News
Russian journalist says domestic politics behind anti-gay crackdown
Putin trying to retain grip on power
Protesters gathered outside of the Russian Embassy on Wednesday, July 31, 2013. (Washington Blade photo by Damien Salas)
A veteran Russian journalist said the Kremlin’s LGBT rights crackdown stems from President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to maintain his grip on power.
Masha Lipman, who was previously the deputy editor of the Russian weeklies Ezhenedelny Zhurnal (“Weekly Journal” in English) and Itogi, said during a briefing at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Northwest D.C. on Nov. 15 that then-President Dmitry Medvedev’s September 2011 suggestion that Putin, who was then prime minister, succeed him sparked criticism within the country. Putin faced “direct discontent from the people” later that year over allegations of fraud during parliamentary elections.
Tens of thousands of people in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities protested the contested vote.
“Putin realizes he needs to respond to that,” said Lipman, who edits the Pro et Contra journal the Carnegie Moscow Center publishes.
Russian voters in March 2012 elected Putin for a third term as president. Medvedev became prime minister.
Putin soon began to harass and repress his critics and propose measures that Lipman said were designed to send a message to the country that those who challenged him are “bad Russians, unpatriotic” and “immoral.” She added Putin also sought to define his critics as “undermining our traditional values.”
“He has to define what good Russians stand for because his adversaries, his enemies are modernized,” she said. “Of course good Russians are defined as conservative. It is political conservatism, but increasingly social conservatism as well.”
Lipman said the Kremlin in the middle of 2012 began to focus more on sex, faith, culture, art and school curriculum.
A law that requires groups that receive funding from outside the country to register as “foreign agents” took effect at the end of 2012.
Putin in June signed a broadly worded statute banning gay propaganda to minors that mirrors similar laws that had taken effect in St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and other Russian regions. A second law that prohibits same-sex couples and any couple from a country in which gays and lesbians can legally from adopting Russian children took effect in July.
“Of course the anti-gay legislation comes as a natural element because it is the epitome of social conservatism,” said Lipman.
The Duma passed the anti-gay propaganda ban unanimously, while polls indicate nearly 90 percent of Russians support the law.
“This campaign, this shift to social conservatism, has worked well for Putin consolidating a conservative majority,” said Lipman.
Russian LGBT rights advocates with whom the Washington Blade has spoken in previous months shared similar observations.
Polina Andrianova of Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based advocacy group, said during an August interview she feels the ongoing anti-LGBT crackdown is part of a “much wider campaign” for the Kremlin to showcase its opposition to Europe and the United States.
“Gay people, non-Christian orthodox people, all of them are viewed as kind of dangerous to the traditional values of Russia,” Andrianova told the Blade. “So they’re viewed as non-Russian and [have] imported values from the West.”
Oleg Klyuenkov of the Arkhangelsk-based LGBT advocacy group Rakurs (“Perspective” in Russian) told the Blade earlier this month during his trip to D.C. that “interest groups” within the Russian government have “persuaded” Putin to sign the gay propaganda law and other measures.
“The government is simply trying to distract the public’s attention from our societal problems, our economic problems,” Kluyenkov told the Blade.
Lipman said it is not surprising that some Russian LGBT rights advocates seek to publicly downplay Putin’s role in the country’s LGBT rights crackdown.
“The gay community is very weak as is, enduring basically little or no sympathy from the Russian people,” she said. “Challenging Putin in and of itself is not a safe thing to do.”
The Kremlin’s LGBT rights record continues to overshadow final preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February.
U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Mike Michaud (D-Maine) and 46 other members of Congress concluded in a Nov. 21 letter to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach that Russia’s LGBT rights crackdown violates the Olympic charter. The Florida Republican and more than three dozen other lawmakers last month asked U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun to explain how he plans to ensure the safety of American athletes who compete in the Sochi games.
The Moscow Times reported Putin on Nov. 20 spoke out against discrimination toward “people of non-traditional sexual orientations.” He said last month during a Sochi press conference with Bach that gays and lesbians will not suffer discrimination during the games.
The IOC has repeatedly said it has received assurances from the Kremlin that gays and lesbians would be welcome to attend the Sochi games, even though Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko and other officials have said authorities plan to enforce the propaganda law. The Associated Press on Nov. 18 reported that Mutko told a Russian newspaper that lawmakers should have waited until after the Olympics to pass the controversial statute.
“When the Olympic committee asks for clarifications [on] just how this legislation will be enforced during the Olympics, the government is forced to respond,” said Lipman.
The White House
Jane Rigby awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
Sitting among a diverse and venerable group of Americans from every walk of life on the dais in the East Room of the White House on May 3 was lesbian and NASA astrophysicist Jane Rigby, awaiting her turn to be honored by President Joe Biden who would bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on her.
Rigby, an astronomer who grew up in Delaware, is the chief scientist of the world’s most powerful telescope who alongside her team operating NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, studies every phase in the history of the universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of the solar system.
A member of Penn State’s Class of 2000, Rigby graduated with a bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy. She also holds a master’s degree and a PhD in astronomy from at the University of Arizona. Her work as the senior project scientist for NASA’s Webb Telescope includes studies on how galaxies evolve over cosmic time and she has published more than 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
Rigby was named to Nature.com’s 2022 list of 10 individuals who shaped science and to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women in the same year. Rigby had postdoctoral fellowships at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., before landing her job at Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2013 Rigby was awarded the Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement for Science.
A founding member of the American Astronomical Society’s Working Group on LGBTQ Equality in January 2012, now called the Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Minorities in Astronomy, Rigby serves as its Board Liaison until her term expires this June.
The lesbian astrophysicist in an interview for SGMA’s website spoke about her experiences including coming out:
“I’ve been out since 2000. My story’s simple — I fell in love with a fellow grad student in the department. It was a close-knit department, so hiding would have been ludicrous. Nor did I want to hide the best thing in my life! So, we were out as grad students. I certainly heard people say awful homophobic things at work there. They weren’t directed at me, and they weren’t said by people with power over me. If I recall, I was much less afraid of homophobic discrimination at work, than I was afraid of the two-body problem, and the lack of support we would receive as a same-sex couple in astronomy. That fear turned out to be justified. I’ve seen numerous different-sex couples get a wide range of support in solving the two-body problem, which was never offered to us,” she told the interviewer.
She reflected on American astronaut and physicist Sally Ride, her childhood role model who had an impact on her career:
“One of my biggest role models when I was young was Dr. Sally Ride. A few years ago, on her deathbed, Dr. Ride chose to write in her obituary that her life partner had been a woman. Dr. Ride was the most influential woman scientist when I was growing up — the person that made me say, “I want to do THAT when I grow up.” It was because of her that I realized that astrophysics was a profession, that physics was a subject girls could study, that NASA needed astrophysicists. So I’m so … amused, I suppose, that Sally Ride was this influence on my life’s path, at a time when I was completely unaware that it was even possible to *be gay* — and at the same time, she was gay, in love, and deeply closeted to keep her job.”
The interviewer noted that “for some women being gay is a cause for concern at the work place. Some say they were unsure about how to turn their sexual orientation into a positive aspect of their work persona.” Then asked Rigby what is your view on this?
“My experience is that absolutely I am a *better* astronomer because I’m queer. For a few reasons. First, I see things different than my colleagues. On mission work, as we weigh a decision, my first thought is always the community impact: ‘If we do things this way, who benefits, and who gets left out in the cold?’ Will this policy create inclusion, or marginalization? I think about science in terms of community-building. What team do we need to tackle a given science problem, with skills that are different from mine? Absolutely I think that way because I’m an outsider, because I’ve been marginalized. And because community-building is central to LGBTQ culture,” she said.
Editor’s note: You can read Rigby’s complete SGMA interview here: (Link)
Married to Dr. Andrea Leistra, Rigby, her wife and their young child reside in Maryland not far from her workplace at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Washington and when not studying the universe is often found on the neighboring Chesapeake Bay wind boarding, a favored pastime.
Also honored in the ceremony Friday were a former U.S. vice president, a civil rights worker and martyr, two former Cabinet secretaries — one a former U.S. secretary of state, a speech writer for the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an Olympian and gold medalist, and one of the most powerful woman political leaders and the speaker emeritus of the U.S. House of Representatives, among others, and LGBTQ advocate Judy Shepard.
WATCH
Arts & Entertainment
Washington Blade’s Pride on the Pier and fireworks show returning June 8
The annual Pride on the Pier Fireworks Show presented by the Leonard-Litz Foundation will take place on Saturday, June 8 at 9 p.m.
The Washington Blade, in partnership with LURe DC and The Wharf, is excited to announce the 5th annual Pride on the Pier and fireworks show during D.C. Pride weekend on Saturday, June 8, 2024, from 2-10 p.m.
The event will include the annual Pride on the Pier Fireworks Show presented by the Leonard-Litz Foundation at 9 p.m.
Pride on the Pier extends the city’s annual celebration of LGBTQ visibility to the bustling Southwest waterfront with an exciting array of activities and entertainment for all ages. The District Pier will offer DJs, dancing, drag, and other entertainment. Alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase for those 21 and older. Local DJ’s Heat, Eletrox and Honey will perform throughout the event.
3 p.m. – Capital Pride Parade on the Big Screen
3:30 p.m. – Drag Show hosted by Cake Pop!
9 p.m. – Fireworks Show Presented by Leonard-Litz Foundation
The event is free and open to the public. The Dockmasters Building will be home to a VIP experience. To learn more and to purchase tickets go to www.prideonthepier.com/vip. VIP tickets are limited.
Event sponsors include Absolut, Buying Time, Capital Pride, DC Brau, DC Fray, Burney Wealth Management, Infinate Legacy, Leonard-Litz Foundation, Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, MISTR, NBC4, The Wharf. More information regarding activities will be released at www.PrideOnThePier.com
Maryland
Trone discusses transgender niece
Blade interviewed Md. congressman, Angela Alsobrooks last week
Editor’s note: The Washington Blade last week interviewed both U.S. Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. The full interviews with both Democratic candidates for retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.)’s seat will be on the Blade’s website later this week.
Maryland Congressman David Trone last week discussed his transgender niece during an interview with the Washington Blade about his U.S. Senate campaign.
Trone, who is running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), on May 1 told the Blade during a telephone interview that his niece transitioned when she was in her early 20s. Trone also noted she attended Furman University, a small, liberal arts university in Greenville, S.C.
“I was concerned about how she would be able to transition there,” said Trone.
Trone, who founded Total Wine & More, attended Furman University as an undergrad and is on the school’s board of trustees. Trone told the Blade he donated $10 million to the university to “build out their mental health capacity, which I felt was a way that she could have the best mental health care possible when she worked her way through (her) transition.”
Trone’s niece graduated from the university after she spent five years there.
“She had a great relationship with Furman,” said Trone.
Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks are the leading Democrats running to succeed Cardin. The winner of the May 14 Democratic primary will face former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan in November.
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Jane Rigby awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
Washington Blade’s Pride on the Pier and fireworks show returning June 8
‘RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars’ cast visits D.C.
Rosenstein: Vote for Angela Alsobrooks and April McClain-Delaney
Judy Shepard to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom
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