 A gay Russian pop star has criticised organisers of Moscow Pride for being too insistent on holding the event despite a ban from the city’s mayor and violent opposition from anti-gay groups.
“If society doesn’t accept [gays], they shouldn’t insist,” pop singer Boris Moiseyev told online daily Kommersant, which conducted a poll on the issue.
Moiseyev himself has been targeted for pickets and protests by ultra-religious conservative group Russian Vanguard, which has called for gay sex to be recriminalised.
However, despite his comments on Moscow Pride, Moiseyev said Russia had been right to abolish laws against homosexuality in 1993 because “the civilised society should protect everyone: both homosexuals and lesbians”.
Moscow Pride organiser Nikolai Alexeyev was unimpressed with the singer’s criticism.
“Boris Moiseyev is known as very close to [former President and current Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir] Putin and the Kremlin,” Alexeyev said.
“He received an award from Putin. He is used as ‘an excuse’ by the power.
“His shows are not exactly what we need to show to the Russian society who are the gays and lesbians. Dressed in women’s clothes, he really does not give a positive image of gays and lesbians.
“The shows of Moiseyev are often targeted by anti-gay protesters and religious groups, who come to protest in front of the hall where he performs, so, ‘If society doesn't accept him as a gay singer, he should not insist.’”
Alexeyev, who heads the rights group Gay Russia, led the Pride demonstrations in Moscow last Sunday.
The demonstrators again defied a ban by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has referred to gay pride events as “Satan's work”.
Moscow police said 36 people were arrested at the demonstration, most of them Russian Orthodox and far-right opponents of the rally who had thrown eggs at the gay activists.
Agence France Presse reported one gay man was punched to the ground, while four gay activists were arrested after a stand-off at an apartment block opposite City Hall where they had unfurled a banner.
The demonstration started with about 25 people gathering by a statue of 19th century Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, widely believed to have been homosexual.
“We came to bow before this great composer in this most symbolic place in the capital,” Alexeyev told the demonstrators.
“It is more symbolic than the building where the country's greatest homophobe sits,” he added.
Moiseyev was not alone in his criticism of Moscow Pride. Several prominent Russians interviewed for the Kommersant poll said they believed homosexuality should be recriminalised.
Member of the Russia’s Central Executive Committee Gennady Raikov said if Russian gays were subjected to criminal penalty “no one would promote himself as they would be afraid of being imprisoned”.
Heart surgeon Leo Bokeria agreed, saying that to preserve family, society and state "we should suppress promotion of homosexual relations”.
“Population decrease exceeds population growth and gays make this statistic even more frightful,” Bokeria said.
Although Moscow Theological Academy deacon Andrey Kurayev didn’t endorse recriminalisation of gay sex, he said attempts "to involve others to their affliction" by way of conducting gay-parades should be "if not criminally liable, then penalised by public sanctions”.
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