Hiding Gays in Russia
When I read this piece on CNN I can’t honestly say I was surprised. It’s human nature. If you bully and push anyone too hard, and threaten them long enough, they are going to retreat and go into hiding. And that’s exactly what’s been happening in Russia with gay people, even some of the most prominent who have been openly out for a while.
A very openly gay bisexual from the Ukraine, Pavel Petel, was once candid about what he did and about who he was, until he and his partner were attacked near Moscow. Here are a few of his comments:
“People in the regions are very aggressive towards gays. Sergey and I were lucky to be alive last year because some people wanted to kill us. My fear has been growing since then.”
And recently, “I was working on my video when I turned on the TV and saw video of one anchor of a Russian channel who said that you need to burn the gays’ hearts,” he told CNN. “I had to continue to smile, perform, say ‘hello sexy’ but it was difficult. I started to be afraid.”
And this is what we’re supporting this winter with the Olympics?
I still stand by my own prediction that all will be calm for the sake of appearances during the Olympic games, but when they are over this is only going to get worse for gay people in Russia and more like Petel will go into hiding unless the rest of the world does something to stop it. And by not boycotting the 2014 Olympics the entire world is doing a huge disservice to the global LGBTI community. Because when I hear open comments about burning gays it’s getting too close to what happened in Nazi Germany during WWII. History always tends to repeat itself.
Chris Christie Slams Trans People
As if New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t have enough bad things happening with the GW traffic jam deal and all the problems within his administration, he vetoed a bill that would have given trans people the opportunity to change the gender on their birth certificates in order to identify with the gender they are now. In other words, if you were classified as a male at birth and you became a trans woman without having surgery, you could go back and change it to female on your birth certificate. Those who have had surgery can make the change, but those who haven’t can’t.
‘It was very vindictive,’ Garden State Equality Executive Director Troy Stevenson tells Gay Star News. ‘It had not been a controversial piece of legislation. Just because it had the word transgender in it, he didn’t want to sign it.’ Stevenson points out that only about 30% of transgender people actually go through a full surgery.
I’ve known a few trans people in my time and none that I’ve known had the surgical procedure done, not one. Yet they all lived their lives as male to female and no one I knew every thought twice about it. I would imagine the ability to change the gender classification would come in handy when dealing with any official papers or related material. Unfortunately, thanks to Christie they can’t.
The whole point behind the new trans gender movement, for lack of a better way to phrase this, is more about how trans people mentally identify with gender and not about their actual physical body parts. Christie has always come off as a nasty, belligerent man, and if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, guess what?
The bill passed the Senate in late December by a vote of 21-11. The Assembly had approved the bill last June by a vote of 43-27.
My side note here is one thing: if this is the best the Republican party can come up with in the next general Presidential election we’re all in big trouble. Because this is taking away our choices as voters. And we all wind up voting by the sheer process of elimination instead of passion for the people running for office.
