News
2007-06-27
Russian
Christians "purge" gay cruise waters
Russian gay
cruise sparks "purification" effort
More than 200
Orthodox and right-wing Russians sailed a
More than 200
Orthodox and right-wing Russians, including a fiercely
antigay member of parliament, sailed an icon-bedecked ship
down the Moscow River on Sunday to "cleanse" the
waters after a gay cruise took the same route the
night before, the Interfax news agency reported.
Participants
hired a ship and decorated it with church banners, icons,
Russian imperial flags and their motto, "We are Russian, God
is with us."
"Our great
Orthodox capital is in spiritual vacuum and experiences
ideological aggression from the West. So our aim was to
demonstrate that the Russian people's spiritual and
moral ideals are alive and will be so forever," Yury
Ageschev, coordinator of the Union of Orthodox
Brotherhoods, told Interfax.
He said one of
the action's aims was "to purge the Moskva River after
a large group of gays hired a similar ship to have a party
going the same route last night."
Participants
included state Duma member Nikolay Kuryanovich, who in
February introduced federal legislation to recriminalize
homosexuality.
Joining him were
members of Cossack groups and assorted religious
believers. They sang a prayer as they passed the Novospassky
Bridge, then listened to a Christian rock band,
Interfax said.
Gay rights
continues to be a sore point in Russia. Antigay neighborhood
activists recently asked Moscow officials to support
their nightly patrols aimed at emptying a park where
gay people meet.
On Friday,
Russia's supreme court upheld earlier court rulings banning
last year's Moscow pride parade, which had been scheduled
for May 2006. Gay activists rallied anyway and were
pummeled by right-wing protesters and detained by
police. (Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)
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