From The Moscow Times:
Over the last year, various religious leaders have called on their followers physically to attack gay people. It began when a group of activists declared their plans to organize a gay pride parade in Moscow in May 2006. Umar Idrisov, the chief Muslim authority in the Nizhny Novgorod region, said Muslims should stone gays if and when they march. Far from reprimanding Idrisov for calling for violence, Russia’s head mufti, Talgat Tadzhuddin, stated that all “normal people, both Muslims and Russian Orthodox,” are going to beat gay people if they come out to march. Patriarch Alexy II was not quite as crude, but he publicly thanked Mayor Yury Luzhkov for his blatantly illegal refusal to consider the organizers’ application for a parade permit. Last month, Metropolitan Kirill cited homosexuality as a chief evil value forced upon Russia by the West. The message was clear: Homosexuals don’t just lack the right to march, they don’t have the right to exist.