Coming Out

[ 16/09/2010 17:00:00 to 25/09/2010 17:00:00. ]
It is exactly one year since the International Queer Culture Festival 2009.

We are happy to tell you that the organization “Coming Out” continues the tradition and invites YOU to Festival 2010!

The Second International Queer Culture Festival will be held in St. Petersburg from September 16 to 25, 2010 Through music, theater and poetic events festival aims to draw public attention to the problems of homophobia and transphobia in Russia.The slogan of the festival - “The Art of Being Yourself” is a call for everyone to be confident in themselves and to understand that respect for differences is the basis for the creation of a free and happy society.

The notion of “queer” refers both to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and to all people who do not fit into the framework of ideas of what men and women should be. “Queer” offers to see a human in the first place as an individual.

Detailed information about the program can be found at the official Festival website: http://www.queerfest.ru

Two-month preparation work is over. Festival took place, time to look back.

SITE.
Club “Arctica” was a nice surprise. The beautiful “Golden Hall”, a separate bar, WC, good hall, back rooms and lobby, everything ready and inviting.
We got a great sound director, Taras Rodichev, who participated in the previous festival.

AUDIENCE.
The most vulnerable part of any festival - few people in the audience. About 70 people.
Was it good or bad?

Bad as it was hard to make ends meet financially, but good as you knew almost everyone in the room. The atmosphere was peaceful and pleasant.

Translation of the article will be made available soon. Please, check back later.

Translation of the article will be made available soon. Please, check back later.

Our project “Parenthood” continues to hold scheduled meetings and seminars. You can keep track of the event if you sign up for our group “Coming Out” in Vkontakte: http://vkontakte.ru/club2352211

On March 22 and 27, two meetings with LGBT parents who have adopted children took place.

The issue of adoption, as well as parenthood problem in LGBT families, is still being silenced in our society. Very often we face the absence of necessary information even on the Internet, and not everyone has friends who can help or give some advice. This event gave me the opportunity to compare the experience of parenting in gay and lesbian families, which I’m studying at the moment. It seems important to me that both gay and lesbian families face the same problems and challenges in upbringing children which means they can team up for solving these problems together.

Translation of the article will be made available soon. Please, check back later.

Dear friends!

Today, April 5, started the Week Against Homophobia. This year our campaign involvs 17 cities (Vologda, Izhevsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Saint Petersburg, Tyumen, Petrozavodsk, Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Kaliningrad). This is the largest number of participants since 2007. Attention of the mass media this year is also unprecedented - even before the week we got so many publications, as there was at the end of previous campaigns. For the first time in the preparation of the Week Against Homophobia evolved the initiative groups of LGBT activists in such cities as: Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Voronezh, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Vologda.

Since April, 1st in Saint Petersburg and Moscow on the bars Fly Cards, which are in the halls of restaurants’ and café’s system, beauty salons and fitness centres, clubs and bars, cinemas and entertaining centres, the cards of interregional social movement «The Russian LGBT Network» have appeared. The release of the cards is timed to the beginning of information campaign «Week against homophobia» which will be going off from April 5 till April 11 in more than ten regions of our country.
The main idea of the card, where two pairs are represented, consists in expression of love independence from sexual orientation. Love may be different: between man and woman, between two women, between two men. “Any love is lawful, if it is a true love”, the writer Rudolf Erich Raspe spoke. This remarkable phrase became the card motto.

Tatyana Tcherkezyan’s original project

From the point of view of the law “The Civil marriage” is a neutral territory without rights and duties. The form of relations is very popular recently and has temporary character as a rule. Marriage, the family’s creation, follows further. However there are pairs which have no an opportunity to leave this neutral territory in our country. Unisex marriages aren’t registered.