I guess this goes under "my home city is awesome," albeit for a different reason. It's not because of the architecture (which remains pretty damn awesome), but because, on May 17, LGBT activists managed to conduct a flash mob, and nobody got arrested. The same thing, unfortunately, couldn't be said for Moscow, where 17 activists were arrested. Per ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago, there was, shall we say, a bit of an uproar when the Russian government unveiled new drivers license restrictions based on what the document characterized as psychological disorders. While some of them were legitimate disorders that could legitimately affect driving, the list also included "transsexualty," "transvestism" and " ( Read more... )

This bit of news is just plain odd.

Fontanka, a St. Petersburg, Russia online newspaper, reported that on Thursday, at 1:00 PM St Petersburg time, Federal Immigration Service detained two American media professionals - Randy Covington and Joe Bergantino.


( Read more... )

Being non-heterosexual in Russia is, to put it mildly, not easy. Even if surveys suggest that attitudes towards LGBT individuals are changing for the better, the "gay propaganda" law still exists, and holding Pride Parades hasn't gotten any easier since 2011.


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The faculty union of the University of Illinois at Chicago, my alma mater, went on strike back on Tuesday. The Chicago Tribune article does a decent job giving the background on what's at stake. But, to sum it up, professors want their (frankly, pretty low, considering the field) salaries raised. UIC is saying there isn't enough money for the kind ( Read more... )

The article comes to us from Znak (the sign), a Russian online newspaper. Rather than try to summarize it, I'm going to translate the whole thing verbatim, just to give you a better feel of what sort of crap LGBT individuals in the Motherland have to deal with.

It Has Come to This. For the first time in Russia, a child (!) is punished for gay ( Read more... )

A Twitter conversation with mysticowl inspired me to think back on how I arrived at my current, socially liberal philosophy and how much moving to United States had to do with it.

Growing up, I was taught that prejudice was wrong. That whatever differences there may be between various nationalities, human beings are the same on the inside, and they deserve ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )