Gay Groups

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Nikolay Alexeyev, organizer of the failed gay parade last May, intends to sue Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov for ‘having insulted him and the peaceful and democratic aims the gay parade set itself’.

Speaking at the opening of the 15th Christmas Educational Readings on Monday in Moscow, Luzhkov reminded the audience that last year the Moscow authorities brought pressure to bear on supporters of the gay parade ‘which cannot be called anything but satanic action’, and promised to bar another gay parade in the capital.

‘We are shocked by Mr. Luzhkov’s statement that the gay parade is a satanic action and see in it a personal injury to the organizers and potential participants in the gay parade’, Alexeyev said to Interfax, noting that such statements addressed to ‘an enormous number of people of homosexual orientation living in Russia are not appropriate to such a high-ranking official’.

He said the Moscow Mayor’s statement ‘would not be a surprise for a reader of medieval historical books but to hear such comparisons in the 21st century and from the mayor of the largest city in Europe at that is simply a scandal’.

‘Certainly, it will not be left without a response from our side’, the gay parade organizer said promising to sue Luzhkov personally.

Besides, the Moscow mayor’s statement, according to Alexeyev, is ‘another proof for the European Court of Human Rights that ‘the true reasons for banning the gay parade in Moscow was not at all a concern for the security of the participants but an elementary cave-man’s aversion to homosexuality’.

On Monday the organizers of the Moscow gay parade also lodged a complaint against Russia with the Strasbourg court demanding a compensation worth of 20 thousand euro and promised to stage another gay parade in Moscow on May 27, 2007.