Vladimir Putin‘s anti-gay laws didn’t come into being out of thin air. The climate in Russia has been fostering anti-gay hate for decades. But just as the Tea Party in America made racism more “acceptable” in certain circles, and just as Hitler fueled existing anti-Semitism to further his agenda, Putin’s anti-gay laws are the culmination of a culture of hate. Putin “merely” has codified a culture of hate into law — literally giving Russian citizens license to hate, and to act on that hate.
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Pink News just published an excellent and extremely disturbing roundup, “The 20 most shocking anti-gay news stories from Russia so far.” A few words from the list of 20 stories:
tortured
killed
raped
naked and beaten body
sexually assaulted
colluded
whipped
imprisoned
witch
cure
indoctrinate
arrested
punched
apocalypse
stabbed to death
violently beaten
And here’s an excerpt from the first story, “Tortured and killed gay man ‘raped with beer bottles’”
In May, a gay man from the southern Russian city of Volgograd who was tortured to death in an apparent hate crime, was sexually assaulted with beer bottles, and had his skull “smashed with a stone.â€
The naked and beaten body of the 23-year-old man was found in the courtyard of an apartment building in the city.
“He was raped with beer bottles and had his skull smashed with a stone,†said Natalia Kunitskaya, a spokeswoman for the Volgograd region branch of the Investigative Committee.
She went on to admit that the attack was believed to have been a hate crime, which was noted as a rare admission from Russian law enforcement agencies on the issue of homophobia in the country.
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Image, top by Rusa LGBT via Twitter
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