Russian
Christians "purge" gay cruise waters

More than 200 Orthodox and right-wing Russians, including a fiercely antigay member of parliament, sailed an icon-bedecked ship down the Moscow River on Sunday to "cleanse" the waters after a gay cruise took the same route the night before, the Interfax news agency reported.

Participants hired a ship and decorated it with church banners, icons, Russian imperial flags and their motto, "We are Russian, God is with us."

"Our great Orthodox capital is in spiritual vacuum and experiences ideological aggression from the West. So our aim was to demonstrate that the Russian people's spiritual and moral ideals are alive and will be so forever," Yury Ageschev, coordinator of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, told Interfax.

He said one of the action's aims was "to purge the Moskva River after a large group of gays hired a similar ship to have a party going the same route last night."

Participants included state Duma member Nikolay Kuryanovich, who in February introduced federal legislation to recriminalize homosexuality.

Joining him were members of Cossack groups and assorted religious believers. They sang a prayer as they passed the Novospassky Bridge, then listened to a Christian rock band, Interfax said.

Gay rights continues to be a sore point in Russia. Antigay neighborhood activists recently asked Moscow officials to support their nightly patrols aimed at emptying a park where gay people meet.

On Friday, Russia's supreme court upheld earlier court rulings banning last year's Moscow pride parade, which had been scheduled for May 2006. Gay activists rallied anyway and were pummeled by right-wing protesters and detained by police. (Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)