by Rex Wockner
International News Briefs
Homophobic Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is at it again.
"For several years, Moscow has experienced unprecedented pressure to conduct a gay pride parade, which cannot be called anything but a Satanic act," he said during a public appearance Jan. 25.
"We have banned such parades and will ban them in future as well," the mayor continued. "Everyone must accept this not as a theorem but as an axiom."
"It is high time to crack down with all the power and justice of the law rather than messing around with talk of human rights," Luzhkov said. "We need a social whip or something like that."
Luzhkov has banned gay pride events in each of the past four years and has sent riot police to violently arrest small groups of activists who ignored the bans.
Moscow Pride organizers have sued over the bans in a series of cases that have been merged into one at the European Court of Human Rights. On Jan. 19, the court approved a request from the Russian government to postpone the deadline for its response in the matter until Feb. 20.
Moscow's fifth pride events will take place in late May, and another march will be attempted on May 29.
It is unlikely there will be a Euro Court ruling before that time.
