Moscow lawmaker seeks rainbow flag ban after Facebook fanfare of US gay marriage verdict
A Moscow city MP has promised to press for the ban on the most known symbol of the LGBT community after the campaign of support of the US move to legalize same-sex marriage has hit Russian social networks, drawing ire from conservatives.
Aleksey Lisovenko made this pledge via a Facebook post and in the same post he claimed that “the United States must have gone completely mad and now its gay delirium is threatening the entire civilized world.”
The politician went on to suggest that the American nation can start “spreading gay marriage all over the world by means of aircraft carriers,” similar to today’s policy of “imposing democracy with tanks.” He warned the concern over minorities’ rights can be used to interfere into the affairs of sovereign nations.
“Billions of US dollars would be pumped into gay propaganda all over the world, preparing the grounds for ’rainbow revolutions’,” he forecast.
READ MORE: Tweeting Rainbow: Social media explodes in gay pride after SCOTUS ruling
Lisovenko noted that soon after the verdict on same sex marriage was announced in the US, profile pictures of thousands of Facebook accounts were painted with rainbow colors, including the accounts of many celebrities, politicians and major brands. He added that the simultaneousness of this move allowed for the suspicion that some coordination or even “an order from above” – and Barack Obama’s statement that the verdict was a victory for America confirmed this suspicion.
The MP wrote that he was sending an address to State Duma with a request to include the LGBT flag into the list of symbols banned for use on the territory of the Russian Federation. Lisovenko also asked the parliament to allow the state internet watchdog Roskomnadzor to block any website or social network accounts that use the rainbow flag on their pages.
Last Week, Russian Senator Mikhail Marchenko (Bryansk Region) addressed the Roskomnadzor agency with a request to influence Facebook so that it would stop using LGBT symbols and promoting same sex marriage.
In comments with Izvestia daily, Marchenko claimed that this promotion was made with emoticons and influenced the subconscious of the Russian public. Pictures with same sex couples under rainbow flags, sometimes with children, contradict both Russian traditional family values and the Russian law, he said.
READ MORE: Call for anti-gay crusader Milonov to be investigated for extremism
Russia’s best-known anti-gay activist, St. Petersburg municipal lawmaker Vitaly Milonov, urged the blockage of Facebook on Russian territory, claiming that the campaign of rainbow-colored profile pictures was a violation of the Russian law. Milonov was the main sponsor of the law that forbids promotion of “non-traditional sex relations” to minors under threat of fines, approved in 2014.
In reply to Milonov’s statements, his longtime critic Senator Konstantin Dobrynin (Arkhangelsk Region) suggested to lower the level of aggression towards minorities and remove all politicians who speculate on the subject from Russia’s political field. To do so Dobrynin proposed the introduction of the principle “don’t ask don’t tell” into the Russian law. The same principle was used by the US military between 1994 and 2011.
