Russia’s Vitaly Milonov: Gay Men Deserve To Be Punched And Kicked

Vitaly Milonov, the author of St. Petersburg’s “homosexual propaganda ban,” has responded to the attack which cost a gay man his left eye. Via the St. Petersburg Times:

Answering Chizhevsky’s accusations, Milonov said LGBT organizations themselves were to blame for the attack and alleged that the incident might have been an act of provocation to compromise anti-LGBT activists. According to Milonov, some anti-gay activists are provoked by what he called the LGBT activists’ “continuously eccentric escapades, rudeness and acts of provocation.” “Unfortunately, not everybody manages to stay calm, some behave inappropriately,” Milonov told the Fontanka.ru website on Nov. 6. “But to say that some of our activists went with pneumatic guns to a homosexual den…it’s a great pity that the guy got it in the eye, but I think it was a planned act of provocation.” Although a number of LGBT activists were hit by stones and beaten during the rallies, Milonov said that the level of the violence was exaggerated.

“I can’t remember such aggression against these people,” he said. “But when some idiot hops on the Field of Mars (the site of recent LGBT rights rallies) with a placard reading ‘Sodom to every home,’ he is asking to be punched. So it’s absolutely wrong to think that any of our activists could have done this to Chizhevsky. The maximum that they did was delivering somebody a kick at a gay parade.” Milonov apparently approved of acts of violence against LGBT rights activists — whom he alleged to be financed by “Georgian entrepreneurs and from Israel” — at public rallies. “When a foreign agent openly offends my family, as a Russian man I deliver him a kick,” he said. Later in the interview, Milonov dismissed LGBT rights as the “rights of sick people and perverts,” describing LGBT rights rallies as “marches against normal society.”

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Milonov calls himeself “a defender of the cross.” (Graphic via Queer Nation)