Kat Mayhew (Reporter)
GAY bars in Andalucia are boycotting vodka, after draconian anti-gay laws were introduced in Russia.
A series of Spanish bars along the coast are refusing to stock any brands coming from the country after President Putin banned homosexuality.
“We are not ordering any vodka from Russia,” insisted a spokesman for Gay Club Puerto Banus.
“We totally support the gay community”
Gay clubs and bars around the world are now supporting the movement, launched by American Dan Savage.
The law banning homosexuality has been enforced by the Kremlin, and has stirred up Russian vigilantes – who are taking the law into their own hands.
Shocking videos have been appearing on Youtube showing thugs attacking victims in the street, and even urinating on them.
The No Russian Vodka movement is ensuring that homophobia cannot be hidden behind the iron curtain – the global community is doing everything it can to highlight the problems in Russia.
And behind this action stands the Russian Orthodox church and the same in Greece with the Greek Orthodox church – maybe time to get rid of these repressive priests of darkness.
Are we now going to boycott all Islamic regimes, whose teaching is exactly the same. And all fundamentalist Christian countries and US States – ditto. And the Vatican has said a few things recently about banning gay men from becoming priests. . .
maybe they should ban all straight Russians as well. I mean it is not the vodka that is homophobic but the people.They certainly are not a gay race of people . Oh pm yes lets ban the lot, religion is the root caurse of most problems we would be better off without them .
As an original gay liberationist, I would like to critic this piece for being inaccurate. The new law in the Russian Federation, which was first tried out in St. Petersburg, bans not homosexuality as such, but gay propaganda directed at minors under 18 very much like the old Thatcherite clause 28 which was introduced after my company Gay Men’s Press published the first ever gay book for kids, Jenny lives with Eric & Martin, back in the early 1980s. Homosexuality is perfectly legal in Russia even if the wider society is homophobic and both Moscow and Petersburg have vibrant gay scenes. Boycotting vodka may make you feel good – and good on you – but as clause 28 was eventually scrapped by pressure from the Brit gay world no doubt the militant Russian gay scene will eventually overturn this law too. No rights are ever won without struggle. As for that ignorant jerk Stephen Fry equating Russia with Nazi Germany, after the old USSR lost 26 million souls fighting off the Nazi invasion, beggers all belief. We also published a book called The Men With the Pink Triangle, an account of a gay prisoner in the nazi death camps. I suggest that Mr Fry find a copy somewhere and actually do some research before coming out with such trash.