RUSSIA: Anti-Gay Crackpot Paul Cameron Speaks To National Parliament

Paul Cameron, the only American anti-gay activist who rivals Scott Lively for his litany of repulsive lies about LGBT people, has testified before Russia's Duma. Via Buzzfeed:

Russia’s parliament invited an American anti-gay psychologist whose work has been widely discredited to give expert testimony where he suggested that a third of LGBTs support pedophilia, according to a participant in the meeting. Family Research Institute founder Paul Cameron, who has been censured by the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association for distorting statistics in efforts to block LGBT rights, spoke at a Duma roundtable on “family values,” according to tweets from lawmaker Alexander Sidyakin. Based on his tweets, the roundtable seemed to be intensifying the drumbeat in favor of laws targeting gay and lesbian parents. A pending proposal to take away their children was recently withdrawn by its sponsor, Deputy Alexei Zhuravlyov, but he has promised to re-introduce it after some tweaks are made to its wording. Russia has already banned citizens of countries that have approved same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children.

Cameron's most frequently repeated lie is his claim that gay men die an average of 20-30 years early. Even the vile Family Research Council has deleted that bullshit from their website, but just a few months ago he repeated that claim to a drooling Bryan Fischer.  We have to wonder if Cameron also told the Duma about his belief that President Obama is secretly gay or suggested that they adopt his idea to tattoo HIV-positive people on the face.

Rachel Maddow Calls Out Religious Right For Supporting Russia's Anti-Gay Pogrom

Brian Brown: Fred Karger Will Not Stop Me From Collaborating With Russia

Yesterday we learned that NOM watchdog Fred Karger has reached out to federal officials, asking that they investigate Brian Brown for possibly violating the Logan Act, which forbids citizens from collaborating with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Five days after Brown's speech to the Duma, they passed the bill which bans anybody from a country with legalized same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children. Today an official Russian state news agency got a response from Brown.

Brown told RIA Novosti in a telephone interview Wednesday that he spoke extemporaneously at the meeting, and he called Karger’s suggestion that the speech may have violated US law “absurd.” “It is laughable how little he understands that in America we’re free to stand up and speak for things like traditional marriage around the world,” Brown said. Brown said he was invited to speak to the lawmakers by Russian activists working with the World Congress of Families, an Illinois-based conservative group set to hold a global convention in Moscow next year. He said Karger’s appeal to top US officials would not deter his work abroad. “We’ve been very open that we’re going to work with allies around the world that believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” Brown said. A State Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that she could not confirm whether Karger’s letter had been received but added that “if and when we do receive it, we will review it and respond appropriately.”

According to a transcript posted by the Duma, one of the things that Brown told Russian lawmakers was, "We will unite. We will defend our children their normal civil rights. Every child must have the right to normal parents: a mother and a father."

REPORT: NOM's Brian Brown Collaborated With Russia's DUMA On Bill That Bans Gay Couples From Adopting

Right Wing Watch reports that at the invitation of Russia's legislature, NOM president Brian Brown traveled there with a group of far-right French Catholic anti-gay activists to collaborate on the bill that bans gay couples from adopting.  The DUMA passed the bill five days after Brown's visit.

On June 13, 2013, just days after the Russian Duma passed laws banning on gay “propaganda” and actions that “offend religious feelings,” a delegation of five French Catholic anti-gay activists --at least one with ties to the far-right Front National party -- traveled to Moscow at the invitation of the Duma committee on family, women and children to discuss, among other issues, Russia’s plans to tighten its ban on adoption by same-sex couples abroad. Joining them was one of the most well-known figures in the American anti-gay movement, National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown. Brown had worked closely with the French anti-gay movement in its protests of the country’s marriage equality law, traveling to Paris to demonstrate against the law and signing onto an email to members of the Collectif Famille Mariage, one of the most prominent groups working to oppose marriage equality in France.

More from the report:

Le Figaro notes that elected officials at the front of the French anti-marriage movement did not respond to the Duma’s invitation to attend the meeting for fear of being “associated with a campaign of homophobia directed by Moscow” but that the name of the far-right Le Pen family “was mentioned several times” at the event. According to Russian news reports, the French activists and Brown attended two events in Moscow. One was a joint meeting on changes in international adoption laws with the Duma’s committee on foreign affairs and its committee on family, women and children – whose chair, Yelena Mizulina, authored the ban on gay “propaganda” and the adoption bill.

The other event was a roundtable discussion on "Traditional Values: The Future of the European Peoples," hosted by the St. Basil the Great Foundation – a Catholic group run by Konstantin Malofeev, the head of a private equity group and spirited anti-gay activist – and also sponsored by the Duma’s family committee, the right-wing Center for Social-Conservative Policy, and a new multi-party group of Russian MPs formed, with approval of the Russian Orthodox Church, to “protect traditional Christian values” and fight “aggressive liberalism” inreaction to Pussy Riot’s protests. Among the measures pushed by the group was the new law imposing jail time for “insulting religious feelings.”

Right Wing Watch notes that NOM has never announced Brown's trip to Russia and has refused their request to comment publicly. As you may recall and as RWW notes in their report, earlier this year Brown appeared at one of the massive anti-gay rallies staged in Paris by Manif Pour Tous, which by then had been taken over by violent factions from France's far-right and neo-Nazi groups, as well as a group that demands a Catholic theocracy for France.

It seems obvious that Brown's humiliating defeat in France and the friends he made in their failed and often violent anti-gay movement spurred his invitation to take part in Russia's pogrom against its gay citizens. It's not yet known if Brown also collaborated on the pending bill that authorizes the Russian government to seize the children of gay parents. (And still, NOM is not listed as a hate group by the SPLC.) Please hit the top link in this post and read the full and extensive report by Right Wing Watch.

VIDEO: Below is a brief appearance by Brown from a Russia television station covering the meetings.

RUSSIA: Activists Arrested As Duma Passes Ban On "Homosexual Propaganda"

Today the lower chamber of Russia's legislature passed a national ban on "homosexual propaganda." Such bans were already in existence is several regions and in the city of St. Petersburg. Towelroad reports that schoolboys attacked and kicked a gay activist as the bill was being considered.

The legislation, adopted on June 11, has been criticized by rights defenders as a way to oppress homosexuals amid rising homophobia. It bans "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" to minors by Russians, foreign citizens, and media organizations. In addition, it would ban gay pride rallies. Fines can be up to 1 million rubles ($31,000). Earlier on June 11, as the legislation awaited its final reading, police were deployed to break up clashes in front of the State Duma between gay-rights advocates and Christian activists. At least 20 rights activists and several antigay demonstrators were detained.

The bill now proceeds to the Federation Council and must be signed by President Vladimir Putin.

RUSSIA: 20 Protesters Arrested As Duma Approves Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Today the Russian Duma almost unanimously approved the first reading of the national bill to ban "homosexualist propaganda."

The bill was supported by 388 MPs with one vote against and one abstention. The ban was submitted by deputies from the Novosibirsk Region in Siberia, who had earlier introduced similar local regulations. If approved, it would introduce heavy fines for the promotion of homosexuality among children. Those found guilty of the offence could be fined up to 5000 roubles (about $160), but the fines increase 10-fold for officials and 100-fold for companies.

Hearings were initially scheduled for December, but got postponed twice which caused some MPs to suggest that there must be some kind of a homosexual conspiracy which is desperate to prevent the law from coming into force. Similar laws already exist in several Russian regions, including the country’s second-largest city St. Petersburg. The initiators of the federal ban say that homosexual propaganda in Russia is rife, both through the mass media and public action, and children are especially vulnerable as they cannot critically appraise “the avalanches of gay propaganda that fall upon them every day”.

LGBT activists outside the Duma were assaulted and pelted with eggs by members of the Russian Orthodox Church, but the Associated Press reports that it was "mostly" the gay protesters who were arrested.

RUSSIA: Legislature To Consider National Ban On "Propaganda Of Homosexualism"

Next month Russia's legislature will consider adopting a national ban on "gay propaganda" similar to the ones already existing in St. Petersburg and nine other regions. Via press release from the Russia LGBT Network (their English is slightly fractured):

The Russian State Duma will consider the first reading of a federal level bill banning so-called "propaganda of homosexualism" on December 19th, 2012. This information was received from Russian State Duma calendar to address issues in the second ten days of December, which was recently approved by the Duma. Igor Kochetkov, Chairman of Russian LGBT Network: "Today we would like to address to the deputies of State Duma with a call. Don't discredit yourselves and Russia by adoption this absolutely senseless ith common sense and the right of law. One year of application of such laws in the regions have shown that, in practice, they are used to persecute dissidents, not to protect the children. Under the pretext of protecting the family the author of the bill actually destroy it, identifying a family as "biological union of a man and a woman." In reality this "farm" approach to people shows how some deputies look to us, their constituents."

The Russia LGBT Network has a blog (in Russian.)