Here's How The Obamas Marked Martin Luther King Federal Holiday

by Nomad

Open Season for Intolerance: How Russia's Anti-Gay Propaganda Laws are Destroying Lives

by Nomad

A Russian newspaper article provides an example of how discriminatory anti-gay propaganda laws have become for Russia's gay citizens. In fact, it has become a tool for hunting down individuals and destroying their careers. 

Last month a music teacher at a school for disabled children in Saint Petersburg was fired for "an amoral action."
The crime? 

Her identity. Her sexual orientation.

According to the news report, the teacher was outed by an anti-gay crusader, Timur Bulatov, who then wrote a letter of complaint to the school authorities.  In a private meeting, the administrators told her that because she was a lesbian, she would no longer be allowed to work with students.  For a dedicated teacher, this decision was heart-breaking. 

She told one reporter:

"During all the years of my work at the school I gave all I had to my favorite profession, developing a love for arts, music among the children. ..Considering the capabilities of our children with moderate to severe developmental disabilities, I tried to make every lesson interesting, educational and fun."

What's important to understand here is that the teacher was not openly gay to her students. The anti-propaganda laws do not, it would seem, apply in this case. The incident shows the predictable outcome of the Russian duma's 2013 passage of new laws banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors.

Believe It Can Be Done

by Nomad

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope that it can be done, then they see that it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. – Francis Eliza Hodgson Burnett