets of homosexuals.



trendy sex deviants



British fagtivist 'attacked'



On Sunday, though, they didn't have to -- police did the work for them, detaining a small group of gay rights activists that included Völker Beck, a member of the German parliament for the Green Party, and other high-profile European politicians -- allegedly for their own protection as skinheads began attacking them.

Beck and a delegation of European politicians were marching to Moscow's city hall to deliver a letter signed by 42 members of the European Parliament protesting Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's refusal to grant a permit for a gay rights march in the city for two years in a row. Luzhkov has denounced gay-rights parades as "satanic activity." But the parade earlier in May was meant to celebrate the 14th anniversary of formal Russian decriminalization of homosexuality.

Enter Beck. "We have to make it very clear to Russian politicians that the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Russia is also a signatory, also applies to gays and lesbians," the German politician said Sunday.

It was the second time in a year that Beck had been temporarily detained by Russian authorities -- his first arrest came during a similar gay-rights protest in May 2006.

No Protection for Protesters

These demonstrations aren't popular in Russia. Religious fundamentalists marching against this year's event included a priest and other Orthodox church members dressed in black, wearing religious orders on their chests as well as heavy fighting boots. They carried crosses and icons and described their counter-demonstration as a battle between good and evil. "Those are degenerates, they're not even people," said Alexander, a religious fundamentalist taking part in the counterdemonstration. "They will only become humans again when they absolve themselves of their sins."

Beck and his fellow protesters -- a group estimated at less than 100, which included Richard Fairbrass of the British pop group Right Said Fred and the Russian pop group Tatu -- were beaten, pummelled by eggs and tomatoes. The activists were taken into what police said was protective custody, but observers said authorities took no action whatsover against the thugs, skinheads and Orthodox fundamentalists who repeated physical attacks from last year.

"The security forces haven't done anything to protect the activists and demonstrations," said Boris Dittrich, an observer from Human Rights Watch. "They allowed the different groups to mix and gave the impression that it was happening intentionally."

Russian gays have found prominent proponents for their cause in the form of two prominent national singers -- Julia Volkova and Elena Katina of the pop group Tatu. The duo grew famous with a string of pop hits earlier in the decade, and a suggestive onstage relationship -- which turned out to be fake. Fans were disappointed to learn they were straight, and now Volkova and Katina have tried to polish their image by supporting gays in Russia.

They briefly appeared at Sunday's demonstration but, according to the Associated Press, they left quickly after nationalists pummelled their car with eggs.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...485262,00.html

[Alex Linder]

Anti-Gay Russia

Why is a former Communist country so homophobic?

Cathy Young (yes, she's a jew)| June 8, 2007

For the second year in a row, gay [sic] activists in Moscow have tried to hold a parade to mark the anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia. This choice of date was rich with irony: the outcome was a powerful reminder that decriminalization does not equal tolerance. Once again, as in 2006, the parade was banned by the city authorities, and the people who attempted to protest the ban found themselves on the receiving end of brutality both from a gay-bashing mob and from the police. Alas, this ugly incident is all too typical of the treatment of gays in many post-Communist countries.

The events surrounding the protest in Moscow were a particularly stark example of state-sponsored bigotry. At a Kremlin event in January, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov railed against "unprecedented pressure to sanction the gay parade, which can only be described as satanic," and vowed never to permit such a parade in the future. (For good measure, he added that same-sex marriage and sex education in Western countries were "a deadly moral poison for children.")

On May 27, the day of the planned parade, a group of fewer than 100 Russian activists, accompanied by several European parliamentarians and other foreign supporters such as British journalist Peter Tatchell and pop singer Richard Fairbass, rallied to present Luzhkov with a petition asking for the ban to be lifted. None of the protesters were able to get to City Hall. About 30 were arrested, and the police and special riot forces mostly looked on with indifference as skinheads and other thugs beat the demonstrators and militant Christian grandmas pelted them with eggs. Three of the attackers, including a man who punched Tatchell, were reportedly arrested; mostly, however, the police "protected" the gay activists and their supporters by hauling them away.

Sympathy for the protesters seemed scarce. A 19-year-old Russian college student I met on an Internet forum wrote to me that she was nonplussed by Western condemnation of police actions: "The gay parades are forbidden in Russia and to make them without a permission sounds strange and stupid. No wonder that [the police] have to arrest the members." This logic may tell us more about attitudes toward civil liberties than attitudes toward gays in Putin's Russia; but the young woman's specific comments about gays were telling as well. "You see, the gay prides in Russia don't work not because of government but because of people," she wrote. "The majority of citizens truly despise gays. ... I have no idea what will happen if parades become a usual thing in Russia. In that situation gays will be all dead because normal people will just kill them." Ironically, she then added that she couldn't understand what the gays wanted anyway: after all, Russia now has "lots of gay clubs where they can be safe and enjoy their culture."

Such attitudes are fairly typical. Indeed, quite a few Russian gays opposed the push for the parade, fearful of popular backlash. (One self-identified lesbian posted a foul-mouthed rant in her online diary blasting "the fucking faggots" who antagonize the public by insisting on "waving their dicks in people's faces.") An April 2005 poll of 1,600 Russians found that only 14 percent "definitely" supported a law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation while another 28 percent were "somewhat" in favor of such a ban. Moreover, over 43 percent said that same-sex relations between consenting adults should be prosecuted while only 37 percent opposed such prosecutions.

Russia is not the only post-Communist country with a gay problem. In Poland, authorities have recently undertaken an initiative to outlaw all discussion of homosexuality in schools, and a high-level official in charge of children's rights, Ewa Sowinska, followed in the footsteps of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell by expressing concern about the sexuality of purse-carrying purple Teletubby Tinky Winky and its possible effects on young viewers.

A few days before his personal experience with homophobia in Moscow, Tatchell wrote about the problem of anti-gay bigotry in Eastern Europe on the blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian. "With the demise of communism," Tatchell noted, "religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism are filling the void. Homophobia is the hallmark of these reactionary movements."

But this argument is not entirely accurate. Far from being a new phenomenon in the former Soviet bloc, homophobia was also a hallmark of communist regimes. In the Soviet Union, male homosexuality was punishable by up to eight years of imprisonment; while sodomy laws in American states required proof of specific sexual act, a gay man in Soviet Russia could be jailed if his neighbors testified that he had no female company and frequent male visitors who stayed overnight. Castro's Cuba has been notorious for its persecution of gays.

Why this intolerance in societies where traditional religion with its condemnation of homosexuality held no sway? The reasons are varied. Communist regimes have associated homosexuality with Western bourgeois decadence and individualism, a selfish pursuit of pleasure rather than reproductive service to the collective. It is also likely that the totalitarian suppression of civil society simply froze in place many cultural prejudices that were challenged and reexamined in free societies.

In today's Russia and Poland, conservative religious forces capitalize easily on these prejudices left from an atheistic past. In Russia, resurgent political authoritarianism plays a part as well. As one gay man wrote bitterly in the diary of the Moscow lesbian who lambasted the protest: "The power structure has no use for queers—any vertical power structure. Because they don't fit in and they keep breaking the rules."

Cathy Young is a contributing editor of reason. And a kike.

http://reason.com/news/show/120638.html

[Alex Linder]

Cathy Young is yet another kike masquerading as a conservative, preaching the same old degradation and decomposition for White society, all in the name of tolerance, benevolence and universal brotherhood. There is truly no good jew but a dead jew.

[Alex Linder]

Anti-queer demonstrators in Moscow last week.


Crucible of hate

All across eastern Europe, gay people are demanding equality. But in Russia, Poland and Latvia, their growing confidence is being met with violent resistance from nationalist and religious groups. What lies behind this hysteria? Phoebe A Greenwood reports

Friday June 1, 2007
The Guardian

It is Gay Pride season in Europe, with marches in Poland and Russia. In Latvia, the capital, Riga, is hosting four days of lectures, classical concerts, parties and film screenings, but the big draw will be the final parade through the Vermane Garden on June 3. Organisers are hoping for a turnout of around 400, maybe more if the weather is as sunny as last year. It's hard to know. What they can expect with some certainty is that neofascist and ultra-religious counterdemonstrators will outnumber their marchers by at least two to one. The police presence will be greater still. As one activist put it, "It'll be less of a Pride parade than a human rights fight."

Whether the sun shines or not, the atmosphere will be stormy. The hope is that Ivars Godmanis, Latvia's new minister of the interior, generally considered a pragmatic man, will prevent a repeat of last year's event, a human rights and PR disaster. The march had been banned as a risk to security. The Latvian prime minister, Aigars Kalvitis, said he could not condone "a parade of sexual minorities", even though such a ban was an infringement of the right to freedom of assembly to which Latvia had signed up when it joined the EU on May 1 2004.

As a compromise, Riga Pride organisers held a private indoor rally at the Berg hotel, following an Anglican church service. The church was surrounded by a group of religious extremists, old women and skinheads. "We tried to leave by the back door but they had put guards there. We tried to move through them but groups of people started to run at us shouting, 'You deserve to die,' and 'Leave our land.' They were carrying bags, which could have had anything in them," remembers Jolanta Chianovica, a half-French, half-Latvian activist.

The bags were full of human excrement, which was hurled at the mostly female congregation. Meanwhile, more counterdemonstrators had swarmed to the Berg hotel, where they were refusing to let Pride supporters in or out. "I saw two girls trying to leave and people spat in their faces directly in front of the police but they did nothing. When they saw the police weren't interfering to stop the violence, they felt they could do whatever they liked. That was really frightening," says Chianovica.

The new mayor of Riga has approved this year's march, but gay and lesbian activists are steeling themselves. Latvia is typical among eastern European countries where, increasingly, being gay is seen as an act of political aggression. Rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are denied on vague grounds of "promoting homosexuality" or posing a risk to security. Homophobia has become a touchstone issue for politicians seeking to divert attention from economic frustration. Homosexuality may be decriminalised in these countries, but only on condition that it stays out of sight. Aside from a small number of activists who are openly gay, homosexual people in most of eastern Europe are invisible. In Poland, where an anti-European party was elected just two years after the country gained membership to the EU, the rise in homophobia is tangled up with a surge in nationalism. In Latvia, activists claim they frequently hear that homosexuality didn't exist in the country before it became part of Europe.

In Britain, homophobia still exists, but there are laws to protect gay and lesbian citizens from it. There is no such legislation to protect sexual minorities from discrimination in Latvia and Poland, or Russia and Moldova, which are members of the Council of Europe, where Prides have been banned. In Belarus and Serbia, no one has even suggested a Pride. Romania introduced anti-discrimination law in 2000, but last year hundreds of protesters turned out to pelt the Bucharest Pride parade with eggs, bottles and stones. Both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have voiced concern about the rise in homophobic violence in eastern Europe during recent debates, flagging Poland as a particular trouble spot. But their power appears to be limited. The promotion of homophobic legislation and use of hate speech by politicians in these countries continues unabated, a two-fingered salute to the notions of integration and acceptance represented by Europe.

On May 19, 5,000 people marched in Warsaw Pride. The following day, Roman Giertych, who is deputy prime minister and minister for education, joined 800 supporters of family values in a countermarch, to oppose "revolting pederasts". In Moscow last Sunday, gay activists were punched, kicked and pelted with eggs by a mob - some holding crucifixes - as they tried to hand a petition signed by 40 MEPs to the mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, in protest at his ban on a Pride parade. Riot police stood by as thugs chanting "death to homosexuals" attacked veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell, Right Said Fred singer Richard Fairbrass and Russian pop duo Tatu, then moved in to arrest 31 of the pro-gay protesters.

Riga's 2006 Pride ban had a EU precedent in Warsaw in 2005, a ban which, the European court of human rights recently ruled, violated three articles of the convention on human rights. Lech Kaczynski, the Warsaw mayor who refused that application, is now the president of Poland and intends to appeal against the court's decision. The Moldovan supreme court ruled that the decision of Chisinau authorities to ban the 2006 march was illegal, but Vasile Ursu, the mayor, banned the 2007 Pride anyway. In Moldova in April, a group of lesbian and gay supporters protested against the Pride ban in a picket outside Chisinau city hall. They also tried to lay flowers at a statue commemorating victims of repression, but police blocked their access to the monument, filmed the mostly foreign protesters and noted the number plates of their cars. Rightwing extremists threw eggs.

"Their idea is that gays and lesbians, by laying flowers at the monument, make it dirty," says the event organiser, Maxim Anmeghichen. The Moldovan police made no arrests but detained a driver working for the activists on no particular charge. Maxim reasons, "He's a Moldovan driver, and they probably thought, 'We'll show our protest this way.' "

Last year in Latvia, police said they could not step in to protect the gay rights rally because they had not been given authorisation from the mayor to do so. Counterprotesters, who were to all intents and purposes engaged in an illegal protest, gathered freely to chant, throw holy water and excrement. The police detained 14 people for acts of violence.

Igors Maslakovs was among the anti-gay protesters. Describing himself as a businessman, Maslakovs stopped work last year to devote his time to founding and running Latvia's "No Pride" organisation. The No Pride logo shows two male stick figures having sex with a red line through the middle. The group website, which was built using Maslakovs' money, announces its purpose: "To fight against the opinion that homosexual lifestyle is proper and even recommended, which is enforced on Latvian society by [the] EU."

Maslakovs' account of last year's Pride event differs only marginally from those of the supporters: "It wasn't human excrement, it was chicken shit." He claims it was aimed at the two Anglican pastors who led the morning service and that they got what they deserved.

Maslakovs' views on homosexuality, he says, are Christian beliefs. He has particular affinity with the New Generation Church, an evangelical organisation with a swelling international congregation of mostly Russian speakers. The group now has 108 churches in 15 countries, including Argentina, Israel and America. It is headed by Aleksey Ledyaev, a publicity-savvy pastor with close ties to the Christian right in America. In February, Pastor Ledyaev attended a breakfast at the White House hosted by President Bush. "He's a very good man, a very powerful man. He has many connections with parliament and worldwide connections to the USA and Russia. He agrees with me," says Maslakovs.

Pastor Ledyaev declined an interview, writing instead: "I believe that Christians and their traditional values are discriminated against today, and not the gays and lesbians." In his sermons, he has been more explicit, saying of homosexuals: "God will bring evil upon them! God will drive them out and they will fall!" Many of the counterprotesters at last year's Pride wore "I Love the New Generation" T-shirts.

Homophobia has a strong ballast in Latvia's Christian leaders. Early this May, the Archbishop of Riga urged Christians to take to the streets and oppose the Pride march. "If there are 1,000 sexually crazy people acting foolishly, then the people's march in Riga should have at least 40,000 or 50,000. That proportion would give the government enough reason to leave sexual perversion outside the law."

Maris Sants, the Anglican pastor for whom the bags of chicken excrement were intended, has had first-hand experience of this church's response to perceived perversion. He became a celebrated champion of gay rights in Latvia when, two years ago, he was excommunicated from the Lutheran church by the Archbishop of Latvia on a charge of "promoting homosexuality".

"I had been preaching against xenophobia and promoting tolerance, not homosexuality," he says. "I was told of my excommunication via email. It wasn't a surprise. The atmosphere in the church was very closed, more like a totalitarian sect. They are against women's rights and are only open to Latvian-speaking people. I know a blind pastor who is suing the church. They're not allowing him to serve because he is blind. The Old Testament says a pastor in many ways needs to be perfect, a model, so that can't include people with special needs."

In many former communist states where religion was suppressed for decades, the church has developed considerable influence. One ideology has been replaced by another. The current human rights commissioner for the Latvian parliament, Janis Smits, was previously a Lutheran pastor. He was mayor of Riga when Pride was banned and is a representative for the ultra-nationalistic First party. In September 2006, he addressed Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, on the issue of gay rights. "I invite all Christians who are here ... if you vote for the legalisation of homosexuality, then, please, go to church and openly repent for what you have done, because it will no longer be possible to halt this plague that you have let loose in our society."

Such inflammatory speech is frequently heard in the Saeima, as it is in parliaments across eastern Europe. In Poland, the anti-European far-right coalition has been in government for the past two years. "We joke that this government is more Catholic than the Pope," says Tomasz Szypula, secretary general of Poland's Campaign Against Homophobia. But the reality is not so funny. Roman Giertych has proposed a bill banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools and universities.

The European Parliament has expressed its concern about this legislation, and in April voted to send a fact-finding delegation to Poland. What the EU hopes to achieve through this investigation is unclear. Even less clear is what Giertych means by the "promotion of homosexuality". It is a phrase Szypula has written asking him to clarify. So far he has failed to do so.

Giertych's father, MEP Maciej Giertych, is less reticent. He explains that the issue of gay rights in Poland is not one of human rights but morality. "By promoting, I mean spreading literature or inviting homosexuals to talk to children about the glories of homosexuality. Private sexual lives should remain private, whether they are decent lives or homosexual, adulterous, promiscuous, lesbian lives. They should keep to themselves rather than promote themselves, especially in schools."

In Szypula's opinion, the Polish gay community learned to hide under communist rule and is continuing to hide in the new democracy. "Many people say, 'I can't show my sexuality outside because it would become political.' But when you go to work and your colleagues start talking about their children or wives, you see it is not political to say you are gay, it's just who you are," he says.

Police do not record the motives for violent assault in Poland. The Campaign Against Homophobia, however, has questioned more than 1,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Poles and found that over the past two years, half of those questioned had suffered psychological violence and, of the 18% who had been physically assaulted, half were attacked more than three times. Of those who were physically attacked, 85% said they were too scared to report the crime to the police.

Aside from physical risks, the psychological battery that gay rights activists expect in return for visibility takes its toll. Szypula describes the first time he was hit by an egg: "It may be just an egg, but it hurts like hell, and worse than that is the humiliation. You have egg on you, on your clothes. Though, unfortunately, you can get used to anything."

London MEP Jean Lambert, who spearheaded the campaign to launch an investigation into Poland's homophobic school legislation, says the EU could be more proactive in protecting the rights of its gay and lesbian citizens but is limited by what it can actually do.

"People listen to their peers, and for the Polish government, that is other governments. If there is a special relationship anywhere in the EU, aside from France and Germany, it's between Britain and Poland. British ministers need to actively explain why they have gone even further than the European Union requires to protect the legal rights of gay and lesbian people."

After his involvement in last year's Riga Pride, during which he made several TV appearances, Maris Sants was attacked six times in the street. He has since distanced himself from activism, preferring to concentrate instead on the book he is writing about homosexuality and Christianity in Latvia. It keeps him indoors. "I felt burnt out. After four years of being open, I now feel it's time that I stepped back from the movement," he says.

Szypula knows many activists who have resigned in order to reclaim their anonymity and their lives, and he understands why: "I don't want to be a full-time gay my whole life either. But we have to survive this government. We need to build structures in our community so when this government falls, we'll be ready. These are big words I'm saying now but I have to really believe in them. Otherwise, when I look at the situation and see it only getting worse, I just feel hopeless".

Homosexuality and the law
How attitudes vary across eastern Europe

Belarus Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1994. No legislation barring discrimination in employment. Age of consent 16 for all relationships. No laws on homophobic crime. Widespread homophobic prejudice, stigma-tisation and acts of violence against gay people. Russian Orthodox Church considers homosexuality a "grave sin".

Bulgaria Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1968. Discrimination in employment banned in 2003. Age of consent 14 for all relationships. Some inheritance rights for same-sex couples. Gradual change in previously conservative public attitudes to homosexuality.

Latvia Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1992. Discrimination in employment banned in 2006. Age of consent 14 for all relationships. Same-sex marriages banned. Homophobia widespread.

Lithuania Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1993. Discrimination in employment banned in 2004 as a condition of joining the EU. Age of consent 14 for all relationships. Open opposition to gay rights on the political right.

Moldova Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1995. No legislation barring discrimination in employment. Age of consent 16 for all relationships. Homophobia rife, verbal attacks on gay people routine, and physical attacks not uncommon.

Poland Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1932. Discrimination in employment banned in 2003. Age of consent 15 for all relationships. Government proposing legislation that would allow teachers to be dismissed for promoting "homosexual culture". Public attitudes very anti-gay.

Romania Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1996. Discrimination in employment banned in 2000. Age of consent 15 for all relationships. Gays allowed to serve in armed forces. Intolerance widespread, but government is recognised as making significant progress in redressing inequalities and homophobia.

Russia Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1993. No legislation barring discrimination in employment. Age of consent 16 for all relationships. Intolerance and homophobia widespread; Russian Orthodox Church condemnatory; support for such rights as gay marriage very low.

Serbia Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1994. No legislation barring discrimination in employment. Age of consent 14 for all relationships. Discrimination and homophobia widespread, and public opinion very hostile. Homosexuals banned in armed forces (though this law is only loosely applied) and constitution bars any recognition of same-sex unions.

Slovakia Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1961. Discrimination in employment banned in 2004, though critics of the legislation consider it flawed. Age of consent 15 for all relationships. Tolerance gradually increasing, especially in the capital, Bratislava.

Slovenia Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1977. Discrimination in employment banned in 1998. Age of consent 15 for all relationships. Civil unions for same-sex couples legalised in 2006. Active lesbian and gay movement, no discrimination against gays in armed forces, and public attitudes far more tolerant than further east (though still below EU averages).

Ukraine Homosexual acts decriminalised in 1991. No legislation barring discrimination in employment. Age of consent 16 for all relationships. Gays not allowed to serve in armed forces. Homophobia rife outside Kiev.

· Sources: Avert.org; Diskriminace; LGBT rights on Wikipedia

Linda MacDonald

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gayrights/...093006,00.html

[Правда]

Reported 2 weeks ago

http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=49138

[Celtic_Patriot]

The Russians, like the Americans, are sick and tired of the Jews forcing homosexuality on White society.

It began with forcing the monks to be celibate and not take wives, so as to control knowledge, clerical celibacy, power, money, homosexuality and information in the Early Christian Church.

At the upper level were the clergy. They were the most educated.

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html

So those who were allowed to read in the Monastery libraries, would not reproduce and pass on that knowledge to their children.

The Church owned much land, the
priests were supported with
mandatory taxes(tithes), and they
had the monopoly on education,
books, and records. Most peasants
were illiterate and uneducated; the
church was the depository of the
written records, and was the source
of learning. Most schools were
church schools or schools within
monasteries; most teachers were
monks and priests. With these
powers of censorship and control
over knowledge, the church kept
rigid control of the information
people received about religion,
history, science, and philosophy.

http://dsc.dixie.edu/owl/syllabi/Hum...endicesHum.pdf.

The Christian Church had all the books in it's Monasteries. The Monks were sworn to celibacy and could not legally have children.

Christian Monastery practice increased homosexuality, as designed, to contain the information in the monastery libraries and keep it within the Church. Money, Information, Power, concentrated in the Church with celibate gay monks.

The monastic schools, the great--the only--means of disseminating the learning of the time...

http://www.worldwideschool.org/libra...ies/chap2.html

Writing, knowledge only held by the monks in the monasteries until 1100 AD.

From around the 12th century, the monastic schools no longer held a monopoly on the teaching of writing, and it was no longer restricted to those entering the various branches of the church.

http://www.medievalwriting.50megs.co...y/writing2.htm

Homosexuality has always been against nature and White Pagan religions.

In Russian Pagan religions there was never any Forgiveness for Homosexuality as there is in Christian forgiveness and redemption doctrine.

2nd Lateran Council, 1139

Although celibacy did not become a universally mandated state for clerics of the western Church until the 12th century (2nd Lateran Council, 1139) various church leaders began to advocate it by the 4th century.

The earliest recorded church legislation is from the council of Elvira (Spain, 306 AD). Half of the canons passed dealt with sexual behavior of one kind or another and included penalties assessed for clerics who committed adultery or fornication.

The most authoritative source is the Decree of Gratian already mentioned. Though mandatory celibacy had been decreed by the 2nd Lateran Council in 1139, this law was received with neither universal acceptance nor obedience. Medieval scholars attest that clerical concubinage was commonplace. Adultery, casual sex with unmarried women and homosexual relationships were rampant. Gratian devoted entire sections to disciplinary legislation which attempted to curb all of these vices.

The 4th Lateran Council (1215) repeated the previous council’s condemnation of celibacy violations. It added however a specific mention of homosexual sex by clerics and decreed that those found guilty of this transgression were either to be dismissed from the clerical state or confined to a monastery for life. The former amounted to social exile and the latter to imprisonment.

http://www.crusadeagainstclergyabuse...ortHistory.htm

Christian monasteries were filled with homosexual clergy.

The documentation from the medieval period indicates that although homosexual liaisons were not uncommon among the secular or diocesan clergy, most celibacy violations involved heterosexual forms of abuse. Illicit sexual activity by the monks was another matter. Although concubinage and even illicit marriages occurred among the monks, the fact that they took vows of chastity precluding marriage and lived a common life theoretically isolated from women meant that their sexual outlets would be considerably restricted. The monks became known for the frequency of homosexual activity especially with young boys. Many monasteries passed local regulations in attempts to curb the rampant abuses. In his Rule, Benedict commanded that no two monks were to sleep in the same bed. Night lights were to be kept burning and the monks were to sleep clothed. Many monasteries enacted their own rules forbidding various kinds of sexual behavior and added punishments that were often more severe than those meted out to the secular clerics.


So common was clerical same-sex activity that some scholars have concluded that homosexual relationships were commonly associated with the clergy.

http://www.crusadeagainstclergyabuse...ortHistory.htm

Homosexuality in Russia was created by the Christian Church's monasteries, where Gays could go be with 120 men and read books all day.

Christian (Jewy) Monasteries worshiping an asexual non-heterosexual celibate male Jew (Jesus) was the ultimate gay pride fantasy of the 10th century. Go be with a bunch of men reading books about a man that never had sex with a woman, Our Lord Jesus the amazing gay Jew.

Christianity is a Gay religion for homosexual men to worship a Jew homo.

Pagan Russians would have taken them out to the marshes and killed them.

.