Organizations in three California cities are expected to announce on Tuesday they are cancelling events that were to feature Nikolai Alekseev, a Russian gay leader/activist currently on his first tour in the US, after the has made anti-semitic and other derogatory comments towards Americans, according to reliable sources.
Alekseev was to tour seven US cities from Feb. 26 through March 7. The last three days of his tour were to include stops in West Hollywood, Palm Springs and San Francisco.
Alekseev has led efforts to openly celebrate LGBT Pride in Moscow since 2005. Each year Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has banned it, but Alekseev and a small band of activists have defied officials, often ending up detained or arrested by police and, at times, attacked by counter-protesters spurred on by anti-gay Russian Orthodox clerics and the homophobic hate speech of Luzhkov himself.
“They (Moscow officials) couldn’t imagine that there was someone who would fight this, who would come back and do this again in 2007, 2008, 2009,” Alekseev said at his Feb. 26 stop is Chicago, as reported by Gay Chicago Magazine. “They couldn’t imagine that in just three years after Moscow Pride started that the international reputation of the mayor was ruined.”
The Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board and the City of West Hollywood, Equality California and the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, the sponsors of the California cities, are expected to release a joint statement announcing the cancellation.
Hey there! I’ve been following your weblog for a long time now and finally got the courage
to go ahead and give you a shout out from Kingwood Texas!
Just wanted to mention keep up the fantastic job!