LGBT people are attacked during the “Day of Kisses”, an act of protest against Russia’s 2013 bill criminalising “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”. Photo CC-by-2.0: Roma Yandolin / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Today marks the International Day against Homophobia. It’s commemorated every year on 17 May, and its goals are clear: to shine a light in the dark, overcome taboos, and share the most up-to-date data and findings about LGBT people and their lives — whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning. First and foremost, the day marks a turning point for science — for it was on 17 May when, after a mass of disproved data and studies, the World Health Organisation officially declassified homosexuality as an illness. From then on, homosexuality has not been considered an illness, for the simple reason that there is no scientific evidence to consider it as such. That said, the removal of homosexuality from a list of diseases and illnesses by no means fully resolves the immense number of political and social problems faced by LGBT people in a number of countries, including Russia. And that’s why today is a good opportunity to continue this campaign against illiteracy.
In Russia, the attitude of politicians and many ordinary citizens towards LGBT people is often based on ignorance, stimulating widespread prejudice and hatred. The country’s law, passed in 2013, against distributing propaganda about “non-traditional sexual orientations” to minors is one such result. The law presumes that children can become gay or lesbian simply from reading a newspaper article — of course, no scientific evidence to prove this was ever presented by the lawmakers behind the bill.
