Coming Out

Dear friends,

We invite you to join the third Day Of Silence in Russia!

Attention: Organisation “Coming Out” does not hold a street action in 2010.

Reminder: always check information about Coming Out’s actions on the official web-site of the organisation - http://piter.lgbtnet.ru/ and in the official VKontakte group - http://vkontakte.ru/club2352211

On Saturday, April 24, 2010 St. Petersburg and 20 other cities in Russia will become quieter as they will take part in the Day Of Silence.

How you can participate?

We suggest that you join us in these ways:

St. Petersburg LGBT Organisation Coming Out expresses its condolences to the victims and organisers of the event. We are sorry that people who had no intention to participate in a pride or LGBT event got hurt as a result of misinformation about the event.

We consider the fact that the event was announced as gay-pride without the approval of the organisers to be unethical. At the same time we emphasise that the homophobic attack was a hate crime.

We encourage LGBT community to be cautious: not every event under the rainbow flags is organised by Coming Out. Information about the Coming Out events is always displayed on the official website piter.lgbtnet.ru and the official group VKontakte.

The Saint-Petersburg “Coming Out” LGBT organization held a series of single pickets in Malaya Sadovaya street on April, 11^th. These events were conducted under the motto “We stand for Russia for everybody. We stand for Russia without homophobia” which marked the end of the “Week Against Homophobia”.

7 people participated in the picket, about 40 activists were present and supported the action. The police were making arrangements concerning protection of public order. During picketing there were 2 minor incidents which were efficiently reacted to by the police.

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.

We invite all the inhabitants of Saint Petersburg to come to a series of single pickets which will be the conclusion of the Week against Homophobia campaign.

The picket will take place on April 11, 2010, from 14.00 to 16.00 on Malaya Sadovaya street.

Together we can clearly declare our stand: the unacceptability of homophobia, of insults to human dignity and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

We expect support from EVERYONE who is not indifferent to the position of various social groups in the society and who understands that homophobia hurts everyone and concerns everyone.

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.