Number Of The Day: FOUR!

That's the number of people who have been found guilty of breaking Russia's 'gay propaganda to minors' law since it was introduced a year ago.

Source: Russia Year In Review Report, Human Rights Campaign on the impact of the law.

Nikolai Alexeyev, the Moscow Gay Pride founder and publicity-loving provocateur, and an associate, Yaroslav Yevtushenko, who picketed a children's library in Arkhangelsk with pro-gay signs - probably wanting to get arrested again to appeal to the Western media.

Dmitri Isakov, pictured, was arrested after holding a placard in a public square in Kazan, which translates as; 'Being gay and loving gays is normal. Beating gays and killing gays is criminal.'

All three men were fined 4,000 rubles - about £70.

Alexander Suturin, editor of Molodoi Dalnevostochnik, a weekly local newspaper, was fined 50,000 rubles (£850) for publishing an interview with a sacked gay school teacher who said; 'My very existence is effective proof that homosexuality is normal.' Case appealed.

All three cases are every bit as wrong as they are dumb, but predictions that the law would bring about some anti-gay holocaust in Russia appear to have been rather exaggerated.

[The HRC report is an interesting round-up of how things have been reported in the Western media. It includes such hilarious fictions as facts as Neo-Con far-right gay jerk James Kirchick being thrown off Russia Today for showing his rainbow suspenders (you can watch him NOT being thrown off RT here), and Justin Bieber's ex Selena Gomez being banned from performing in Russia - because of her previously invisible support for gay rights. Yeah, that happened. Other quotes give Gay Star News as their source, to which as ever words fail me].

Regular readers may care to read Chomsky & Herman on the Propaganda Model. State homophobia may be available in other countries we are not currently demonising for empire.