This is a short diary, but I had not seen this before (forgive me if it is a double posting).
This past week a painting of Putin in woman's underwear. I've seen it called drag or a negligee, but whatever people call it it is dissent that is bringing more attention to the atrocious laws regarding homosexuality that have been recently passed.
Start of Christian-Science Monitor article:
Russian police raided a St. Petersburg art gallery Monday, seizing several "offensive" paintings that appeared to taunt Russian leaders for their alleged homophobia, including one that depicted President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in lingerie, and another that presented the coauthor of a recent law against homosexual "propaganda," Vitaly Milonov, against the backdrop of a rainbow flag.
Apparently the fact that the G20 is meeting (including our very own POTUS) in St. Petersburg in about week is making the repressive & corrupt Putin regime feel that they need to crack down on any dissent - especially on such a hateful and petty law.
The gallery's owner, Alexander Donskoy, said that police launched the search-and-seizure operation without warrants and proceeded to seal the entire exhibition, which also included risqué depictions of Mr. Obama, former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and former Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. The entire exhibit can be viewed online.
More below the fold.
This has also been picked up by the WSJ (actually the CS Monitor may have picked this up from the WSJ, but I saw it there first), and their article says:
Last weekend, the museum offered free entry “in solidarity with Russia’s LGBT community.” The “password” to gain free admission was for people to say they were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered at the door. The issue has come to the fore amid calls by some Western activists for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi due to the new “gay propaganda” law.
Isn't dissent great? We have to do our part in writing to the USOC and to President Obama to speak out against this travesty of a law that Russia has implemented.
In other Russian repression news, Salon is reporting that "Four Dutch nationals were arrested on Sunday for reportedly asking young people about their views on gay rights"
Four Dutch tourists were arrested in Russia on Sunday for violating the country’s ban on “homosexual propaganda,” making them the first foreigners to be charged under the new law.
Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that we must stand up for our fellow human being and for human rights for all?
I'll conclude with the final paragraph from the Smithsonian Magazine Blog on this repression:
Gay-themed works are not the only pieces of art in peril in Russia. either. On June 21, a gallery curator lost his job after refusing to censor a politically charged exhibition that used the symbols of the upcoming Sochi Olympics to portray a darker, more sinister vision of the new Russia.