Thought For The Day: Anton Krasovsky

"It's a very difficult question," said Anton Krasovsky, a gay television presenter who lost his job after coming out live on air. In a column in the Guardian last May, he wrote that the time for gay people to become courageous and stand up for their rights had come. Now, though, he said it was hard to evaluate whether the huge international pressure had helped.

"I think any kind of hysteria is bad," he said. "Putin is not Hitler. Sochi is not Berlin 1936. When I read the calls for boycotting the Olympics I was absolutely disgusted."

Quoted in The Guardian who also visit Sochi's gay club Mayak.

Owner Andrei Tanichev,tells them; "It's a complex question, whether or not all the noise in the west about the issue has been good or bad. On the one hand, it is very good that it has forced people in Russia to think about gay rights properly. On the other hand, I think the level of noise has been greater than the size of the problem."

Still what would they know, they're only gay Russians?

PS The Independent On Sunday also sampled the gay scene in Sochi - which they claim is "Russia's gay capital."

PPS And the Daily Telegraph!! "It's Russia's Brighton."

PPS Today's Times also goes to Club Mayak! The place must be rammed right now.

PPPS As does USA Today!!! "It's a bit  fake, all this attention," a patron tells them, ironically. 

The Guardian: Worst Letter EVER!!!

Perhaps, when thinking about how best to proceed about homophobia in Russia, we should listen to gay people in Russia (Report, 8 August). The Russian LGBT Network has said: "We believe that calls for spectators to boycott Sochi, for the Olympians to retreat from competition, and for governments, companies and national Olympic committees to withdraw from the event, risk transforming the powerful potential of the Games into a less powerful gesture that would prevent the rest of the world from joining LGBT people, their families and allies in Russia in solidarity and taking a firm stance against the disgraceful human rights record in this country. Do not boycott the Olympics – boycott homophobia."
Russia's leading gay rights campaigner, Nikolay Alexeyev, also does not support a ban or boycott. 
Perhaps these people have a better idea about what to do than patronising neocolonialist posturing from the likes of Stephen Fry?

Richard Smith

Brighton, East Sussex

Who is this Richard Smith guy?
He sounds like an arsehole.
He's been to Moscow for like a day and yet he thinks he can pronounce forth on this.
How dare he accuse national treasure Stephen Fry of "patronising neocolonialist posturing".
Wanker.

• The laughably apolitical and banal Gay Star News is - but of course - going to town on the Sochi Olympics. Here they report on someone who's painted their nails rainbow "in protest". You really couldn't make it up.

Update: Russian gay TV journalist, Anton Krasovsky, also speaks out against a boycott.

Russia: I Am Human And...

“For the majority of Russians, ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ are abstract concepts that have been imbued with a number of negative connotations through media and public rhetoric.
“If people associate them with real people, then attitudes change quickly. People who actually know gay  people are much less likely to be homophobic.”

Igor Kochetkov, a Russian gay rights campaigner, quoted in The Independent.
A rare good article about The Gays in The Independent, that's mainly about Anton Krasovsky, pictured, a television presenter for a state-backed TV station - who was sacked, though possibly more for criticising Putin, and his anti-gay "propaganda" law, not for coming out.
There's a more revealing Russian interview here. 
Not sure why journalists always think Peter Tatchell is the go-to-guy for a quote on any gay story, though, he usually talks sense, but he's hardly an expert on Russian life.
The journalist also seems to be oblivious to the fact that gay men being murdered also happens in the UK. 

All of Anton Krasovsky’s friends and colleagues knew he was gay. But when he announced it on live television, it caused a sensation. The presenter, who had made a successful career on state television channels before being appointed editor-in-chief of a new Kremlin-funded internet broadcaster, was no marginalised liberal; he was very much part of the system. But with his words, he had crossed a red line.

“I am gay, and I am a human being just like Putin and Medvedev,” he said to the cameras, referring to Russia’s President and Prime Minister. In the context of Russian public life, it was a revolutionary statement. He was fired immediately, and all references to him were removed from the channel’s website...