October 11, 2013
Video: LGBT Activists Arrested in Moscow for 'Gay Propaganda'
Winnie McCroy READ TIME: 1 MIN.
LGBT rights activists were arrested in Moscow on Sunday, Oct. 5, after holding a street propaganda action that compared Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws to Hitler's fascist reign. A video of the incident has surfaced online.
According to the New York Times, police officers arrested the activists after they marched through the Arbat district chanting and holding a banner reading, "Hitler Also Began With the Gays. No to Fascism in Russia."
The activists also chanted against Russia's legal moves to remove children from LGBT parents. A proposed bill would remove children from LGBT homes, and another would bar gay couples or those in gay-friendly countries like Sweden from adopting Russian children, according to the Huffington Post.
Initially, some bystanders spoke against police officers using excessive force. But later, after they discovered that the protest was in support of LGBT rights, bystanders rejected the protesters, calling homosexuality "the decline of morality."
"We warned him," said a police officer to a female bystander, after pushing a male protestor into the back of a police car.
Russian LGBTs have lived in a pervasive climate of fear and violence, subject to brutal public attacks and private torture. The recent legal ban on "propaganda for nontraditional sexual relationships" has only served to ramp up this homophobia and hatred.
Watch the brutal video below:
Winnie McCroy is the Women on the EDGE Editor, HIV/Health Editor, and Assistant Entertainment Editor for EDGE Media Network, handling all women's news, HIV health stories and theater reviews throughout the U.S. She has contributed to other publications, including The Village Voice, Gay City News, Chelsea Now and The Advocate, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
