A friend from Moscow just sent me an interesting update on the president’s news conference, at which he was asked about the statements of the Mayor of Moscow:
On the subject of gay pride parade (January 29 blog posting): Putin held a televised press conference last week and was asked what he thought of Luzhkov’s remark. He answered that his duty as the president is to combat the demographics problem in Russia. Got a lot of applause for that.
That, of course, was a real cheap shot, but coming from a head of state, it was also dangerous – I imagine that remark may have provoked some gay beatings that day, as it amounts to the president essentially legitimizing the majority of Russians’ homophobic attitudes.
He did hasten to add that he respects all personal freedoms, which I should note in the Russian political environment he did not have to do (unlike he would have had to in Europe or the US to avoid a scandal). So he does get some credit for that… Still, it was a very public bit of bigotry. And quite representative of the Russians’ sentiment in general.