Tag: “gay propaganda”

Trans(national) Solidarity

“Yara Tychina, a young transgender woman and Astana resident, picketed on Vodno-Zelyoniy Boulevard next to the House of Ministries and the Parliament. Unfurling a handmade transgender flag, she demanded that the Senate, the Presidential Administration, and the President reject the ‘LGBT propaganda’ amendments. She was taken to the Yesilskoye District Precinct of the Astana Police. Further details are in the video.”

“[In which video Ms. Tychina says] Hello! I am Yara Tychina. I’m an ordinary citizen of Astana. I work in the coffeehouse [?] industry. I’m an openly trans women. I am protesting peacefully today because there are no other means to impact my country’s repressive policies. I don’t simply oppose this law. [It] violates my rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of my friends, my colleagues, the people in my life and, most importantly, my family, over half of whom are members of the LGBT minority community. I have carefully scrutinized this law and I can say truthfully that it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘propaganda,’ since in black and white it says that any mention of LGBT—in a positive vein, in a neutral vein, it doesn’t matter which; in personal profiles, in personal conversations with people, it doesn’t matter where—is considered ‘propaganda.’ The fact that I’m an openly trans woman makes me a criminal, according to the new amendments. These amendments also don’t have anything whatsoever to do with ‘protecting children,’ since hundreds of Kazakhstani LGBT children, who had no way of influencing [who they are], will find themselves outlawed. They will be banned. They will be forbidden from talking about themselves on social media. They will be forbidden from gathering together in public or in private.

“[Ms. Tychina is interrupted by Astana police officers, who claim she is violating the law. She repeatedly states her willingness to go with them to the police station. She then continues.] I heartily and tearfully implore the Presidential Administration, the Senate, and the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and the Constitutional Court, if that doesn’t work, to reject these amendments. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Kazakhstanis, will unavoidably suffer. With these amendments, you will bridge the gap between Kazakhstan and Russia, but you will also drive away all international investments and significantly harm Kazakhstan’s standing in the international arena. But first of all you will harm people. You will harm my family. I implore you to stop it. Thank you!

“[Responding to a reporter, who asks her name, Ms. Tychina says] My name is Yara Tychina. I’m in the coffeehouse [?] industry. I have a small business. I’m an ordinary [female] citizen. [Responding to a question about her flag, she says] It’s a transgender flag, the flag of my identity. It’s homemade. [To the police officers] Let’s go! Thank you! [A police officer explains to the press that Ms. Tychina has not been detained but has voluntarily agreed to go with them to the station.]“

Source: werequest.kz (Instagram), 3 December 2025. Translated, from the Russian, by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Peter Leonard for the heads-up.

Police in Kazakhstan’s capital detained a transgender activist for staging a solitary protest against pending legislation prohibiting so-called “LGBT propaganda.” Yara Tychyna held up a handmade transgender flag near government buildings in downtown Astana and called for the Senate and the presidential administration to reject changes to the law, which are designed to proscribe “propaganda of non-traditional relations,” a formulation broad enough that positive portrayals of same-sex relations could be treated as prohibited content. Lawmakers have been debating the measure since the lower house approved it in November. Officials insist the restrictions are framed as child-protection rules. Critics warn that the draft’s language is vague and that equating LGBT themes with harmful content risks legitimising discrimination.

Source: Peter Leonard, “Central Asia’s week that was #82,” Havli, 3 December 2025

On Wednesday, November 12, the [lower house of the] Parliament of Kazakhstan (Mäjilis) unanimously passed a law banning “LGBT propaganda” in the media and on the internet. Violators face fines, and in the case of repeat violations, up to ten days in jail.

“Endeavoring to protect children from information detrimental to their health and development, provisions have been made to restrict the dissemination of information promoting pedophilia and non-traditional sexual orientation in public spaces, as well as via the media, telecommunications networks, and online platforms,” the document states.

The changes will affect nine laws. Violations of the ban will be punishable by a fine of up to forty minimum calculation indices (in 2025, this amounted to 157,000 tenge, or approximately 260 euros, or 24,500 rubles), or up to ten days in jail.

Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Culture Yevgeny Kochetov explained that materials containing “propaganda of non-traditional relationships” would have to be labeled “18+.” Content that violates the law would be blocked.

Kochetov added that the strictures currently apply primarily to those who distribute materials. If minors attend a screening of a film rated 18+, the cinema’s managers, not the parents, would face a fine, he explained.

“If, for example, [men] are holding hands in the park, this is not considered propaganda. These are their personal boundaries, and there are no questions here,” said one of the sponsors of the bill, MP Yelnur Beisenbayev.

The Mäjilis initially sought to ban “LGBT propaganda,” in April 2024, by amending the law “On Mass Media.” They later proposed criminalizing “LGBT propaganda” and equating it with incitement to ethnic, social, or religious hatred.

When MPs began discussing banning “LGBT propaganda,” a petition entitled “We oppose open and covert LGBT propaganda in the R[epublic of] K[azakhstan]” was posted on the website E-Petition.kz. It was the third petition in the country to gather the fifty thousand signatures required for consideration by the government.

The Ministry of Culture and Information decided to partly accede to the petitioners’ demands—when it came to strictures aimed at “protecting and shielding adolescents and children from the promotion and cultivation of sexual relations.”

Consequently, the ban was presented as an amendment to the draft law on archiving.

Traditional values

In recent months, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has repeatedly spoken about the need to protect “traditional values.” The day before the Mäjilis passed the bill, and ahead of his visit to Moscow, Tokayev published an article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta in which he spoke about the friendship between the two countries.

“We are united by a common take on traditional values, similar views on the pressing issues of contemporary life, and cooperation in ensuring the welfare of [our two] brotherly peoples,” Tokayev wrote.

In Russia, the law banning “LGBT propaganda” among minors was first introduced in St. Petersburg in 2011, and then at the federal level in 2013. In 2023, the Russian authorities went so far as to declare the “international LGBT movement” extremist.

As of July 2025, Human Rights Watch had catalogued more than one hundred criminal indictments and convictions [in Russia] for involvement in the “international LGBT movement” or for displaying symbols which the authorities attribute to this movement.

Following Russia’s lead, “LGBT propaganda” was banned in Hungary in 2021, and in Georgia in 2024.

LGBTQ+ in Kazakhstan

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Kazakhstan de facto in 1997 and de jure in 1998. Since 2003, transgender people have been able to change their gender marker in official documents.

In 2021, the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law ranked Kazakhstan 154th out of 175 countries in terms of public acceptance of LGBTQ+, below Uzbekistan, Russia, and Afghanistan.

The online platform Equaldex, which researches the rights of sexual minorities around the world, writes that “[a]ccording to recent survey data, there appears to be strong opposition to LGBTQ+ rights in Kazakhstan.”

Many human rights organizations have already criticized Kazakhstan’s ban on “LGBT propaganda.”

Human Rights Watch urged lawmakers to reject the bill. The NGO argues that the proposed amendments violate fundamental human rights and could make LGBTQ+ people in Kazakhstan more vulnerable.

Organizations including ILGA-Europe (the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), and TGEU (Trans Europe and Central Asia) have also issued a joint statement against the bill.

The Kazakhstani organization Queer.kz commented on the Mäjilis’s passing the amendments banning “LGBT propaganda” as follows: “We continue to write letters! Our organization will continue to work together with our colleagues to defend human rights and freedom!”

Source: “Kazakhstan parliament votes to ban ‘LGBT propaganda,'” BBC Russian Service, 12 November 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Peter Leonard for the heads-up.

Over the past four years of America’s modern anti-transgender panic, Missouri has been one of its chief laboratories. Each legislative session brings a flood of new proposals targeting transgender people—with each year opening with often more than a dozen bills—and 2026 is already shaping up to continue that pattern. In the first batch of early bills, lawmakers introduced 21 anti-LGBTQ+ measures, many escalating the state’s enforcement tactics beyond even last year’s cruelties. One stands out in particular: a bill that would ban “social transition” in schools—blocking teachers from using a student’s chosen name or pronouns, even with parental consent.

The bill, SB1085, filed by Senator Joe Nicola, states in its summary that it would prohibit “public school staff members from encouraging minor students in their ‘social transition,’” which the measure defines as engaging in any activity “with the goal of helping a student become perceived as a member of the opposite biological sex.” The text defines social transition broadly—“participating” in a student’s gender transition based on “details such as his or her name, appearance, or behavior”—and bars schools from taking part in any conduct that could contribute to a student “not being perceived and treated as a member of the student’s biological sex.”

The bill explicitly forbids all school staff and faculty from “the use of alternative pronouns or names for the minor student, either in school records or otherwise.” Notably, it contains no provision for parental consent—meaning the restrictions apply not only to unsupportive parents but also to parents who affirm their transgender children. The measure appears to single out trans students exclusively: nothing in its text bars name changes for any other reason unrelated to gender transition.

You can see the provisions here:

Provisions in SB1085

The bill marks the latest front in anti-transgender legislation: an effort not just to ban medical transition for trans youth, but to prohibit any form of transition at all, including social transition. Earlier this year, reporting out of Texas showed how a similar law led teachers to suddenly deadname students who had used their affirmed names for years without issue. Variations of this language have surfaced in several states, but Missouri’s proposal is among the most explicit and far-reaching attempts yet to regulate social transition in schools.

The ban on social transition—even with parental permission—underscores a shift in how anti-trans legislation is being sold to the public. For years, supporters of bathroom bans, sports bans, and “don’t say gay” policies framed their efforts as battles for “parental rights.” Increasingly, though, that language has fallen away as lawmakers move to strip supportive parents of any authority at all, mirroring the approach in medical transition bans that override parental consent entirely. Under Missouri’s proposal, parents would have no right to approve their child’s affirmed name or pronouns, and any teacher who honors a family’s wishes could face the loss of their license.

The social-transition ban is just one front in a broader offensive. Missouri lawmakers have already filed bills to outlaw public drag by defining it as prurient “male or female impersonation,” to strip Pride flags from public schools, and to roll back nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in housing, employment, and public accommodations. And more proposals are almost certain to follow. When the legislature gavels in on January 8, the real question for observers won’t be whether these bills appear—they already have—but which ones Republican leadership chooses to fast-track. That early movement will signal just how aggressive Missouri intends to be in advancing its anti-LGBTQ agenda this session.

Source: Erin Reed, “New Missouri Bill Would Ban “Social Transition” In Schools, Even With Parental Permission,” Erin in the Morning, 3 December 2025

On April 27, 2023, Kansas became the first state in the country to institute a statewide definition of sex. “A ‘female’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” the law declared, “and a ‘male’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.” Since then dozens of state legislatures have introduced similar bills; sixteen have passed. In Indiana and Nebraska governors have issued executive orders to the same end. Each of these measures effectively strips transgender people of legal recognition.

The language of these policies usually distinguishes men from women by their reproductive capacity, which is assumed to be determined at birth or even at conception. Each statute mandates that its definitions of “sex,” “female,” and “male” be used whenever those words appear in any part of the state code. Some purport to be establishing a “women’s bill of rights,” as the titles of Kansas’s and Oklahoma’s bills suggest; Louisiana’s is titled “The Women’s Safety and Protection Act.” (On the other hand, the name of North Dakota’s bill—into which legislators slipped another term they wanted to define—captures the arbitrariness involved: “The Definition of Female, Male, Sex, and Scrap Metal Dealer.”)

This legislation is part of a broader onslaught. In the past few years Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced thousands of bills targeting trans people, with measures to ban puberty blockers and hormones for trans youth, bar trans girls and women from sports, mandate that bathroom access be based on birth sex, outlaw drag performances, and more. So far more than two hundred of these laws have passed, with grave, often life-changing consequences for the trans residents of red states across the country.

Continue reading “Trans(national) Solidarity” →

Love in a Young Pioneer’s Tie

The cover of “A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie,” as designed by Adams Carvalho

Katerina Silvanova was born and raised in Kharkiv, but moved to Russia at the age of twenty-two. She majored in forestry engineering, but never finished her studies. She has worked in sales all her life. Elena Malisova is a Muscovite and married, and works in IT. The girls [sic] had never been associated with literature, but both have had a passion for writing since childhood. One day, chatting on the internet after a hard day’s work, the friends agreed that they had to do something together. So, the idea of the novel A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie was born.

Musician Yuri Konev arrives at the abandoned Swallow Young Pioneer Camp in the Kharkiv region to encounter the ghosts of his past. Something happened there that turned his life upside down, changing it forever. There he met the camp counselor Volodya, who became more than a friend to the teenager.

Walking through streets of the camp, overgrown with grass, Yura recalls how rapidly and stormily his relationship with Volodya developed, how they had been afraid of what was happening between them. And yet, they had gravitated to each other. The trip to the camp is a new revelation for Yura. He was sure he had buried the past there, that its rebellious echo would never again disturb him . And yet, Konev will have to come face to face again with what already turned his life around once. Apparently, not all the ghosts of the past are willing to hide in memory’s back alleys forever.

Why should you read A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie?

  1. It’s a new extraordinary look at the late Soviet period of history.
  2. It’s a novel about sincere first feelings, cloaked in mystery and shame, condemnation and doubts.
  3. It’s an absolute bestseller, one of the year’s most anticipated and controversial books.

Book Description
Yura returns to the Young Pioneer camp of his youth after twenty years. In the ruins of the past, he hopes to find a path back to the present, to the person he once loved. This story is about the fact that not everything in the USSR was smooth, straight-laced, and impersonal, that there were experiences, passions, drives, and feelings that did not fit into the moral framework leading to the “bright future,” and that this future was not so bright.

Source: LitRes. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

Leto v pionerskom galstuke (LVPG) [A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie] is a novel co-written by Elena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova. The book deals with the relationship between two young men, the Young Pioneer [sic] Yura and Volodya, who meet at Young Pioneer camp in the summer of 1986.

[…]

Twenty years later, the musician Yuri Konev returns to the place where the Swallow Young Pioneer Camp was once located, recalling the summer of 1986, which spent there, and his love for the MGIMO student and camp counselor Vladimir Davydov. Yura and Volodya were jointly involved in staging a play, and a strong friendship arose between them, which gradually developed into teenage love. Throughout the book, Volodya refuses to accept his homosexual orientation, periodically insisting on ending the relationship and explaining that he is trying to “steer Yura off the right path” and that he is homophobic himself. At the end of the their stay at the camp, the young men bury a kind of time capsule under a willow tree, agreeing to dig it up in ten years. After parting, Yura and Volodya continue to communicate by correspondence for some time, but after a while they lose touch with each other. In 2006, after finding the time capsule, Yura learns in a letter that Volodya sends him that he had failed to “overcome” his orientation and still loves Yura.

The novel, which was originally posted on the website Ficbook.net, was published by Popcorn Books in 2021. By the end of May 2022, the book had sold more than 200,000 copies, not counting electronic sales. The novel took second place in the list of the most popular books among Russians in the first half of 2022, compiled by the Russian Book Union, and sales of the book amounted to about 50 million rubles. August 2022 saw the release of a sequel, What the Swallow Won’t Say, which takes place twenty years after the events described in A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie.

[…]

Critic Galina Yuzefovich gave a generally positive review of the novel, noting that “life in the Soviet Union differed little from life today, and emotions, relationships, and the desire to love and be loved do not depend on ideology.” Book blogger Anthony Yulai (Anton Ulyanov) rated the novel positively on the whole, noting that the authors keep the reader “in a state of emotional shock due to the alternation of sweet moments with sad ones and an abrupt change in the tone of the narrative towards the novel’s end.”

Zakhar Prilepin harshly condemned the book and its publishers on his Telegram channel: “Popcorn Books (which inevitably suggests “porn books”) is are celebrating their triumph and counting their profits. They will regard this post as good fortune, too. That’s what they were counting on. I won’t hide it: I’d burn down your whole office while you’re sleeping at home!” A video featuring a negative review of the book was released by Nikita Mikhalkov. He read aloud an excerpt from the novel and deems its publication a “violation of the Constitution.” He also noted that the abbreviation “LVPG,” as the novel is known among fans, is very similar to “LGBT.”

N.A. Ostanina, chair of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, sent a request to Roskomnadzor to examine the contents of the book to determine whether a criminal case could be launched against it in the future. A similar request was sent by the news agency RIA Ivan-Chai, but received a negative response.

Source: Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

A map of the Zina Portnova Memorial Swallow Young Pioneer Camp in 1986, as featured in the novel’s front matter.

“Aren’t you exaggerating?”

Seeing Volodya’s slightly condescending smile, Yurka was embarrassed. He probably thought that Yurka remembered their dance too well and was still jealous, so he was ready to accuse Masha of anything. And if Volodya really thought so, then he was right. Yurka’s ardent desire to jump out of the bushes and catch the spy red-handed was caused precisely by jealousy. But Yurka also had arguments in defense of his theory.

“It’s not the first time she’s been out at night. Do you remember when Ira came to the theater and attacked me, asking me what I’d been doing with Masha and where I’d been walking? And it’s true, no matter where we are, she’s always there. Volodya, we have to tell them about her walks!”

“Deal with Irina first.”

Yurka did go find her almost immediately. All the same, his mood was spoiled, and Volodya was paranoid again, and he constantly froze, listening and looking around and not even letting him touch his hand. And the evening was already coming to an end.

After hastily saying goodbye to Volodya, Yurka returned to his unit and found the counselor. He expected her to frown and scream at him as soon as he walked in. He was already ready to babble excuses, but Ira stared at him in surprise.

“Actually, no, I wasn’t looking for you,” she said. Yurka had already put his hands up to stop his jaw from dropping, when Ira yelled.

“Where have you been, by the way?”

“With Volodya.”

“Did you even notice what time it is?! Yura, who are they playing lights out for?! If you’re going to be late, you have to warn me!”

Yurka fell asleep, struggling with mixed feelings full of anxiety. Volodya was constantly surrounded by girls, but it seemed to Yurka that Masha popped up too often. It must be jealousy after all. And to top it all off, he apparently had been infected with Volodya’s paranoia.

Source: Elena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova, A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie (Popcorn Books, 2021), p. 155, as chosen by the True Random Number Generator. Translated by the Russian Reader

In an industrial block in northeastern Moscow on a recent Friday night, organizers of an L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly art festival were assiduously checking IDs. No one under 18 allowed. They were trying to comply with a 2013 Russian law that bans exposing minors to anything that could be considered “gay propaganda.”

The organizers had good reason to be wary: Life has been challenging for gay Russians since the law passed, as the government has treated gay life as a Western import that is harmful to traditional Russian values and society.

Now Russia’s Parliament is set to pass a legislative package that would ban all “gay propaganda,” signaling an even more difficult period ahead for a stigmatized segment of society.

The laws would prohibit representation of L.G.B.T.Q. relationships in any media — streaming services, social platforms, books, music, posters, billboards and films — and, activists fear, in any public space as well. That’s a daunting prospect for queer people searching for community, validation or an audience.

“I’m afraid for my future, because with these kinds of developments, it won’t be as bright as I would like it to be,” said a drag artist who uses the stage name Taylor. Taylor’s performance on Friday before a small but enthusiastic crowd tackled themes of domestic violence, mental health and AIDS.

The proposed laws are part of an intensifying effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to cast Russia as fighting a civilizational struggle against the West, which he accuses of trying to export corrosive values.

The Kremlin is coupling the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. expression with its rationale for the war in Ukraine, insisting that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine but all of NATO, a Western alliance that represents a threat to the motherland.

[…]

Source: Valerie Hopkins and Valeriya Safronova, “‘I’m Afraid for My Future’: Proposed Laws Threaten Gay Life in Russia,” New York Times, 4 November 2022

This Blog Is Gay

Felix Glyukman, as seen in a screen shot of his “controversial” YouTube video, courtesy of Sota

YouTube demands that an LGBT blogger living in the United States remove a video that violates Russian law
OVD Info
January 4, 2022

YouTube has demanded that the blogger Felix Glyukman, who lives in the US, delete his [Russian-language] video “How I Realized I’m Gay.” The news was reported by Sota, who quoted Glyukman’s Facebook post on the matter.

The video hosting service referred to a letter it had received from Roskomnadzor. The notice states that the video, which the blogger posted in 2019, violates the Russian law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” and contains information prohibited for distribution. YouTube informed Glyukman that it would block the video if he failed to delete it.

“I actually found the video in Roskomnadzor’s registry. By the way, in it I talk about how I became aware of my sexual orientation in adolescence and how my preferences manifested themselves even in childhood. I also recommended the book This Book is Gay. Apparently that’s why the hardworking asses of Roskomnadzor’s staffers caught on fire: because it was about me as a minor,” commented Glyukman.

The blogger adds that he has not lived in Russia since 2017, and shot the video in Miami.

Translated by Thomas H. Campbell

Yuma, Mila, Barcelona (The VkusVill Refugees)

Yuma’s Instagram “postcard” from Barcelona: “We are safe, we are resting. We cannot hide our happiness at being a family. Many THANKS to those who supported us, to those who dared to make themselves visible and express their support to us, and to those who supported us in person! Thanks to you, we have not given up! It was a difficult ordeal for all of us, we are all in rough psychological shape. But the sea, the sun and kindness are healing [us]) And we are still with you) and are ready to communicate. We are ready to tell you how it happened, what happened, and why) #wearenotamistake #vkusvill #familyequality

“We were left without work and without a home”: The young women from the deleted VkusVill ad have left Russia

ACCORDING TO ROSKOMNADZOR, UTOPIA IS A PROJECT OF THE NASILIU.NET [“NO TO VIOLENCE”] CENTER WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE JUSTICE MINISTRY, PERFORMS THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT

Why is this not the case?

Women featured in an ad for the VkusVill supermarket chain, which was removed due to homophobic threats, have left Russia for Spain. Yuma, the head of the family, has written about this on Instagram.

“We are safe, we are resting. We cannot hide our happiness at being a family. […] It was a difficult ordeal for all of us, we are all in rough psychological shape. But the sea, the sun and kindness are healing [us],” she wrote.

Yuma’s daughter Mila has asked [her Instagram] followers for help in finding a job. She writes that she can only work remotely, and receive a salary in euros. “Unfortunately, due to this difficult situation with VkusVill, we were left without work and without a home. […] Now my family and I really need to get settled in Barcelona, we are having a difficult time and we need friends, and maybe your friends’ friends or their friends will help us start a new life in Barcelona,” the post says.

Mila’s Instagram appeal for help finding a job

In late June, the supermarket chain VkusVill published photos of families who are their customers and their favorite products on its website and social networks. Among the photos was a family consisting of a mother, two daughters, and the wife of one of them. After the photos were published on Instagram, users divided into two camps: some called for a boycott of the store and threatened the company and the women with violence, while others supported the campaign.

Four days later, VkusVill deleted the photos, and an apology appeared in their place: “This page contained an article that has hurt the feelings of a large number of our customers, employees, partners and suppliers. We regret that this happened, and we consider this publication our mistake, which manifested the unprofessionalism of individual employees.” The apology was signed by Andrey Krivenko, the chain’s founder, and eleven top managers.

VkusVill’s Instagram apology, along with their image of a “proper” Russian family

The removal of the ad caused an even more violent reaction — users most often called it a “disgrace” and “support for homophobia.” Utopia published different opinions on the incident.

Source: Utopia, 3 August 2021. Thanks to Maria Mila for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Recipes for Domestic Bliss

VkusVill removes ad featuring queer family, apologizing to customers and suppliers for “hurt feelings”
Takie Dela
July 4, 2021

The retail chain VkusVill has apologized for an advertisement featuring a queer family. The company’s press release notes that the deleted piece “hurt the feelings of a large number of our customers, employees, partners and suppliers.” In the release, which was signed by company’s founder and its regional managers, the advertisement was dubbed a “mistake that manifested the unprofessionalism of individual employees.”

On June 30, VkusVill published on its website the story of a family consisting of a mother and two daughters [sic], one of whom is engaged to a young woman [sic]. In addition, the “Consumer School” section contained stories from other customers of the store: a woman who lives with a dog, a couple without children, a large family, and a single mother. They talked about themselves and their favorite VkusVill products.

After the advertisement was published, VkusVill and the queer heroines of the article began to receive threats.

Roman Polyakov, the manager of the store’s content factory, told Takie Dela that the store’s employees regularly touch on hot-button topics, including the problems of refugees, people with autism, and people with Down syndrome, and the topic of garbage recycling. He told Takie Dela that VkusVill valued examining issues from different sides.

He added that “it would be untrue” to say that there are no such families among VkusVill’s clients, so he had decided to include [the queer family] in the feature.

According to Polyakov, employees of the content factory consulted with lawyers on how to correctly submit information about LGBT people from the legal point of view, and also discussed with smm specialists and hotline employees how to react to customer dissatisfaction.

Translated by the Russian Reader

_________

A screenshot of the page containing VkusVill’s abject apology to violent Russian homophobes for their queer-positive ad. The page is entitled “Recipes for Domestic Bliss.”

This page contained an article that has hurt the feelings of a large number of our customers, employees, partners and suppliers.

We regret that this happened, and we consider this publication our mistake, which manifested the unprofessionalism of individual employees.

Our company’s goal is to enable our customers to receive fresh and delicious products every day, not to publish articles that reflect political or social views. In no way did we want to become a source of discord and hatred.

We sincerely apologize to all our customers, employees, partners and suppliers.

Respectfully,

Andrey Krivenko, Founder
Valera Razgulyaev, Information Manager
Alyona Nesiforova, Unified Concept Manager
Yevgeny Kurvyakov, Development Manager
Yevgeny Rimsky, Quality and Procurement Manager
Tatyana Berestova, Regional Manager
Lyubov Frolova, Regional Manager
Renata Yurash, Regional Manager
Svetlana Lopatina, Regional Manager
Larisa Romanovskaya, E-Commerce Manager
Kirill Shcherbakov, Micromarket Department Director
Maxim Fedorov, Order Manager

Source: VkusVill website. Translated by the Russian Reader. 

_________

VkusVill’s ad spotlights a “matriarch,” her partner and two daughters who practice ethical veganism, support fair trade and provide shelter to LGBT people in need. Image: VkusVill Natural Products/Facebook/Moscow Times

Russian Food Retailer Defies ‘Gay Propaganda’ Law With LGBT Family-Featuring Ad
Moscow Times
July 2, 2021

Russian organic food retailer VkusVill has featured an LGBT family in its new promotional material this week, defying the country’s law against “gay propaganda toward minors.”

As part of a series of health-conscious families, VkusVill spotlights a “matriarch” Yuma, her partner Zhenya and two daughters Mila and Alina, who practice ethical veganism, support fair trade and provide shelter to LGBT people struggling to find acceptance in their own families.

“We believe not featuring the families of our real customers would be hypocritical,” VkusVill said, warning readers to “weigh all the pros and cons” before continuing further.

The popular retail chain marked its June 30 promotional piece with an “18+” label to comply with the anti-LGBT propaganda law.

“Family is blood ties or a stamp in a passport. Let’s rethink this. In the 21st century, it’s primarily people who love us, those who will always shield us, people with whom we go through life together,” the promotion says.

Law enforcement authorities, who usually file misdemeanor charges against violators — the most recent of which were the authors of a Dolce & Gabbana Instagram ad showing kissing same-sex couples — have not yet commented on VkusVill’s publication.

Notorious anti-gay St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov took to social media to condemn the “pagan” ad.

Other social media users — which the MBKh Media news website reported swarmed VkusVill’s social media after a notorious anti-LGBT hate group reposted the article — posted threats against the chain.

Western countries and human rights activists have criticized Russia’s 2013 “gay propaganda” law as well as 2020 constitutional changes that contain a clause defining marriage as between a man and a woman only.

_________

yumalevel
Perhaps the most important thing to our family is care and acceptance. And we also fiercely protect each other and all support each other as much as possible. And we also try to help others. And today @vkusvill_ru posted a piece featuring us, and I’m amazed at how much support I saw there!!! “Others” are not so different at all))) it turns out that we are all our kind!!!

I love you! Kind, caring, accepting, gutsy, brave, making the world a world)
💞 💞 💞 💞 💞 💞 💞

Source: Instagram/Moscow Times. Translated by the Russian Reader

The Russian National Guard Has Canceled Your Yulia Tsvetkova Solidarity Film Screening

Flacon Design Factory in Moscow. Photo courtesy of Popcornnews.ru

Russian National Guardsmen Disrupt Screening of Film in Support of Yulia Tsvetkova at Flacon Design Factory in Moscow
MBKh Media
September 15, 2020

Russian National Guardsmen have come to the Flacon Design Factory in Moscow and stopped a screening of the [2014 documentary] film Vulva 3.0, an event planned in support of the activist Yulia Tsvetkova. The screening’s curator, Andrei Parshikov, reported the incident to MBKh Media.

According to Parshikov, Petrovka 38 [Moscow police headquarters] had received an anonymous call that so-called propaganda of homosexualism [sic] would take place during the event.

“First, Petrovka 38 got an anonymous call, and then the local police precinct was informed about the call. The precinct commander came to Flacon and said that things looked bad. We told him about the movie. He said that while he understood everything, he couldn’t help us because since Petrovka 38 had received the call, a detachment would be dispatched in any case and they would shut down the screening. The only solution, he said, was to give the local police a screening copy of the film so they could that could look at it and make sure it checked out, but he still could not promise anything. We said, Okay, we’ll give you a screening copy, and we’ll postpone the screening,” Parshikov said.

Subsequently, around twenty Russian National Guardsmen arrived at Flacon. They are patrolling the premises and making it impossible to screen the film.

UPDATE (8:24 p.m.)

The screening of the film has been canceled for today, curator Andrey Parshikov has informed MBKh Media. According to him, the Russian National Guardsmen are still at Flacon. Parshikov added that the film would be sent for a forensic examination tomorrow.

Yulia Tsvetkova is an activist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. In November 2019, she was charged with “distributing pornography”(under Article 242.3.b of the Russian Criminal Code) over body-positive drawings she published on Vagina Monologues, a social media group page that she moderated. Due to pressure and harassment, she had to close the Merak Children’s Theater [which she ran with her mother].

Law enforcement authorities began their criminal inquiry into Tsvetkova after two criminal complaints were filed against her by Timur Bulatov, who runs the homophobic social media group page Moral Jihad, which mostly publishes threats, insults, and Bulatov’s own derogatory monologues about gays.  [Bulatov] informed the police that Tsvetkova was distributing pornography.

Tsvetkova was subsequently also charged with several administrative offenses for “promoting non-traditional sexual relations” on her personal page on VK and the group pages Komsomolka: Intersectional Feminism and The Last Supper: LGBTQIAPP+on-Amur | 18+.  Tsvetkova was convicted on these charges and fined.

Thanks to Maria Mila for the link. Translated by the Russian Reader

“He Fell on the Knife”: Moscow Jury Acquits Man Who Confessed to Involuntary Manslaughter of Gay

Moscow Jury Acquits Man Who Confessed to Involuntary Manslaughter of Gay Man
Takie Dela
February 7, 2020

A jury at Moscow’s Basmanny District Court acquitted a man accused of murdering homosexual Roman Yedalov, reports the LGBT group Stimul, whose lawyers represented the interests of the victim’s friend and mother in court. The website xgay.ru reports that the assailant’s name is Anton Berezhnoy.

The defendant admitted his guilt in part. He claimed, however, that he had not caused the death deliberately but accidentally: the victim had allegedly “[fallen] on the knife.” On February 6, when asked the question of whether Berezhnoy had caused Yedalov’s death or not, the jury said he had not, thus obviating the following question as to his guilt.

A final verdict will be handed down by the presiding judge in a few days but, according to law, the verdict cannot be a guilty one for the defendant. Stimul’s lawyers have already said they would appeal the court’s decision.

“The evidence and testimony presented in the trial convinced me that the altercation was provoked by the defendant,” said Anton Lapov, a lawyer for the injured party. “I’m convinced that it was this bloody outcome that the defendant envisaged. One person had their life taken, while another person was robbed of their health.”

The murder occurred in the early hours of June 29, 2019, at Kursk Railway Station in Moscow. Berezhnoy assaulted gay couple Roman Yedalov and Yevgeny Yefimov, who were returning to their home in the Moscow Region, and struck them with a knife.

The murder was captured on CCTV. Courtesy of Takie Dela

Yefimov’s wounds were not life-threatening and he survived, but Yedalov died on the spot. According to Yefimov, Berezhnoy shouted insults relating to their sexual orientation during the attack. Yefimov suspects that Berezhnoy followed them from a night club.

The Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal investigation into the murder. Yefimov and the dead man’s mother were named as the injured party, while Berezhnoy was remanded in custody. During the trial, the prosecutor argued that the available evidence proved the defendant’s guilt. Yedalov’s mother told the court that she was proud of her son for defending his friend by stepping between him and the assailant.

In November 2019, Maxim Pankratov, the star of a video on the YouTube channel Real Talk in which children asked him questions about homosexuality, reported that he had been threatened. People on the street recognized him and shouted “Faggot! Pervert” as he walked past. Another group of strangers attempted to attack him at night, but he managed to escape. Pankratov underscored the fact that he had not talked with the children about sex and had not committed violent acts against them.

After the video starring Pankratov was posted, the Moscow police charged the channel’s creators with “promoting homosexualism [sic] among minors,” while the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into sexual violence against minors. Investigators claimed that the conversations with children were designed to arouse them sexually and induce them to have sexual relations. The video was deleted after the scandal erupted.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Yulia Tsvetkova: Blues and Pinks

“He Threatened to Kill Us for Perverting Children”
A Feminist Staged a Children’s Play. She Has Been Accused of Extremism and Interrogated by Police
Larisa Zhukova
Lenta.ru
March 15, 2019

The police department in Komsomolsk-on-Amur has been investigating the work of feminist Yulia Tsvetkova, producer of the activist comedy theater Merak. The ostensible cause of the investigation is her production of a children’s play about gender stereotypes, Blues and Pinks, which the people who denounced Tsvetkova to the police regarded as promotion of homosexual relations among minors. The suspicions of the authorities have also been piqued by the anti-militarist dance productions Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and Prague Spring, and the VK community page Komsomolka. Lenta.ru recorded Tsvetkova’s account of why regional activists have grown accustomed to threats of real violence and how the local extremism prevention center (Center “E”) inspects children’s dances and drawings.

“Are You Against the Soviet Union?”
Everyone who has known us for a long time agrees that something completely insane has been happening. We have pupils who have been working with us for almost sixteen years, starting with my mom’s early development workshop.

Our theater is me, the actors, and my mom, our manager. We are a tiny theater company in a really small city and the only young people’s theater of its kind. We are not a classic theater company, but a horizontal (egalitarian) and activist theater. We highlight societal problems and look for ways of solving them. We established the theater a year ago. We decided to call it Merak, with the stress on the first syllable. In Serbian, mérak means a buzz, a high, life’s little pleasures.

The actors are twenty-one children aged six and up. They write poems, contribute to the scripts, build scenery, and choreograph the dance numbers. As director, I supply the overall outline, but then I leave the creativity to them. How do you feel in this scene? I ask them. What should it be like? How should the dialogue sound? What words would  you use to say that? How would you dance it? Some find it odd I deal with children as equals, but I believe it has to be this way. We use improvisation, forum theater, gags, and free dance.

Everything was fine until February, until we decided to stage four danced-based plays, which we had been rehearsing for six months. Two plays are staged one day, while the other two plays are staged the next day. We came up with the idea of calling them a festival by way of combining them. It would have been the first activist art festival in the region. A week before the first performance we got a phone call from city hall. The next day, the Youth Center, a venue we had already confirmed, told us they were booked up on the dates we needed, and there were no openings for the next six months.

The telephone conversation with city hall lasted over an our. City officials went over our poster point by point. Why was our play called Blues and Pinks? We wrote, “We can do it again”: were we against the Soviet Union or something? We were asked what we meant by the word “individual.” Obviously, there was something about what we were doing they didn’t like. We also suddenly got the cold shoulder at other venues.

pic_08ab34d1a9a5f76eb7ff4c96411bec73Detail of a poster for The Color of Saffron Festival of Activist Art. The inscription reads “We can do it again. We can ban it!” 

After the news that the festival had been shut down was published, city hall called us and said we had misunderstood them. Actually, they supported our undertaking. They invited us to a meeting at which they made it understood that if we denied the news reports, they would help us find a venue. Since I don’t like having my arm twisted, and I didn’t think I had done anything wrong by talking about the connection between their first phone call and the sudden refusals to give us a venue, I was not about to refute any of the reports. That was when they interrogated the kids.

“The Kids Are Feared like Terrible Dissidents”
To be honest, I thought we would be called on the carpet for our anti-militarist production Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. It is a translation of a song by Serj Tankian, lead singer of System of a Down. He often voices his opposition to war and the arms industry. The big dance number in the play is set to his song. It’s an urgent problem for us, because all the boys who attend our workshop, which has been functioning for over twenty years, try to smuggle in toy pistols at first. But we have a ban on weapons, even toy weapons. Why? We are trying to make sense of things. During the big dance number, one dancer acquires a “pistol.” Then another gets one, too, as a means of defense. A third dance gets hold of a machine gun, and the atmosphere heats up. It is satirical and exaggerated, of course, but it is a quite dramatic play as well.

pic_dc844038f81c1c5c70e0d764a49c0a98

Merak Theater’s poster for its four-play, two-day festival, The Color of Saffron. Originally scheduled for March 16 and 17, it was to have featured (in descending order) Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, Spring [sic], Untouchables, and Blues and Pinks. 

But when we came up with the play, the shooting at the college in Kerch occurred. The kids were scared: the shooting affected them greatly. We talked a lot about what they thought about the incident and how it could have been avoided. No one at school discussed the incident with the children at all, although it should be said adults generally avoid discussing really important things with teenagers. The kids came up with the play’s finale on their own: it showed how the situation could have been avoided.

Prague Spring is a production based on Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. We pay homage to Vaslav Nijinsky’s original choreography and Maurice Béjart’s 1955 choreography, using music by John Cage. Coincidentally, I got the idea during the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops: the two “springs” came together in my mind around the subject of human rights and resisting oppression. It’s a simple, obvious subject, but when you grow up in a small city like Komsomolsk, it can seem quite remote and forbidden. But this is just what I read into it, inner thoughts not meant for viewers. The kids simply dance spring. That’s it. Six-year-olds hop up and down and run around in circles, making up half of it as they go along.

Our fifteen-minute play Untouchables focuses on bullying at school and kindergarten. A lot of what the kids told us themselves about their own experiences went into the play. The more we talk things through, the easier it is for them to deal with them.

pic_eda40eabbbb3ba6a6ff95708693a0148Photo from the Merak Activist Comedy Theater’s page on VK 

Blues and Pinks is a play that illustrates stereotypes about girls and boys. According to the script, we run through the list of clichés: girls like pink, boys like blue; boys are messy, girls clean up after them; boy are defenders and warriors and shouldn’t cry, while girls are future mothers who dream only of getting married; girls and boys can never understand each other. This is presented on stage as a lighthearted dance. We try and show the notion that if a boy pulls your pigtail, it means he likes you is a step away from the idea that if a man beats a woman he must love her.

We continue by suggesting a solution. One of the boys dances, releasing his pent-up feelings as it were. The other boys follow his example, realizing that, whether they dance or not, it does not make any more or less guys. The girls share their dreams. One of them wants to be a businesswoman, while another wants to be a director. They recite the names of great women: the first woman to climb Everest, the first woman to win an Oscar, and so on.

Sophisticated audiences in the western half of Russia would probably find it quite naive, but in our city it is timely and relevant. For example, the other day, a local radio presenter, Tatyana Zhemerenetskaya, announced she planned to run for mayor. She was fired: her bosses were outraged by her excessively “unfeminine ambitions.” Women are supposed to stay home and make soup. In the final scene of our play, the kids say they are individuals. They have dreams and passions.

The funny thing is I didn’t even think about the connotation of the play’s title, which the police caught. One of our pupils came up with it. I have hung out with female LGBT activists, and none of them ever call themselves “blues” or “pinks.” They are just colors to me. Honestly, if I had had doubts, I would not have bothered using the words in the title.

Our actors are between six and seventeen, but the authorities fear us as if we were terrible dissidents. Miraculously, we found a woman interested in contemporary young people’s theater who was not afraid to provide us with a venue. We intend to hold the festival there as planned, on March 16 and 17. But we have nowhere to seat viewers: we cannot find people who will give us chairs. One person said yes, but later he was scared off, apparently.

“She Drew the Rainbow of Her Own Free Will”
The policewoman who came to my office could not say out loud the reason for the investigation. The complaint read that we were promoting homosexuality among minors. She showed me the complaint and blushed.

During my interrogation, I was told I was at the local department for extremism and terrorism prevention (Center “E”). Three complaints had been filed against me: for promoting homosexual relations among minors, for inciting hatred towards men, and for “extremism,” I think.

The interrogation lasted nearly four hours.

First, the officers gave me screenshots of various posts and photos from my personal social media page and the community page Dandelion Field, where I write about really simple things like contraception, HIV, and condoms, things that, unfortunately, not all teenagers know about. There was also stuff from Komsomolka, which deals with feminism. By the way, there I don’t write at all about men: it’s a community page about women.

One of the screenshots showed a workshop from last year at which a girl had drawn a picture, and there was a rainbow in her picture. I was forced to write two paragraphs explains that my underage female pupil had drawn the rainbow of her own free will. No one had pressured and coerced her to draw it.

Next, we got hung up on the phrase “gender stereotypes.” The police officer thought gender had something to do with transgenders. I explained to him what gender stereotypes were, what I meant by the term, and gave examples of stereotypes, as if I were sitting for an exam at school.

Then I was shown a screenshot of a post in which I had negatively assessed the “gay propaganda law,” and I had described the persecution of the lesbians in Chechnya and the “corrective” rapes to which they had been subjected.

The detective asked whether I engaged in propaganda. He asked was sex education was, and who needed it and why. He asked what feminism was. He asked what intersectional feminism was. Ultimately, I had to describe to him how I imagined traditional family values, what I thought about families. I wrote that I wasn’t against traditional family values like love, acceptance, and warmth. This ridiculous testimony took up four pages.

This was followed by the persecution of our children and personal attacks on them. There is no other way of putting it.

“The Police Have Come for You. Let’s Go”
The police officers running the investigation are clueless about the questions they have been asking, and this incompetence has only exacerbated the circumstances.

On March 10, they came for one of boys and one of our girls. It is not clear why they were chosen. There are seventeen teenagers in our theater, and they attend different schools. The police did not pick on our oldest and youngest pupils.

The 15-year-old girl was summoned after school from her house and grilled for two hours by five adults: two police officers and three female school employees. They put the screws on her and descended into semi-insults. They quizzed her about LGBT. Did she know what it meant? they asked. How had she found out? Was I promoting homosexuality? Did I encourage girls to sleep with girls, and boys with boys? The subjects they discussed were such that they would have earned an 18+ rating, but the interrogation took place without the girl’s parents present.

pic_7bc908930662b55a0cdbabb1976b5037Photo from the Merak Activist Comedy Theater’s page on VK 

The 13-year-old boy was kept after school. He was summoned to the headmaster’s office. “The police have come for you. Let’s go,” he was told. No one had the presence of mind to call his parents. The police officers showed him the likes I had awarded a post I no longer remembered, but they were showing this to a child! The absurdity was off the charts. They asked the boy and the girl about each other. Maybe they had picked the through the list of  numbers in their telephones.

When, the next day, they came for another of our boys, we warned him to call his parents immediately. He called his dad, who works as a beat cop, so he was not grilled for two hours, but twenty minutes, and the conversation was more polite and less biased.

Everyone is scared. Naturally, it is frightening when you’re interrogated for two hours. For now, no one wants to quit the theater, because everyone is aware of my work. They know I am opposed to violence, and I treat boys and girls equally. But, first of all, the subject itself scares the kids, because they are still kids and not tuned into all these issues. Second, they feel the pressure: they are afraid to say something wrong and inadvertently throw me under the bus.

Their parents and I have now been trying to understand the legal grounds of why we have been persecuted. We have been poring over the laws.

“Rewind to Fifty Years Ago”
Until recently, everyone really loved our theater and told us how cool we were. We did two productions wholly in English about the history of the English language, which were unprecedented in our city. At the Drama Theater, we did a dance performance about the problems of teenagers entitled Evolution. It was about how society puts pressure on carefree kids, but ultimately their friends help them and their problems are solved. This was all performed to poems written by one of the girls involved in the production. The show was a benefit for disabled children and the local organization Lighthouse of Hope. Not a bad track record for a single year!

Children grow up, and the problems they face get more complicated. First of all, they deal with domestic violence. I have had whole black months when it was one story after another, and I cried because I felt so helpless. It’s really scary: dad’s beating mom, dad’s beating me, dad’s beating my brother. Gender stereotypes are also something our kids deal with up close and personal. My fifteen-year-old female pupils are already pestered now with questions of when they are getting married and having kids, and why they should bother with careers. Homophobia is also a force. I know there are LGBT teenagers out there, and I cannot imagine how hard it is for them to cope alone. The streets in Komsomolsk are a really dangerous place, just as in most typical provincial towns, I would guess.

Komsomolsk is one half a factory town, and one half a gangster town. When you hear about us, rewind to fifty years ago. It is not the twenty-first century here, but the twentieth century. I think what really spooked the police was that I had been talking about activism and feminism. These words scare people.

Our local feminist community consists of two volunteers and me. I have an audience of a thousand some subscribers on our community page, but between two and twenty people in Komsomolsk itself. That is the number of people who come to our events. Unfortunately, that is our audience for the time being. It is a infantile scale.

But there have always been plenty of haters. When I decided to do a lecture on abuse, there were threats: we will come and show you what real violence is like, I was warned. Instead, a group of women showed up who sabotaged the lecture by insisting victims had only themselves to blame or something of the sort.

Even our women’s tea party was disrupted. We wanted to make it women-only, without men, so we could talk about our problems. Men wrote to us that they would come and show us what feminism was. There were so many threats that even the young women themselves got scared, along with the venue where we had scheduled the tea party. They asked us not to come.

I have stopped responding to death threats. Now, as we have been chatting, I have received three messages from a young man. The only word in the messages you can print is the word “you.” Yesterday, a man wrote on the community page of our theater workshop threatening to kill us for “perverting children.” This the general background.

After I was interrogated for four hours by the police about feminism and sex education, I felt I had a claim to the hashtag #FeminismIsNotExtremism. Six months ago, I would insert in posts in connection with the case of Lyubov Kalugina, when I was not even remotely in harm’s way. It is one thing to read about persecuted activists, but it is another thing to become one of them. People keep asking why I do it. What is the point?  My run-in with the police makes me think hard about the kind of country we live in. But I can name at least twenty-one people for whom what I do is not pointless. I can name even more people, actually.

pic_55145f4a6ff0238f1689b54bfaa9dccbPhoto from the Merak Activist Comedy Theater’s page on VK 

What scares me most is the kids think they did something wrong. I ask them, You believe in what we do? Yes, they reply. Do you see anything bad about it? No, they answer. But the whole situation puts them under psychological pressure. It is a really terrible precedent, because the kids have been rapped on the knuckles as it were. They really work their butts off staging our plays. They invest a tremendous amount of energy in them. They are sincerely looking for ways to change the world for the better. These kids are really delicate and sensitive, and they are close to each other as group. They volunteer their time, they visit orphanages, they support other social projects. They are totally maxed out: they try and get straight A’s at school, and they are involved in academic competitions. In the midst of all their activities, they manage to come to four-hour-long, physically draining rehearsals.

But then adults tell them activism is bad, activism is evil, without even fully understand what activism is. And when these adults show up a week before our festival and tell us to get lost, both the kids and I are stressed out. They are really worried.

I have not slept or eaten for three days. I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I have been summoned again to the extremism prevention department. The phone is tapped, and calls with my lawyer are cut off. But I dream of opening a women’s crisis center in our city and an alternative independent school where the children would be not be bullied and hounded, and continuing to move the theater forward. In late spring, we are doing a production based on Svetlana Alexievich’s book Last Witnesses, about children during the Second World War, and in the summer we are staging a new English-language production.

Thanks to Darya Apahonchich for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader.

UPDATE. DVHab.ru reports that, despite the fact the local authorities ostensibly canceled Merak Theater’s Color of Saffron Festival, the festival went ahead way anyway at “closed” venues. DVHab.ru included a full video of Merak’s performance of Blues and Pinks in its article. I have reproduced it below.

Is There Life on Mars?

OSIRIS_Mars_true_colorOne of the joys of the web is being able to catch glimpses of life on different planets.

Gieselman dumped the girlie name bestowed at birth, asked friends and teachers to use Rocko, the tough-sounding nickname friends had come up with, and told people to use “they” instead of “he” or “she.” “They” has become an increasingly popular substitute for “he” or “she” in the transgender community, and the University of Vermont, a public institution of some 12,700 students, has agreed to use it.

While colleges across the country have been grappling with concerns related to students transitioning from one gender to another, Vermont is at the forefront in recognizing the next step in identity politics: the validation of a third gender.

The university allows students like Gieselman to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips.

—Ulie Scelfo, “University Recognizes a Third Gender: Neutral,” The New York Times, February 3, 2015

__________

Russia Blacklists LGBT Teen Online Support Group
The Moscow Times
February 2, 2015

A Russian web site that served as a support group for LGBT teenagers has been blacklisted by the authorities and will likely be blocked within the country, news reports said Monday.

The site’s name Deti-404 (Children 404), after the online HTTP error message for “page not found,” may prove portentous if Russia’s Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor considers the site to be in violation of a federal law that regulates online content.

Russian news site Ura.ru reported on Monday, citing Roskomnadzor, that the Deti-404 web site will be blocked because it disseminated information on committing suicide.

Deti-404.com and as its eponymous groups on social networks Facebook and VKontakte were still accessible in Moscow at press time Monday evening.

Ura.ru published a post contained on Deti-404’s Facebook page showing a young woman’s scratched-up arm with the numbers “404” writing in black ink. The caption reads: “I want to die, to disappear, so that I simply never existed.”

Deti-404’s founder, Yelena Klimova, said last week that she was fined 50,000 rubles ($780) for violating Russia’s controversial law against the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors.” The site’s blacklisting may be linked to that case.

Roskomnadzor opened a case against Klimova last November after it claimed to have received some 150 complaints from “citizens and organizations” about Deti-404’s pages on social media networks.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Homophobic Fascist Hoedown in Russia’s “Cultural Capital”

Gay Pride Event in St. Petersburg. Field of Mars, 29 June 2013

_____

Gay Star News
All participants in St Petersburg gay pride arrested for marching
LGBT activists in Russia confirm that police have arrested about 60 participants in today’s gay pride parade for violating the country’s anti-gay laws, while some were beaten and suffered injuries
29 June 2013 | By Jean Paul Zapata, Dan Littauer

All the participants in today’s St Petersburg gay pride parade have been arrested and are being detained in police vans.  

Some participants were badly beaten by anti-gay protestors. 

Nikolai Alekseev, one of Russia’s most prominent LGBT activists who was arrested last month for organizing a gay rights march, confirmed with GSN that around 60 fellow activists and pro-gay supporters are now in police custody. 

Several people also were badly beaten by anti-gay protestors who attacked the partcipants, with some suffering injuries.

Alekseev, who was not arrested since he was standing outside the fenced area of St Petersburg pride, managed to tell GSN that participants were detained for breaching Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ bill that passed Russia’s upper house in parliament to days ago.

Five Russian gay couples, who yesterday in a historical legal move applied for marriage licenses, were also taking part in today’s march and are now under police custody. The chair of St. Petersburg Pride and Equality organization Yury Gavrikov and his partner Maksim were one of the couples arrested.

Dimitry Chunosov, who along with his partner partcipated in yesterday’s application for marriage license,  was reported to have been beaten up by the anti-gate protestors.

Gavrikov, who knew he was likely to face arrest for organizing today’s gay pride march, could face double penalties as an LGBT individual and leader of an LGBT organization who breached the local and federal Russia’s gay gag  laws.

Both laws have been passed in order to ‘protect minors’ from so called ‘homosexual propaganda’ by punishing offenders with fines and jail sentences. 

The Petersburg law bans the ‘propaganda’ among minors of homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality, and makes the offense – which has never clearly been defined by lawmakers – punishable by a fine of 5,000 rubles (US$157) for individuals, 50,000 rubles (US$1,570) for officials and 250,000-500,000 rubles (US$7,854-US$15,710) for companies.

According to the Federal law, any media or gay rights organization could be fined up to one million rubles ($30.8k, €23.2k) and shut down for 90 days, individuals could be fined up to 100,000 rubles ($3k, €2.3k) and foreigners could be fined the same amount, held in jail for 15 days and deported. 

Sources in St Petersburg indicate that the individuals arrested today may be detained for up to two days.

Watch a video of St Petersburg Pride (in Russian):

Thanks to Roman for the heads-up on the first two videos.