Gay Bashing Inside the Garden Ring
MOSCOW — After she got home at 5 a.m. Vera Kichanova wrote on Facebook,“I thought all those awful homophobia stories happened outside the Garden Ring,” referring to the avenue that circles central Moscow. “Inside the Garden Ring” is a geographic and social appellation: With its overpriced designer apartments, luxury boutiques and at least a couple of coffee shops on every block, the area is generally considered a world onto itself. Some use the term pejoratively, to indicate rich people who are out of touch with reality; others use it to denote a perceived protected space inside an increasingly reactionary country.
Kichanova, a 22-year-old journalist and municipal council member of a remote Moscow neighborhood, meant that she had felt safe inside the Garden Ring. Not that she had reason to think she needed protection against antigay violence: Although she has been an outspoken supporter of L.G.B.T. rights, she is married to a man and neither of them identifies as gay. In fact, most of the young people who went out to a trendy bar in central Moscow Saturday night did not identify as gay. Still, they got gay-bashed.
“A year ago these people did not feel like they could get away with something like this,” Kichanova said, referring both to the assault and to the fact the attackers clearly did not fear being exposed by corresponding with their victims. “But now they are certain that they have not only the security guards but also the law on their side.”
She was referring to the legislation banning “homosexual propaganda” that President Vladimir Putin signed this summer, which makes it an offense, among other things, to claim that L.G.B.T. people are “socially equal” to heterosexuals. Kichanova and Gnilorybov’s exchange of messages with their self-identified attackers ended with another threat: “We will beat all gays until they are half-dead.” It was this that finally convinced Kichanova, Gnilorybov and one of the other victims to file a police report, 24 hours after the incident.
