News
Gay asylum seeker flees violence in Putin’s Russia
Nasonov, boyfriend left Russia in July after bloody attacks
Andrew Nasonov (Washington Blade photo by Vladyslav Rekhovskyy)
Andrew Nasonov was at a protest in the Russian city of Voronezh against the country’s controversial proposal that sought to ban so-called anti-gay propaganda to minors on Jan. 20, 2013, when a lawyer with the country’s Orthodox Church encouraged nationalists and hundreds of other people to attack him and the handful of other LGBT rights advocates who were protesting.
He said local police questioned him about the attack before another group of people who identified themselves as members of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department kidnapped him and brought him to a basement. Nasonov said the men took his passport, backpack and cell phone, beat him and threatened to take him to a nearby forest before releasing him five hours later.
“They tried to make me say that I had tried to murder someone,” he told the Washington Blade during an interview in Lafayette Park adjacent to the White House, speaking through an interpreter. “At the same time they assaulted me and abused me and called me gay.”
Nasonov, 25, and his boyfriend arrived in D.C. on July 2 in hopes of receiving asylum in the United States.
Nasonov told the Blade they decided to leave Russia after the Voronezh Human Rights House, a local advocacy organization with which he was connected, was attacked. Nasonov said those affiliated with the group were also targeted.
“I worked with those people,” he said. “After all those things happened, I decided to move to the U.S.”
Mother urges lawmakers to oppose gay propaganda law
Nasonov told the Blade he came out when he was 19 after “a long process.”
He does not speak with his father, and his grandmother is unaware of his sexual orientation. Nasonov said his mother cried when she found out he is gay, but she soon accepted his homosexuality.
Nasonov said his mother in a video she made urged Russian lawmakers not to approve a bill that sought to ban so-called gay propaganda to minors in the country.
He told the Blade she did not experience any repercussions from Russian authorities over her opposition to the measure that President Vladimir Putin signed in June 2013.
“She lives in a small village and they don’t have that much information about all this LGBT activity,” said Nasonov. “People know (that I’m gay) and they sometimes terrorize my mother (by asking her) do you know that your son is a ‘faggot.’ And she says OK, but he’s born this way.”
Russia’s LGBT rights abuses ‘may change’ when Putin leaves office
Nasonov, who worked as a part-time freelance reporter for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, told the Blade he feels Russia’s LGBT rights record has continued to deteriorate since Putin signed the propaganda bill into law.
Two masked men last November attacked members of a Russian HIV/AIDS group with air guns and baseball bats as they attended a meeting of a support group in the organization’s St. Petersburg offices.
Police in Moscow and St. Petersburg in February arrested more than a dozen activists who tried to stage pro-LGBT protests hours before the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics that took place in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. Russian authorities detained Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender former Italian parliamentarian, twice during the games.
Bomb threats and venues abruptly cancelling events disrupted the Russian Open Games that drew more than 300 LGBT athletes from Russia and other countries a few weeks after the Olympics ended. Authorities in May arrested several people who took part in separate LGBT rights demonstrations in Moscow.
Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT advocacy group, waged a 16-month battle against a 2012 law that requires groups that receive funding from outside the country to register as a “foreign agent.”
A local judge in July ruled Coming Out must register as a “foreign agent.”
National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown is among the American anti-LGBT advocates who attended the International Family Forum in Moscow that ended on Sept. 15.
“As far as Putin is the head of state, there is no chance for the situation to get better,” said Nasonov. “It’s only after he resigns or whatever it is that it may change.”
Nasonov seeks to help fellow asylum seekers
President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and other American and European officials have repeatedly criticized Putin over his support of Russia’s gay propaganda law. The Kremlin has also faced scathing criticism from the West over the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists.
Nasonov told the Blade the lawyer who organized the attack against him in January 2013 has recruited what he described as “volunteers” to fight in eastern Ukraine. He said this man subsequently went to the region to fight alongside the pro-Russian separatists in the country’s Donbass region that includes the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Voronezh is less than 200 miles from the Ukrainian border.
“It’s just like an invasion of Russia into Ukraine,” said Nasonov.
Nasonov and his boyfriend, who have been together for more than four years and currently live in Silver Spring, have yet to formally apply for asylum because they said they need someone to translate the necessary paperwork into Russian. The couple continues to receive support from Spectrum Human Rights, an advocacy organization that works with LGBT Russians and those from former Soviet republics who are seeking refuge in the U.S.
Nasonov has also begun standing outside the White House on some afternoons with a large sign that highlights his plight and those of other LGBT Russians.
He hands passersby a flier that details his experiences in Voronezh. It also contains a picture of him laying on the ground with blood on his face after he was attacked during the January 2013 protest.
“I’m trying to tell Americans who come to the White House about the situation in Russia,” Nasonov told the Blade before he walked onto Pennsylvania Avenue and stood in front of the Executive Mansion while holding his sign. “I’m trying to put pressure on the Russian government from here and to help other Russian LGBTs who are here already who came to Washington seeking asylum.”
Editor’s note: Nasonov is the first in a series of LGBT Russian and Ukrainian asylum seekers the Blade plans to highlight in the coming weeks.
The White House
Karine Jean-Pierre becomes Biden’s fourth openly LGBTQ senior adviser
Press secretary’s promotion was reported on Monday
Following White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s promotion to a top role on Monday, four of the 10 officials serving as senior advisers to President Joe Biden are openly LGBTQ.
The other LGBTQ members of the president’s innermost circle are White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, senior adviser to first lady Jill Biden Anthony Bernal, and White House Director of Political Strategy and Outreach Emmy Ruiz.
Jean-Pierre became the first Black and the first LGBTQ White House press secretary in May 2022. She spoke with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview last spring, shortly before the two-year anniversary of her appointment to that position.
“Jill and I have known and respected Karine a long time and she will be a strong voice speaking for me and this Administration,” Biden said in 2022 when announcing her as press secretary.
Breaking the news of Jean-Pierre’s promotion on Monday, ABC noted the power and influence of the White House communications and press office, given that LaBolt was appointed in August to succeed Anita Dunn when she left her role as senior adviser to the president.
As press secretary, Jean-Pierre has consistently advocated for the LGBTQ community — pushing back forcefully on anti-LGBTQ legislation and reaffirming the president and vice president’s commitments to expanding rights and protections.
TEL AVIV, Israel — I was sound asleep at 11 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) on Monday when Tzofar, an app that notifies users of incoming rockets, started to go off. The blaring alarm woke me up. It indicated a “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire.)”
I sat up in bed, opened the app to see whether I was under “red alert.” I was just south of it, so I did not need to seek refuge in the stairwell, which is the building’s designated safe room. Less than a minute later I heard a series of loud booms that shook the building.
Hezbollah launched five ballistic missiles from Lebanon towards an Israel Defense Forces base north of Tel Aviv. The explosions that I heard were Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepting them.
The whole situation was over in less than two minutes — it was the third “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire)” that I received on my phone on Monday, which was a year since Hamas launched its surprise attack against southern Israel.
Hamas at around 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET) launched five rockets that triggered alerts in southern Tel Aviv. Iron Dome intercepted four of them. Shrapnel from the rocket that hit the ground left two women slightly injured. I heard the interceptions in the distance. I walked onto my balcony a couple of minutes later, and saw a man hugging a young woman who was standing on her balcony across the street. She was clearly upset.
I walked to a nearby coffee shop about half an hour later, and ordered an iced coffee. I walked back to my building and started working again. I called my mother a short time later to let her know that everything was fine. I also sent several text messages to my husband and other loved ones and friends that reiterated that point.
The Houthis in Yemen launched a ballistic missile towards Israel shortly after 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET) that the IDF intercepted. I was in Hostage Square outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art when I heard warning messages on people’s phones. I looked at the Tzofar app, and saw Hostage Square was outside of the “red alert” area. I then logged onto two Israeli media outlets’ — the Times of Israel and Haaretz — websites that I have bookmarked on my phone and read the IDF had intercepted the Houthi missile.
More than a thousand people were gathered in Hostage Square less than 90 minutes later, watching an Oct. 7 memorial concert on a large screen that had been set up. The IDF Home Front Command has limited the number of people who can gather in one place in Tel Aviv because of the continued threats of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.
This limit is 2,000.
The sounds of war have been a constant backdrop of this trip.
I begin every day with a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Hilton Beach, which is Tel Aviv’s gay beach. These swims help me stay somewhat sane while I am here in Israel.
Israeli fighter jets and helicopters with missiles strapped to them regularly fly north along the coast towards Lebanon. Drones can also be heard. This scene plays out against the context of people swimming, kayaking, and paddleboarding in the water, and others walking and jogging on the nearby beach promenade.
The Nova Music Festival site where Hamas militants killed 360 people and took 40 others hostage on Oct. 7 is located outside of Re’im, a kibbutz that is roughly two miles from the Gaza Strip. It is about an hour and 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.
I visited the site on Oct. 5.
Large IDF Home Front Command banners warn visitors they had 15 seconds to reach makeshift shelters — large concrete barriers placed together — in case of incoming rockets.
“If you receive an alert, lie on the ground and protect your head with your hands for 10 minutes,” the banner reads.
There were no alerts while I was at Nova. I did, however, hear several Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
I stopped at a roadside restaurant in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz that is roughly three miles north of the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, after I left Nova. I had a sandwich for lunch and ordered an ice coffee for the drive back to Tel Aviv. I was walking to my car and I heard two distant Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The second one shook the ground beneath my feet.
I was back in Tel Aviv less than an hour later. It was the last day of Rosh Hashanah, and Shabbat. Hilton Beach, where I had taken my morning swim earlier in the day, was packed.
Life, at least for Israelis who live in Tel Aviv, goes on amid the sounds of war.
Politics
Trump, GOP candidates spend $65 million on anti-trans ads
The strategy was unsuccessful for the GOP in key 2022, 2023 races
With just four weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump and Republican candidates in key down-ballot races have spent more than $65 million on anti-trans television ads since the start of August, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The move signals that Republicans believe attacking the vice president and other Democratic candidates over their support for trans rights will be an effective strategy along with exploiting their opponents’ perceived weaknesses on issues of immigration and inflation.
However, as Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson told the Times, conservatives had tried using the transgender community as a cudgel to attack Democrats during the 2022 midterms and in the off-year elections in 2023. In most cases, they were unsuccessful.
The GOP’s decision to, nevertheless, revive anti-trans messaging in this election cycle “shows that Republicans are desperate right now,” she said. “Instead of articulating how they’re going to make the economy better or our schools safer, they’re focused on sowing fear and chaos.”
The Times said most Republican ads focus on issues where they believe their opponents are out of step with the views held by most Americans — for example, on access to taxpayer funded transition-related healthcare interventions for minors and incarcerated people.
At the same time, there is hardly a clear distinction between ads focusing on divisive policy disagreements and those designed to foment and exploit rank anti-trans bigotry.
For example, the Trump campaign’s most-aired ad about Harris in recent weeks targets her support for providing gender affirming care to inmates (per an interview in 2019, when she was attorney general of California, and a questionnaire from the ACLU that she completed in 2020 when running for president).
The ad “plays on anti-trans prejudices, inviting viewers to recoil from images of Ms. Harris alongside those of people who plainly do not conform to traditional gender norms, to try to portray Ms. Harris herself as out of the ordinary,” the Times wrote in an article last month analyzing the 30-second spot, which had run on television stations in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
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Sounds of war
Trump, GOP candidates spend $65 million on anti-trans ads
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Comings & Goings
