St. Petersburg refuses to fund anti-homophobia campaign

Officials in St. Petersburg, Russia, have refused to include funding to fight homophobia in the city’s Program for Tolerance.

A funding request for posters, a film festival and other actions had been submitted by the LGBT group Equality.

The chairman of the city’s Committee on Culture, Anton Gubankov, agreed that homophobia is a problem but said that “publishing and distributing (material) about LGBT people can be negatively perceived by the majority as the promotion to the public of sexual and gender minorities.”

Equality spokeswoman Maria Efremenkova called the rejection un-European.

“St. Petersburg, which aims to show itself as the most European city in Russia, acts in contradiction to most European cities, which sponsor large-scale campaigns against homophobia and transphobia,” she said.

Efremenkova’s group is planning the city’s first gay pride parade on June 26.

Attempts to stage pride parades in Moscow over the past four years have been banned by that city’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. Small groups of activists who ignored the bans have been violently attacked by riot police and anti-gay thugs.