So there was a Gay Pride Parade in Moscow yesterday
On Saturday, May 28th, a Moscow gay rights organization attempted to hold a Gay Pride parade after the city administration denied them the permit to protest. They planned to march to the Eternal Flame, a Russian monument to all unknown Soviet soldiers who died during World War II.
It went about as well as you would expect. Federal law enforcement blocked off the entire Alexandrvosky Garden, where the Eternal Flame is located. The protestors were met at the park entrances by counter-protesters that included Neo-Nazis and members of a monarchist, Orthodox Christian Horugvenostsy movement that called for the murder of all gays (along with other utterly disgusting things). The city police did absolutely nothing to stop the counter-protestors from beating up the protestors. they did arrest any gay activists that tried to speak to the media (foreign and domestic). And, suffice to say, the police arrested anyone who tried to enter the park.
According to the official sources, 40 people were arrested, and 16 of them were anti-gay counter-protestors. Time will tell how much truth there is in that statement.
Should the activists have waited for a permit? The city officials made it pretty clear that there was no way in hell they were going to get one. And, lest we forget, the first few rounds of Gay Pride parades in United States were illegal. The gay rights movement has to start somewhere.
My mom sent me a link to a post by aleshru. The pictures speak for themselves. As for the text, I will translate it for the benefit of the readers who don't understand Russian below. From American liberal perspective, some of the passages are, shall we say, a bit questionable, but by Russian standards, this is astonishingly progressive.
Today, Moscow witnessed yet another free-for-all called gay pride parade. Yet again, many journalists, mostly from foreign outlets, tried to locate the parade leader, Nikolai Alekseyev, who didn't appear before us after all. That is, maybe someone managed to find him, but it wasn't me, and I stood there almost longer than anybody else. When I left, the only people who remained were individuals who expressed very homophobic positions.
Nikolai, if you are by any chance reading this, I want to address you. 82-year-old Lyudmila Alekseyeva wasn't afraid to march [...] and she was taken away by [the police]. You, Nikolai, urge your supporters to march, invite the press, yet for a second year we need to wait for you, chase after you, search for you. [...] You should either march on the front lines or stop jerking us around.
Unlike Mr. Alekseeyev, who didn't appear before the cameras after all, a large number of people assembled at [the protest location]. Except for the people that are incurably stricken with the Orthodoxy of the brain, the Horugvenostsy, grandmas with icons, etc; there were an awful lot of young people who simply came to "keep Moscow from turning into Sodom."
I think that the very existence of those fighters against Sodom is a shame to our country and for all of us in general. Today, I saw with my own eyes how two young girls fearlessly pushed out two guys who chanted "Death to Faggots!" Nobody helped them.
Stop, take a deep breath and think about it. In the middle of the capital, somebody is calling for MURDER of people who want to have sex differently than what they consider normal. And they are calling for murder OPENLY, right in front of the photo and video cameras that are pointing at them. They were surrounded by the police, by members of OMON (Russian equivalent of SWAT). Is this normal? Isn't that against the law? I approached the lieutenant colonel of the police and asked him to "finally" do his job, and you know what he told me? "Don't get in my way. I'm doing my job." The two girls I mentioned earlier got taken away by the police a few minutes later. And four policemen grabbed each girl. FOUR for EACH GIRL. Nobody touched the people who were advocating murder.
Now, lets take another deep breath and try to think about this rationally. What do the people who march onto the [Red Square] with rainbow flags want? I've often heard a very dubious statement: "I am not against gays - I am against the way they promote their lifestyle." I would like to ask heterosexual men like me a question. Imagine a beautiful naked woman of your dreams. Imagine you are making love to her. Does that arouse you? I imagine it does. I'm aroused. Now imagine doing the same thing with a naked man. Well? Does that arouse you? No? Not at all? Maybe it's even kind of repulsive? Congradulations - you are a heterosexual. Hey, heterosexual - if a man doesn't arouse you, than how can you be LURED INTO HOMOSEXUALITY? WHAT KIND OF PROPAGANDA WOULD FORCE YOU to go against your own body? It's impossible. You can't turn a heterosexual gay. It would be unnatural. The same thing goes the other way around. A gay man cannot become heterosexual, it would not be natural for a gay man to make love to a woman, just like it wouldn't be natural for a heterosexual man to make love to a man. Everybody needs to understand it, accept it and leave it alone.
Now imagine if you are walking on the street with a woman you love and you can't hold hands, you can't kiss her or hug her, because the second you do it, you will be at best insulted and at worst hit. Imagine that, all your life, everyone is always telling you that you are not normal, that you are worse than others, that you are not like everybody else. Could you live with that? If you were in that situation, wouldn't you march to the square and defend your rights?
So what do the people who march in the Pride Parades want? They want to defend their rights. Notice that they don't want any special rights. They want to exercise the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. The law is the same for everyone. If you think they are not normal, it doesn't mean that they don't have rights. I'll allow that homophobes have a right to be homophobes, but I demand to have their calls for murder, their despicable attacks and their snide spitting publicly acknowledged . This is where the line between the man and the beast lies. Right here, and not where someone decides who should sleep with who.
First you decide who should sleep with who, than you dress your women in headscarves, than you forbid them to chose their husbands, than you will throw weak children off the cliff. Only animals do that. You want to be one of them? Join the homophobes.
It went about as well as you would expect. Federal law enforcement blocked off the entire Alexandrvosky Garden, where the Eternal Flame is located. The protestors were met at the park entrances by counter-protesters that included Neo-Nazis and members of a monarchist, Orthodox Christian Horugvenostsy movement that called for the murder of all gays (along with other utterly disgusting things). The city police did absolutely nothing to stop the counter-protestors from beating up the protestors. they did arrest any gay activists that tried to speak to the media (foreign and domestic). And, suffice to say, the police arrested anyone who tried to enter the park.
According to the official sources, 40 people were arrested, and 16 of them were anti-gay counter-protestors. Time will tell how much truth there is in that statement.
Should the activists have waited for a permit? The city officials made it pretty clear that there was no way in hell they were going to get one. And, lest we forget, the first few rounds of Gay Pride parades in United States were illegal. The gay rights movement has to start somewhere.
My mom sent me a link to a post by aleshru. The pictures speak for themselves. As for the text, I will translate it for the benefit of the readers who don't understand Russian below. From American liberal perspective, some of the passages are, shall we say, a bit questionable, but by Russian standards, this is astonishingly progressive.
Today, Moscow witnessed yet another free-for-all called gay pride parade. Yet again, many journalists, mostly from foreign outlets, tried to locate the parade leader, Nikolai Alekseyev, who didn't appear before us after all. That is, maybe someone managed to find him, but it wasn't me, and I stood there almost longer than anybody else. When I left, the only people who remained were individuals who expressed very homophobic positions.
Nikolai, if you are by any chance reading this, I want to address you. 82-year-old Lyudmila Alekseyeva wasn't afraid to march [...] and she was taken away by [the police]. You, Nikolai, urge your supporters to march, invite the press, yet for a second year we need to wait for you, chase after you, search for you. [...] You should either march on the front lines or stop jerking us around.
Unlike Mr. Alekseeyev, who didn't appear before the cameras after all, a large number of people assembled at [the protest location]. Except for the people that are incurably stricken with the Orthodoxy of the brain, the Horugvenostsy, grandmas with icons, etc; there were an awful lot of young people who simply came to "keep Moscow from turning into Sodom."
I think that the very existence of those fighters against Sodom is a shame to our country and for all of us in general. Today, I saw with my own eyes how two young girls fearlessly pushed out two guys who chanted "Death to Faggots!" Nobody helped them.
Stop, take a deep breath and think about it. In the middle of the capital, somebody is calling for MURDER of people who want to have sex differently than what they consider normal. And they are calling for murder OPENLY, right in front of the photo and video cameras that are pointing at them. They were surrounded by the police, by members of OMON (Russian equivalent of SWAT). Is this normal? Isn't that against the law? I approached the lieutenant colonel of the police and asked him to "finally" do his job, and you know what he told me? "Don't get in my way. I'm doing my job." The two girls I mentioned earlier got taken away by the police a few minutes later. And four policemen grabbed each girl. FOUR for EACH GIRL. Nobody touched the people who were advocating murder.
Now, lets take another deep breath and try to think about this rationally. What do the people who march onto the [Red Square] with rainbow flags want? I've often heard a very dubious statement: "I am not against gays - I am against the way they promote their lifestyle." I would like to ask heterosexual men like me a question. Imagine a beautiful naked woman of your dreams. Imagine you are making love to her. Does that arouse you? I imagine it does. I'm aroused. Now imagine doing the same thing with a naked man. Well? Does that arouse you? No? Not at all? Maybe it's even kind of repulsive? Congradulations - you are a heterosexual. Hey, heterosexual - if a man doesn't arouse you, than how can you be LURED INTO HOMOSEXUALITY? WHAT KIND OF PROPAGANDA WOULD FORCE YOU to go against your own body? It's impossible. You can't turn a heterosexual gay. It would be unnatural. The same thing goes the other way around. A gay man cannot become heterosexual, it would not be natural for a gay man to make love to a woman, just like it wouldn't be natural for a heterosexual man to make love to a man. Everybody needs to understand it, accept it and leave it alone.
Now imagine if you are walking on the street with a woman you love and you can't hold hands, you can't kiss her or hug her, because the second you do it, you will be at best insulted and at worst hit. Imagine that, all your life, everyone is always telling you that you are not normal, that you are worse than others, that you are not like everybody else. Could you live with that? If you were in that situation, wouldn't you march to the square and defend your rights?
So what do the people who march in the Pride Parades want? They want to defend their rights. Notice that they don't want any special rights. They want to exercise the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. The law is the same for everyone. If you think they are not normal, it doesn't mean that they don't have rights. I'll allow that homophobes have a right to be homophobes, but I demand to have their calls for murder, their despicable attacks and their snide spitting publicly acknowledged . This is where the line between the man and the beast lies. Right here, and not where someone decides who should sleep with who.
First you decide who should sleep with who, than you dress your women in headscarves, than you forbid them to chose their husbands, than you will throw weak children off the cliff. Only animals do that. You want to be one of them? Join the homophobes.