On Summer 2008 while being in the USA, I decided to set up contacts with American LGBT-organizations on behalf of newly formed Saint-Petersburg LGBT-organization “Coming Out”. Being aware of American mentality and community, I had a dim suspicion that they could be rather interested in Russia.

I sent 20 letters which included brief description of “Coming Out” and hope for collaboration to different organizations. Most promising answer was short, but substantial, from Malcolm Lazin: “would you be so kind to call me as soon as possible”.

Equality Forum is one of the biggest American LGBT-organizations, which annually holds the biggest in the USA international forum, concerning LGBT civil rights. Every year Equality Forum invites representatives from one of the world’s countries to tell about the situation with LGBT on their motherland. When my e-male came, he was just thinking about inviting Russia in 2009. We appeared in the right place at the right time.

Having looked through the information on the organization official website, I was impressed by its scale and possibilities. The forum lasts for a week; it consists of 50 programs and events and attracts well-known politicians, businessmen, writes, actors and other people of world-wide reputation. But no quantity of printing materials could prefer me for the picture I saw in reality and in what I participated.

I am actually glad that the discussion panel about the “Difficulties which Russian LGBT-community meets”, which we were hold together with Ruslan Porshnev (Antigdogma), has been planned on the first evening of our staying in Philadelphia. I suppose, that if I had time to realize the scale of the event, I couldn’t say even “Hello America!” because of emotion…

Analyzing the questions, which we were sent ahead of time, we understood that in the USA as well people are under impression that the struggle for LGBT rights in Russia came to attempts of gay pride only. We decided to begin our discussion with dethroning this myth. After meeting with Michael Gest (who was the first openly homosexual American ambassador and the moderator of our discussion), we reformulated the questions and set new accents.

We tried to give Americans a view on the difference between our cultural traditions, history, mentality, legal awareness and other factors which influence the human rights movement’s development in our country. We told about the two activist movements – a reformist (represented on the national level by the Russian LGBT Network) and a radical (represented by gay pride organizers). We explained that a deep and fundamental work on different levels is necessary in Russia – on the LGBT-community level, on the society level and on the state level. We told about the first progress - about the first official registration of the LGBT-organization “Coming Out”, about the “LGBT Network” community centre foundation in Saint-Petersburg and about the attempts of lobbying of 121-article of law victims rehabilitation, regional organizations developments and other work which is already being done.

The auditory (about 60 people) listened attentively and at the end different questions were raised, such as about the feminine movement, about the psychological work with the community, about the discrimination levels and how possible it is to live openly in the Russian society. After the discussion there was a queue of those, who wanted to wish a good luck, set up contacts and exchange the business cards.

I was surprised – the audience consisted more of white men after 40. I remembered our events, where the main participants were women under 30. Party this was explained later – the discussion participants were existing businessmen, politicians and authoritative gay activists. It’s obvious that we are on different levels of LGBT movement development.

This impression became even stronger after my participation in a state reception, which was organized specially for sponsors, partners and forum guests. Hundreds of people in suits, the same age and sex filled the banquet room. One after another they went to the podium, many of them heterosexuals. The evening star was Gueveni Newsom – a San-Francisco supervisor, who firstly raised the same sex marriages legalization question. Even most cynical people would believe in LGBT rights after his speeches.

The cooperation between business, politics and LGBT activism in America is a smoothly running mechanism. Perhaps, considering American experience, we would be able to construct the same in Russia.

For me it was very useful to leave the everyday activity away and look at our work from the other side. And as we were impressed by our hosts, they felt respect to us and our work.

We have a lot to learn from Americans, Europeans, history and our own experience. However, despite our notorious mentality, political pessimism and civil apathy, despite the endless doubts like “why do we need all this” and “can we change something” – we are moving ahead, we are doing an important and right thing.

And we already have, what to be proud of.

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By Polina Savchenko