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Despite threats from the officials at the Moscow registry office, the two turned up looking like twins, considering Moscow's very strong homophobia, this wasn't against the law. See link to Daily Wail below.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2729737/Here-come-br...
Comments
Fairly respectful, considering the source...
...but I did manage to catch one sentence brimming with judgement and sarcasm--or so it seemed to me:
"And he claims to feel more comfortable as a woman, despite still being attracted to females."
(emphasis mine)
Uh, fellas, if you knew anything about us at all, you'd know that's not at all unusual. Why would her identity as a woman depend upon the gender she was attracted to?
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
The Daily Wail knows when to duck
There are days for virulent attacks and days for snarky hidden ones.
I guess they felt today was a good day to lie low and just be snippy.
Richard Littlejohn still works there remember?
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
I have the unfortunate feeling...
...that even though this was technically legal, the Russian government is going to plug that loophole rather quickly.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Remember - more loopholes ==
Remember - more loopholes == more possibilities for bribes and corruption. [sarcasm]And government haven't united with the orthodox church in ecstasy. Yet.[/sarcasm]
So - I doubt there would be any closing of this loophole. It is the internet that interests the lawmakers now :-/.
PS. I envy the looks and well, how I missed it? Probably should start reading news.
Compared to US or UK there is no homophobia...
...in Moscow.
There are, technically, law against _propaganda_ of homosexuality among children. And yes, gay parades were not allowed in Russia.
But on the other hand I've never heard that somebody was beaten for being gay or for cross dressing. And there are gay couples. They just are not advertising that fact on the central TV stations.
And historically, there was law against male homosexuality in USSR but it was used almost exclusively in cases of rape. So homophobia in Russia usually never goes outside of light ribbing and jokes. Funny thing is that usually when known homosexual is present, nobody jokes about homosexuality.
Also Russian law was always very tolerant to transsexuals. Heard loads of stories and rumors over the years where people were issued full set of documents with new gender before any surgery. Even in 70-th and 80-th.
Also it is quite easy to get hormone prescription and HRT is really affordable. (Also many of the HRT drugs are available without prescription.)
No matter.
Does it strike anyone that as hard as the government might wish to discount this or as some here have said, the loophole factor, human desire and ingenuity always seems to find a way and triump. Russia wants to be part of the modern world but still hold the old ways. It was only a few years ago, or so it seems to have been, Russia for the most part wouldn't allow religious practice. This has had a resurgence to the extreme but hopefully soon it will come back to a balance. In the interim, our sisters just need to stay low and out of limelight, not something this couple has done, and acceptance will come. I wish them all the best. Oh! To be young, bold and beautiful enough to thumb my nose at the authorities. Well at least the young and beautiful part anyways.
Sorry for late reply...
Actually religious practice was never banned in Russia or USSR. There was a problem to get good government positions or good jobs in some organizations if it was known that you are religious. But it is another matter and I'm ready to defend sanity of this approach. :-)
About loophole factor. Russian law is mostly based on "loopholes" many of which are intentional. In Russia there was no actual law against crosdressing. And law against man on man sex in the last ~40 years of that law existence was mostly used in cases of non-consensual sex (rape) or as one of the qualifiers if person had other problems with USSR law.. (and law in part not dealing with rape was removes from criminal code in 1993. 21 years ago)
So once again, US propaganda is very active in promoting homophobia in Russia. But there is no actual homophobia here. I realized that some people considered me to be homosexual while I was in school and college some 20 years later because I've met some of the innuendos used around me at that time in the literature.
So returning to "Russia wants to be part of the modern world but still hold the old ways". Actually Russia wants to let children decide for themselves. So only TV and print advertisement of same sex relationship is banned. And, on the other hand, that law in itself is best advertisement of same sex relationships :-)
Regarding that couple. They are quite beautiful. But I was not able to find any mention of the event even on the Russian gay and TG sites. So even from the point of view of majority of Russian gay and TG people it was not a newsworthy event.