Moscow’s Largest Gay Club Closes after Vigilante Attacks

[JI7]

Moscow’s largest gay club will soon close its doors for good, after a string of vigilante attacks, including shootings, violent assaults and the release of poison gas.

According to Queerussia, the Central Station club, which is Moscow’s biggest gay club, will shut its doors for good, after owner Andrei Lischinsky resigned as CEO earlier this year.

The club has suffered from a huge number of attacks in the past year, including shootings, the release of a poisonous gas, and a coordinated attack by around 100 men.

Lischinsky previously said that Moscow Police had refused to investigate any of the incidents, and that none of his 30 complaints had received a police response.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/03/17/russia-moscows-largest-gay-club-closes-string-vigilante-attacks/comments/#disqus_thread

[Behind the Aegis]

1. No! No! NO! You mean KYIV's Largest Gay club closes!!!

See, I have heard...repeatedly things are hunky-dory for the Russian homosexuals and it is actually the neo-Nazis of Ukraine that are making GLBT lives hell!! Why must you engage in Russophobic propaganda?!?!

(just in case, this is NOT directed at J17 and is bitter and I am sure many in this group know EXACTLY why I wrote what I did!)

[MNBrewer]

2. Exactly!

Pay no attention to Putin's brown-shirted mobs on the Russian side of the border.

Neo-cons, cookies and Nazis! Oh MY!

*sigh*

[LuvNewcastle]

4. I have had it with the people saying that shit.

It's disgusting what the Russians are doing, but it even disgusts me more to see people come on here and deny that it's happening. Now I have an idea how Jews feel about Holocaust deniers.

[knowledgeispwr]

5. Unfortunately...

I am afraid that some people seem to believe that since the USA government (and the governments of other Western nations, to be honest) has been hypocritical about which groups have a right to self-determination and which places are "okay" to invade, that it means that no one from those Western nations can criticize Russia's actions.

An even worse apparent belief (evidently held by some), is that since the USA has had such an ugly history of actions at home and abroad, that all negative actions (or at least most) around the world can be tied to the US or US supporters.

I think that's complete bunk.

[JI7]

6. so this means that the French, Brits, Germans , etc had no right to criticize the US

when BUsh went into Iraq and over anything else because of the history of those nations. and that is some really ugly stuff there.

in fact this is what republicans did anytime some foreigner criticized us. remember the "freedom fries" bs ?

[theHandpuppet]

3. On a related note....

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/12/coca_cola_ford_ikea_pro_gay_in_america_but_not_in_russia.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
Pro-Gay Companies Stop Being Pro-Gay in Russia. Here's How to Fix That.
By Masha Gessen

(Excerpt)

...Which companies have different policies in Russia than in the United States? Why, most of them. Last month, a Russian online magazine contacted companies from the HRC list that have offices in Russia and asked them a single question: Do they provide health insurance to the same-sex partners of their employees? “What we got was no so much an investigation as a fascinating account of our reporter's attempts to get an answer out of the multinational companies,” the editors wrote in an introduction to the resulting report.

Eight companies—including General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, and Gap—did not answer the reporter's repeated emails, phone calls, and social-media queries over the course of several weeks. Nine other companies—including Chrysler, McKinsey & Co., and Citigroup—responded only to say they would not comment. Eleven companies—including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Ford—claimed that they do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but they don't provide health insurance to same-sex partners, either. Along the way, the reporter unearthed the Russian version of Coca- Cola's statement issued last summer in response to Queer Nation's protests against its sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics—it omitted all references to LGBT people and issues. (And yes, that means it made virtually no sense in Russian.) Only six of the 34 companies contacted said they provide health insurance to same-sex partners; these were Nike, Deutsche Bank, Dell, Boston Consulting Group, Disney, and Google.

Sometimes, when American LGBT activists learn of such hypocrisies, they sign petitions and stage protests—like when New York activists staged weekend outings to IKEA, snapping the kinds of pictures that were edited out of the company's Russian magazine. IKEA responded by including a dry nondiscrimination statement in the online version of the magazine. The activists claimed victory, though their success was dubious: Unlike the story that was dropped from the magazine, the nondiscrimination statement did not violate Russian law, which has now been interpreted to ban all positive or neutral portrayals of gay people.

Like Stolichnaya Vodka's $150,000 contribution to an American support fund for the Russian LGBT movement, this was a transparent attempt to have it both ways: pacify the gays in America while keeping mum, or as close to mum as possible, in Russia. There is nothing surprising about multinational companies wanting to do this; their entire LGBT customer base in the United States is smaller than the stakes in Russia. Still, if they would like to keep both, hypocrisy is a risky strategy. A boycott can seem to come out of nowhere—just ask Stoli.... MORE

[NCLefty]

7. Putin is a cruel man.

This could not happen without his blessing.

Videos of what's happening to our people will be their historical shame in a century.