Q Toon: Ain't the Kind of Place to Raise Your Kids

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with the Financial Times last week, claimed that persistent reports of antigay repression in his country are greatly exaggerated: "We have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles."

Singer Elton John blasted Putin in a tweet, writing "I strongly disagree with your view that pursuing policies that embrace multicultural and sexual diversity are obsolete in our societies. I find duplicity in your comment that you want LGBT people to 'be happy' and that 'we have no problem in that.'"

"[Elton John] is mistaken," Putin was quoted as saying by the Russian state-run news agency TASS. "We [in Russia] have a very neutral attitude to members of the LGBT community. We have a law, for which we've been slammed, a law banning propaganda of homosexuality among minors."
According to Putin, the law just aims to make sure children are "left alone" until they've grown up, and then they can make decisions regarding their sexuality.

John was particularly upset over scenes cut from his recent biopic, Rocketman, when it was shown in Russia.

Some of those scenes involved depictions of drug use and gay sex, and it's easy to see how those scenes might ruffle the feathers of younger and more sensitive viewers. But the film's distributors also cut a G-rated photo at the end of the movie showing John and his husband with their two sons, and the film was advertised as being restricted to viewers over the age of 18.

Whatever the film distributor did to the film, and whyever they did it, there is plenty of documented evidence of Russian persecution of LGBTQ persons, especially in Chechnya. Elsewhere, LGBTQ Russians have to be wary of  vigilante gangs who attack LGBTQ gathering places or use dating sites to lure them into a mugging.

Since repression of LGBTQ citizens is more important to the Russian government than protecting them, the vigilantes might as well be working with Putin's blessing.

And probably are.

Q Toon: Red Card Warning

Russia is hosting the 2018 World Cup, and let me just say at the outset that I know "futbol" is the Spanish name for the sport we Americans call "soccer." The rest of the world calls it "football," but we Americans use that word to refer to a game in which only one member of each team ever kicks a ball.

My readers are mostly Americans (Buon giorno, however, to my frequent Italian visitors here), but the characters in this cartoon would not call it "soccer." Anyway, "futbol" is a faithful enough transliteration of "футбол." So there.

Second of all, this idea would have worked better if there were no "penalty box" in soccer / futbol / футбол / calcio / whatever you want to call it. In the Beautiful Game, the area from which a player is entitled to make a direct free kick because of a foul by the opposing team is sometimes called a penalty box.

But on to today's actual topic: as the rest of the world gathers in Russia for the 2018 World Cup, LGBTQ fans have been warned that the Cossacks are on the march to punish public displays of same-sex affection.  Yes, Cossacks.

[I]n the city of Rostov, members of the religious and traditionalist Cossack communities  enlisted to help authorities secure the stadiums say they will will also be on the lookout for acts of same-sex affection.
"If two men are kissing each other at the World Cup, we will tip off the police, drawing their attention to it and the rest is a police matter,” Oleg Barannikov, a head coordinator of the Cossack volunteers with the police told Radio Free Europe-affiliate Current Time. “To us, values mean the (Christian) Orthodox faith and the family come first.”

Barnnikov did not elaborate on what Cossacks hope police will do upon learning about the kissing men. Homosexuality in Russia is not illegal, but recent legislation has banned many materials for public awareness of non-heterosexual relationships and  LGBT pride symbols from public display, equating them to adult content inappropriate for children.

The British Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF), in partnership with the Football Association and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, warned its LGBTQ fans that public displays of affection at the Russia games could be hazardous to one's health. Indeed, a French couple was attacked and seriously injured before the games. Two Dagestani men have been arrested for the attack; OperSlil Telegram's account of the crime granted that “Even though the injured are homosexuals, it does not justify the monsters who beat him.”

Well, that's nice to know. I don't suppose, however, that the OperSlil Telegram people recommended a level of violence more acceptable against homosexuals.

Q Toon: Your Mirandskavitch Rights

This week's cartoon was occasioned by this brazen attack on a St. Petersburg HIV support group on Sunday, but it's really about the open season on LGBT Russians declared by their government.

Anastasia Smirnova, the general project manager of the Interregional Social Movement Russian LGBT Network, reported on Russian queer newsgroups that two masked men with guns and baseball bats attacked a "rainbow social" at the offices of LaSky, an HIV organization for gay men,  just over an hour ago. The police reportedly arrived at the LaSky office but left immediately saying they saw no evidence of a crime. 

Two patrons of LaSky were hospitalized; one had reportedly been shot in the eye, and a woman had been beaten with a baseball bat.

Well, you can't blame the Russian police for not wanting to do anything that might get themselves in trouble for violating the ban on "pro-gay propaganda."

Russia's antigay pogrom (also against immigrants and dark-skinned Russians) has been going on for months now, possibly to distract citizens from the massive sums of money being spent on the Sochi Olympics. In July, the Guardian's Nancy Goldstein rattled off a list of other antigay attacks:

[Do Vladimir Putin and the International Olympic Committee think t]hat we'll just happily ignore last week's news of skinheads luring gay teenagers with an online dating scam, then taping the sessions where they torture them so long as no one blocks our view of the figure skating events?...

[A] BuzzFeed photomontage of '36 Pictures From Russia That Everyone Needs to See' brought millions of viewers image after image of bloodied and crying LGBT Russians clinging to one another — people trying to shield themselves from blows and rotten eggs at peaceful protests turned violent where the police, skinheads, and large crowds of anti-gay protestors beat, mock, assault, and arrest them.
So the news from the Russian LGBT Network that four Dutch tourists had just been jailed under the new "gay propaganda" law for filming a documentary on LGBT rights in Russia was the last straw. ... 

Last month, killers reportedly stabbed and trampled a man to death before putting his body in his car and setting it on fire. Just weeks before, 23-year-old Vladislav Tornovoi's friends murdered him because he mentioned he was gay while they were getting drunk, according to the BBC. They raped him with beer bottles before smashing his skull in with rocks.

Q Toon: Emocide

You may have thought there would be no more cartoons about Iraq.

Shi'ite militants in Iraq are reported to be stoning gay and "emo" youth to death -- the weapon of choice being cement cinder blocks. ("Emo" is shorthand for "emotional hardcore," and is a style based on 1980's punk, goth, etc.)

[Iraq] has been preparing to showcase itself to the world as host of a high-profile meeting of Arab leaders in late March ... But the news that young men in tight T-shirts and skinny jeans are being beaten to death with cement blocks and dumped in the streets has threatened to overshadow the new palm trees and fresh paint. The violence offers a reminder that the government has been unable to stop threats and attacks against small religious sects, ethnic groups and social pariahs like gay men.

Human rights groups put the death toll as high as 40, although official estimates are considerably lower. That the Interior Ministry itself has called emo "satanic" can only have encouraged the killings and motivated officials to downplay the problem.

This Week's Cartoon

This week's cartoon does not address any specific criminal case. In the process of deciding which news story to draw about every week, I always find at least one story about a gay-bashing somewhere. Sometimes, hate crime charges are added to the obvious murder or aggravated assault charges against the accused; but in other cases, the prosecution exhibits a baffling reticence to bring any serious charges at all.

Take for example, the case of Robert Hannah, who has pled guilty to a charge of misdemeanor assault for (ahem, allegedly) fatally assaulting Tony Hunter at Be Bar in Washington D.C. Hannah claims that he punched Hunter because Hunter made sexual advances to him. Hunter died ten days later as a result of the assault.

If heterosexual men were subject to straight panic attacks from uninterested women they made sexual advances toward, you can bet the women would not be charged with misdemeanor assault.