RUSSIA: Actor Ivan "Burn Gays Alive" Okhlobystin Calls On Vladimir Putin To Criminalize Homosexuality

Russian actor Ivan Okhlobystin, who made international headlines last month when he declared that gays should be burned alive in furnaces, is calling upon Vladimir Putin to criminalize homosexuality. Via Russia's official news agency RIA Novosti:

A controversial sitcom star-cum-priest asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring back a Soviet law criminalizing “sodomy.” Not doing so would give “sodomites a constitutional opportunity to defile the young generation,” Ivan Okhlobystin said on his blog on Tuesday. The actor praised Putin for last year’s ban on “gay propaganda,” but said it was not enough because the very existence of a legal gay community amounted to such propaganda. The Kremlin did not comment as of Wednesday. Okhlobystin’s post was deleted from TwitLonger blog platform for violation of terms of service, according to the Twitter of the site’s creator Stuart Gibson, who is openly gay.

Okhlobystin stars in a Russian version of Scrubs titled Interns. More on today's news from the Hollywood Reporter:

In the letter, quoted by the Russian TV station NTV, Okhlobystin complained about the ineffectiveness of the law "against gay propaganda among minors," which was adopted last year, and called for stricter measures. "The existence of officially registered gay communities is direct advertising of homosexuality," reads the letter, in which the actor also suggested that criminal punishment for homosexuality should be reinstated by a national referendum. According to Okhlobystin, urgent steps need to be made to avoid recognition of gay people as "a social group," which, would give them "a constitutional opportunity to corrupt the younger generation."

Sodomy was punishable by up to seven years in prison during the Soviet era, but homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1993 by the DUMA.