The United States' State Department has strongly condemned odious new legislation in St. Petersburg, Russia, which criminalizes the "promotion" of homosexuality among minors.
"Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," the State Department said, repeating a declaration by top US diplomat Hillary Clinton.
"We have called on Russian officials to safeguard these freedoms, and to foster an environment which promotes respect for the rights of all citizens."
The St. Petersburg legislation certainly doesn't respect "the rights of all citizens." In fact, it leaves citizens guessing as to what their rights are, vis a vis the law. The legislation bans the promotion of LGBT lifestyles to minors, especially in public, but fails to explain what might constitute "promotion." Anything — from pride parades to protests to two women holding hands and appearing to enjoy it — could, in theory, be illegal, so long as it's public and vaguely gay.
The New Yorker published an essay on the subject:
The sponsor of the bill—it still has to go through two more votes to become law—is Vitaly Milonov, from the ruling United Party. He explained the legislation by saying, “children have to be protected from destructive information.” What that meant was subject to interpretation. According to Milonov, this information could be found in sex-education classes where such values were “advertised,” as well as in the works of that gay cabal—show business. This was not in any way meant to be an intrusion into the personal lives of Petersburgers, Milonov added, but what could he do when his city is drowning under “a wave popularizing sexual perversion”?
Milonov's colleagues chimed in, lumping sexual assault of a child in with consensual gay sex. “Children maimed by pedophiles jump out of windows, they take their own lives. Pedophilia is an attempt on a child's life!” one of them said, adding that spreading such propaganda should be a criminal offense. Another deputy, Elena Babich, from the nationalist-crazypants Liberal Democratic party, agreed that the proposed penalties were too light. “What is a three-thousand ruble fine to a pedophile when they are supported by an international community?” (Did she mean show business?)
The legislation, which was rushed through the local parliament, is not unique. A similar law was passed this summer in the northern city of Arkhangelsk, where legislators expressed concern about the effect of gays on the city's already low birthrates, and in the Ryazan region. But those were the provinces.
St. Petersburg, long Russia's window to Europe and its bastion of high culture, is both a strange and logical place to pass such a law. For one thing, it was the first place with an L.G.B.T. organization: Kryl'ya (or “wings”) was founded in October 1991, having fought for its creation in the Soviet courts at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized and punishable by five years of hard labor. (That provision, the notorious Article 121, was repealed two years later, in 1993.) Moscow used to have a mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, who denounced homosexuality as “satanic.” St. Petersburg, in contrast, was in some ways the center of organized gay life in Russia: the Russian branch of the I.L.G.A., the international L.G.B.T. rights organization is run out of St. Petersburg; pride parades, long the subject of violent battles with the Moscow authorities (who won't allow them), have passed through this city peacefully, until this year. Imagine passing an anti-gay law in San Francisco.
