This entire post is a TRIGGER WARNING.
From Bilerco:
The group also released this video of a gay teen in Moscow who was lured into the kind of trap described above. It shows him being "bullied, tortured and sprayed with urine in the broad day light."
Watch it at your own risk. You don't need to know a word of Russian to understand how terrified and humiliated this poor young man is.
From the NYT:
A few days earlier, just six months before Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Games, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals they suspect of being homosexual, lesbian or “pro-gay” and detain them for up to 14 days. Contrary to what the International Olympic Committee says, the law could mean that any Olympic athlete, trainer, reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay — can go to jail.
Earlier in June, Mr. Putin signed yet another antigay bill, classifying “homosexual propaganda” as pornography. The law is broad and vague, so that any teacher who tells students that homosexuality is not evil, any parents who tell their child that homosexuality is normal, or anyone who makes pro-gay statements deemed accessible to someone underage is now subject to arrest and fines. Even a judge, lawyer or lawmaker cannot publicly argue for tolerance without the threat of punishment.
Finally, it is rumored that Mr. Putin is about to sign an edict that would remove children from their own families if the parents are either gay or lesbian or suspected of being gay or lesbian. The police would have the authority to remove children from adoptive homes as well as from their own biological parents.
Boycott everything Russian.
Buzzfeed photo compilation of police and anti-LGBT activists attacking LGBT's.
Think this can't happen here?
Yes it can, the same religious fundamentalists here would like things to be just like that for LGBT's in the US.
Some examples of their constant efforts to dehumanize LGBT's:
On Monday, Family Research Council Action sent a volatile email encouraging opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would create nationwide protections for LGBT workers. It echoed many of the claims on the group’s “Fight ENDA” page, including an outright claim that homosexual attraction isn’t biological, so the gay community doesn’t deserve civil rights. Tony Perkins’s daily email from FRC proceeded to once again bemoan last week’s Supreme Court rulings in favor of marriage equality, but similarly highlighted 15 examples of discrimination against gay people the group hopes to protect.
The economic inequality we are experiencing creates an atmosphere where scapegoats are targeted. Instead of going after those exploiting this economy and the workers those that society deems less than are invariably targeted. This is consistent throughout history.
There has been in the last year reports of Nazis in Russia, Burma, and even Greece. This too is consistent, remember Hitler came to power during the Great Depression with promises to end the onerous burden of WWI reparations that were grinding Germany even deeper into poverty.
The religious fundamentalists go after LGBT's because we are such a small portion of the population. That means our ability to receive justice is at the mercy of those in power. And in the case of Russia the LGBT's are being targeted by the state to appease religious fundamentalists.
In Greece the Nazi's there are rounding up 'undesirables' including Transgender people
Even though we have made incremental advances in the recent past we too could quickly turn to fundamentalist Gay hating nirvana.