'We're not hiding': Gay and lesbian Russians say a cultural shift is underway

By Elizabeth Kuhr and George Itzhak
When Lisa Androshina threw her first lesbian party in Moscow in 2017, she had low expectations.
“We wanted to just gather with our friends and just listen to cool music,” Androshina, 34, told NBC News. “We didn’t plan to do anything serious.”

She booked a bar that she said was often empty and invited her friends and some DJs. After a few parties, her event, called LVBZ, grew in popularity.
https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2021-06/210616-LVBZ-founders-ac-1156p-bc657b.jpg
Lisa Androshina, right, and the other organizers of the LVBZ lesbian party in Moscow.Mikhail Vetlov
Androshina, who lives in Moscow, said about 500 people now attend the quarterly LVBZ nighttime dance, which features DJs from around the world.
Despite the government’s anti-gay restrictions and the country’s conservative views on LGBTQ issues, some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Russians, like Androshina, are publicly sharing their identities and forming community, particularly in the country’s largest cities. This has spawned a cultural shift, albeit a small and partially underground one
“We’re not hiding,” Androshina said. “We’re openly speaking about who we are now.”
[SIZE=6][B][B]‘Tired of being targeted’[/B][/B][/SIZE]
In 2013, Russia passed a law that bans distributing information on LGBTQ issues and relationships to minors. Known as the “gay propaganda law,” the legislation states that any act or event that authorities deem to promote homosexuality to those under 18 is a finable offense.
The legislation has had a far more sinister impact than just a financial one: After it passed, anti-LGBTQ violence in the country increased, according to a 2018 report from the international rights group Human Rights Watch. A 2019 poll from the Russian LGBT Network, a Russian queer advocacy group, found 56 percent of LGBTQ respondents reported experiencing psychological abuse, and disturbing reports have emerged in recent years of the state-sanctioned detention and torture of gay and bisexual men in Chechnya, a semiautonomous Russian region. Just last year, a survey found that nearly 1 in 5 Russians reported wanting to “eliminate” gay and lesbian people from society. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/-not-hiding-gay-lesbian-russians-say-cultural-shift-underway-rcna1225

To each their own

Your beloved Obama and the world he has created.

I told it’s coming to Kenya. :D:D

Umeona hio story ya Amerix?

Antifa lesbians are on his conservative ass like a bad cold. Ngoja uone sasa.

Gays and lesbians should all be shot dead or burnt in super petrol