October 11 is already a known date for St. Petersburg.

It’s the day when LGBT Community celebrates Coming Out Day.There is a set of theories and opinions on necessity and categorical uselessness of this process (Coming-Out is the process of opening of the homo- bi-sexualities to associates), but there is information which is pointless to argue with: only 11 % of Russians know personally a gay or a lesbian, however level of tolerance among people in this group much more exceeds all the others. It proves that the big openness of lesbians and gays improves the relation of a society to them. Closedness of LGBT leads to regular infringements of the rights and hate-crimes against representatives of the given social group.

This day has become history in 1988 in the USA. Its organizers were Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary, the American activist in struggle for the rights of gays and lesbians, the politician and the nun in the past. The first Coming-Out has been devoted to the Second National March in Washington for the rights of lesbians and gays in which 500 000 people have taken part. Now in the USA the main organizer of the Coming-Out is the Human Rights Campaign, supporting LGBT leading fair and open life, and their friends and relatives too. The emblem of the Coming-Out was created by the American artist Keith Haring. Besides the USA the Day of Coming-Out takes place in Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain.

This year we invite you to the second wind of the International Festival of Queer Culture within the social Festival Art-Sobes to celebrate the Coming-Out Day.

On October 11, 2009 we look forward to meeting you at the opening of Lida Mikhailova’s photo exhibition “Coming Out of the Closet”, where you will have a chance to make your own “coming out of the closet” and to support the people who are ready to take this difficult step.

The same day will occur “the re-opening” of photo-exhibition “Fiolet”, which took place within the International Festival of Queer Culture.

We also invite you to take part in the discussion
“Masculinity and femininity of the XXI-st century”.

3 p.m.

GAZ-21 (ГЭЗ-21), Art-cafe,

Ligovsky pr, 53

See you!