With the Sochi Winter Olympics just a few weeks away our global LGBT community will focus on Russia & their oppressive antigay laws. According to The Advocate in their February cover story “Love in Putin’s Russia” street violence, intimidation & governmental discrimination are the problems facing our LGBT brothers & sisters. In their story they visit gay & lesbians residing in Russia to find out what it’s like living there today & it reads like America in the 1950’s. To find a gay bar in Moscow is nearly impossible. The gay scene is a network of back-alley stairwells & unmarked doors. Storefronts are disguised as flower shops, trap doors lead to secret passages. There are only about a half-dozen such bars in the city of over 11 million. According to the article people like Sergey, a journalist who has been writing for Moscow newspapers since the days of Soviet censorship states like many gay people, he’s “not in the closet, but also not out,” largely because he could still lose his job for being gay, “From every corner of this country, on every TV station, all you hear is ‘gay.’ Such public attention to this topic has never occurred in Russia,” Sergey tells The Advocate’s Chadwick Moore, “So many people are interested in gay items, even people who didn’t think about this before. The people who started this antigay law have contributed not so much against, but for gay propaganda. It’s a good thing.” A gay person living in Russia concluded, “Russia is really good at enacting laws, but the people just do whatever they want. This country is lawless. There is a disconnect between society & politics. The propaganda law is disgraceful in what it represents, but the practical effect is still yet to be seen.” Updates to Come..:)
Read Full Article: advocate.com
Listen: MEUSA Brian Silva On Gay Marriage In 2014
Hear Audio Interviews w/ LGBT Leaders @OUTTAKE VOICES™
OUTTAKE VOICES™ NOW ON HUFF POST...:)
SUPPORT OUTTAKE™ @ OUR EQUALITY STORE
View Our Historic Short Trailer on Gay Marriage
No comments:
Post a Comment