A high court in Russia has ruled against LGBT activists in Moscow sought to have that city’s legislative ban on anything that could be construed as propaganda promoting homosexuality to minors overturned. For the moment, it appears the next Moscow Pride event won’t be possible until 2112.
Nikolai Alekseyev is a gay RussianLGBT-rights activist, who was arrested along American LGBT-equality activist and San Diegan, Lt. Dan Choi at 2011’s Moscow Pride event. It was an event that was as fleeting in duration as the wait for the next Moscow Pride may be long. As LGBT Weekly previously reported, last year’s festivities were cut short when ultra-orthodox religious protesters and police moved in only minutes after the event was declared open for business.
The Interfax news agency quoted Alekseyev as saying after the Moscow City Court of Appeals decision, “We will appeal against the actions taken by the Russian authorities, which have banned gay pride pirades in Moscow for the next 100 years, in the European Court of Human Rights in the nearest future.”
Although it is not clear whether an invalidation by the European Court of Human Rights of the Moscow Pride ban and its accordant laws would compel a change of heart in Russian Capital; conventional wisdom says that Russians have long sought to shed what many see as that nation’s image of being a bit backwards and clunky in comparison to its European cousins.
In light of that national desire, Alekseyev wants Europeans and the world to know that the issue of bans on expressions of LGBT pride are not a relic of a Cossack or Bolshevik past.
“Thus, we will get the invalidation of the bans not only on past, but also future gay pride parades in the Russian capital.”
