It is tragic that Moscow’s Mayor Luzhkov has permitted the suppression of a peaceful, civil, non-egregious demonstration. Whether one considers homosexuality to be morally proper or not, all individuals ought to enjoy the freedom to express their beliefs—true or false ones—without fear of government persecution. Many other commentators are similarly outraged over this. For example, Dr. Bill Belew at http://www.panasianbiz.com/2006/05/moscow_mayor_is_antigay.html discusses some frightening details of the incident that followed the protest:

“Activists attempted to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier just outside the Kremlin wall. However, they were greeted by about 100 religious and nationalist extremists who kicked and punched them. So…the police arrested the gay activists!”

Who is less moral: the peaceful demonstrators who might have expressed certain controversial ideas some of us might disagree with or the violent brutes who tried to destroy the demonstrators for the mere act of speaking out?

It seems that the Russian government has yet to learn the necessity of tolerating free expression of ideas—even unpopular, wrong, or bizarre ideas, no matter what guise they might take—so long as there is no coercion involved.

See Dr. Belew’s Blog—PanAsianBiz—at http://www.panasianbiz.com for another place to discuss this saddening event.

Veronika Khokhlova , writing at Global Voices Online, has more information and background on the Gay Pride parade in Moscow that Brett reported on below….