Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow Friday night, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.
Police searched venues across the Russian capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna, and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported.
Eyewitnesses told journalists that clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services. They also said that managers had been able to warn patrons before police arrived.
Russia has always been anti-LGBT+. Stalin called them abomination and Putin is just a dimestore version of that monster.
It’s worth remembering that for all of the numerous issues Western nations and especially the US have with freedom of speech and expression, for every convert to some racist ideology, there is also a new supporter of LGBT+. The rise in hate we see is paralleled by a rise in acceptance of the marginalized. Freeze peaches is a double edged sword and always has been.
The paradox of tolerance is certainly an issue, but the very fact we’ve evolved as a culture to the point we’re having a discussion about it says something about the benefits of that freedom. Our culture isn’t stagnant. We have the capacity for growth and change, and while the government usually maintains the social status quo, we in turn can affect what the status quo is.
Fucking peaches.
Not always. Soviet Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1917, and it was the first country in the world to do that. But it was recriminalized again in 1933 by Stalin.
Fuck Stalin
I was reading several months ago that there was a time in the mid ‘90s that there were a few gay clubs in Russia that were relatively unmolested by the cops, as long as the local “roof” was paid off.