Tuesday 3rd September, 5-8pm: On Tuesday of this week, two days before the G20 summit meeting in Moscow, an extraordinary collection of London’s gay community and its ardent friends and supporters assembled outside Downing Street to protest the situation of gay rights in Russia.
Organised by QX’s editor Cliff Joannou, Peter Tatchell and the All Out ‘global movement for love and equality’, this second Russian protest has made political headway both here in Britain and around the world, calling upon David Cameron and other world leaders to ask Putin directly to repeal his anti-gay legislation.
As news of the protest spread, Peter Tatchell was offered a meeting on Tuesday during the day with the Foreign Office to discuss what is happening in Russia and what can be done about it under international relations. At the protest itself Liberal Democrat MP Chris Bryant turned up to speak, and has promised to raise the matter in Parliament. Paul O’Grady was also witnessed in attendance, as well as well-known scene figures and businessmen such as Gary Henshaw and the Ku Bar boys. Globally, there were protests held on the same day in over thirty other cities, from Los Angeles to Stockholm to Managua.
Russia is not the only country in the world with problems to do with treatment of gay rights. Many other states have draconian and disquieting laws infringing upon the human rights of their citizens. However, with the furore over Russia, the Winter Olympics at Sochi 2014, and the international headlines they are making, it shows that the world is speaking about equality. Perhaps, if we can make our voice heard through these protests, and change one country’s political standing, then the signal may sound to other countries that it is time to follow.
What we are fighting for is equality for all, wherever the place of their birth.
Whitehall
Words by Patrick Cash
Photos by Chris Jepson
