Russian MP, Vitaly Milonov, said gays should be kept in shelters like cats and sterilized

NEWS AND COMMENT: Russian MP Vitaly Milonov is vehemently anti-LBGT. He hates gay people and said that they should be confined to shelters and sterilized like shelter cats. He seems to reflect a substantial segment of Russian society which is hugely illiberal, repressive and backward thinking in respect of equality of rights and attitude towards gay people, the LBGT movement and ethnic minorities. An illiberal society is one in which freedom of thought is restricted.

Anti-LGBT+ Russian MP Vitaly Milonov. Photo in public domain.

Why should this be? It seems to me to be a throwback to the Stalin area. He didn't like gays either and the Russian government told people how to think and it seems that Putin has indoctrinated the citizens of Russia to stop thinking for themselves and to catch up with enlightened thinking. The world has changed thankfully in accepting and respecting gay people, diversity and the LBGT+ movement. Russia is living in the dark past.

The attitude of this segment of Russian society is similar to that of Britain about a hundred years ago when homosexuality was decried and seen as a mental illness. Gay people were seen as dangerous and punished. It was illegal to be gay! A mad world.

I'm thinking particularly of the amazing gay man, Alan Turing, who helped to crack the Enigma machine during the Second World War. He was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film Imitation Game. Alan Turing killed himself by eating an apple laced with cyanide because he was so badly persecuted by the state. That is why the Apple Computer company's symbol is an apple with a bite taken out of it.

Russian MP Vitaly Milonov, a notoriously homophobic member of the State Duma, made the comment that gay people should be kept in shelters and sterilised like cats when responding to a question from a presenter on the Russian radio station RT. The recording has been removed. He was called out by the head of Russia's Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeev, who said that Milonov was calling for people violate Russian law. It appears to be an impotent law.

Milonov also said that "Homosexuality is disgusting. Homophobia is beautiful and natural."

Obviously, what caught my eye was the way that he has equated gay people with shelter cats. An extraordinary way to describe gay people and utterly unacceptable. He is the disgusting one. Russia has a problem with this highly illiberal, right wing and ignorant attitude. Both Russia and China are bad apples.