Russian gay rights campaigners have requested the none too princely sum of one kopeck (the smallest monetary amount possible) from the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, after he referred to them as ‘homos’. During an interview for the television show ‘Face To The City’ aired last week, he explained that there were two reasons why he’d always banned gay pride marches in the city:
‘First and foremost, the public morale does not accept such parades, the public morale does not accept those homos. [Secondly] if they gather together, even if we assume that they are allowed to hold the parade, other people will simply kill them. There are radical Christians in Moscow who stand strongly against such demonic manifestations, as they say.’
He also told the Interfax news agency that after attempts were made to hold a gay pride parade during the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow he ‘had to isolate about 19 radical Christians who intended to attack those homos’. His previous remarks on the subject express his belief that homosexuals are ‘weapons of mass destruction’ who carry out ‘satanic acts’. The organizer of the parades, Nikolai Alekseyev, is now seeking a symbolic one kopeck payment for the insult to honour and dignity that the humiliating comments caused.
Will the mayor pay? Did Stalin love Trotsky like a brother. . . .
