Looks like Sir Elton John may get his wish to confront Vladimir Putin about his country's anti-LGBT record, as the Russian president reportedly rang up the singer yesterday.
This past weekend, Sir Elton John, accompanied by his husband David Furnish, met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev on Saturday to lobby him on LGBT rights. While there he told the BBC he would also like to meet Putin:
“I'd love to meet him [Putin], I'd love to sit down and talk to him. It's probably pie in the sky but unless you try, unless you put your foot in the water, your toe in the water … at least if I meet him and say, ‘Listen, come on, let's have a cup of tea, let's talk about this', he might laugh behind my back and then he shuts the door and call me an absolute idiot but at least I can have a conscience and say I'd tried.”
St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov, the architect of the country's gay “propaganda” ban who was recently awarded a state honor medal for his service, reacted by saying John shouldn't distract the president with “rainbow affairs” and offered to meet with the singer to discuss how he is “deeply and systematically mistaken”.
