This is what I was thinking. Wow, what a defense “We can’t be repressing gay because there are no gay people!”
This is what I was thinking. Wow, what a defense “We can’t be repressing gay because there are no gay people!”
Every graphic description of torture I read I regret, on some level, because it makes me want to lock myself in my apartment and never leave it again.
I agree with your broader point, but would like to note the counter-example of Uganda with its 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act that made being gay a capital offense. Sure, it didn’t mandate that camps be set up, but it’s an example of Christian rhetoric being used to cleanse a country’s gay population. Fortunately the…
But... Communist-mandated atheism didn’t successfully purge the religions either. They’re still there.
I’ve worked with asylum seekers and related ngos for years - reports out of Russia, Chechnya, Iran, amd similar anti-LGBTI countries have made me vomit. I had to ask to not work on such cases because I was too emotionally and mentally affected, and could not be impartial. Even if they do escape, LGBTI asylum seekers…
Just because the country was officially atheist doesn’t mean the populace was. Persecution doesn’t usually lead to genuine (de-)conversion.
Fun fact I learned during my Italian Cinema phase. When Fellini was casting The Satyricon the two main male leads are American models because he said, “Italy does not have homosexuals.” And that was in the 1960s. Self delusion is a powerful thing.
Tell it to the anti-gay laws of Soviet Russia and Communist China, as well as the ongoing homophobia and bigotry in those two countries denuded of religion over their high communist period.
Some random background about the delightful figure that is Ramzan Kadyrov and his fascinating relationship with the Kremlin nomenclature:
The Guardian also reported some men are, indeed, feared murdered by their families.
This is cultural. And the whole culture in that region, Christian or Muslim, is the problem.
Zero disagreement here. And thanks for making the distinction.
The barriers between culture and religion are permeable - they intermix. Culture creates religion and religion influences culture. There are features both of Christianity and of Islam that are hostile to homosexuality. Not surprising when one considers their common origin. Orthodox Judaism is also fairly hostile to…
But being gay is TOTALLY a choice, right? I mean who wouldn’t choose to be tortured by armed thugs and have to fear for your life? /s
You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic. If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.
Kadurov is way worse then Putin, he makes Putin looks liberal.
I am quite certain a Novaya Gazeta reporter, Anna Politkovskaya was murdered for reporting on atrocities from the Chechen wars a few years back, she is not the first, she is not the last. I fear for the lives of the folks reporting on this.
NO BUT THEM THAR MOOSLIMS IS ALL RAPEY AND EXPLODEY!!!!1!!!1!
The only difference being that Chechnya has a Muslim majority doing this.