Coming Out

April 4, on Saturday night, Nevsky prospect looked totally bemused in its most crowded portion stretching from Vosstaniya square to Kazansky cathedral. And a small wonder: a bunch of cool and smiling guys and girls was making its way through the crowd. How did they do it? Very simply: by handing out anti-homophobia flyers, postcards reading “Limits are conditional” and “Homophobia-free city” to all who cared to take them.

This flashmob became a beautiful finishing touch to the Week without Homophobia. There were about twenty of us, and twice as much as the similar action gathered the last year.

On March, 27, as a part of the Week against Homophobia the Coming Out organization organized a panel on “Bringing up children in a homophobic society (bringing up children in LGBT families, heteronormativity and heterosexism of the modern education)”.

We are glad to note that among those who joined us to discuss this really important topic were a psychologist (Elena Tumanova), a kindergarten teacher (Maria), a “second mother” from lesbian family (Larisa), a schoolteacher (Valery Sozaev) and even a father from a heterosexual family (Oleg Pachenkov, sociologist). Of particular note is the excellent panel planning achieved by Alexandra, the event coordinator, and a wonderful job done by Natalya Gudzovskaya as panel leader; thanks to her questions the experts had the opportunity for an in-depth presentation of their positions and the audience felt included in the discussion on the topic.

On 25th of March 2009 Youth informational project “Polit-gramota” arranged the 20th anniversary debates, which took place in club “Sochi”. Whereas the debates were during the Week Against Homophobia within the bounds of campaign “Xenophobii.NET”, managers agreed with LGBT-organization’s Coming Out proposal to devote one round to the topic “Homophobia as a political problem”. Maxim Ivantsov (Youth human rights movement) and Michael Potepkin (Youth movement “Nashi”) have been debated.

Per se the debates should have been moved near the questions as “What is homophobia?”, “Does the homophobia exist in modern society?”, “Wherein it shows up?”, “Is homophobia a political problem?”, “And how to overcome this problem?” etc. But instead of it the discussion came to “low-kitchen-chat-about-sex” level, accompanied with the dirty jokes.

Dear friends,

the Week against homophobia continues and on this Saturday, March 28, at 6 p.m. we are going to show you the documentary film “The Times of Harvey Milk” by the American director Rob Epstein in the context of our project ComingOutCinema. This film was shot in 1984 and has since obtained many prestigious awards.

On the 23th of March in the office of the historic-educational human rights non-government organization “Memorial” in Saint-Petersburg there was a commemoration meeting of gay and lesbians – the victims of political repressions. As experts and guests were invited the Director of research-and-development center “Memorial” Irina Flige, the president of “Memorial” Sergey Hahaev, the cofounder of “Memorial” Tatjana Kosinova, the president of the society “The Positive Dialog” Nikolaj Panchenko, the poet Olga Krause and the president of Russian LGBT Network Igor Petrov.

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In over 13 Russian cities, the Week against Homophobia has just begun. It takes places from March 23 to 29. Petersburg does not make an exception and is, as always, in the vanguard of the antihomophobic campaign. This year, the Week against Homophobia is timed to the “Memorial year to homosexual [...]

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