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Russia Refuses Registration of Gay Group Campaigning for Marriage Equality

■ Irina Fedotova (Fet) and Irina Shipitko seen when they attempted to get married in Moscow in May 2009.  The couple subsequently got married in Canada. photo courtesy Marriage Equality Russia

MOSCOW, February 24, 2010  –  The Russian Ministry of Justice has turned down the application of a group of gay and lesbian activists to register first All Russia NGO dedicated to support the campaign for same-sex marriage.

“Your organisation cannot be registered on the basis that its aims contradict the law of NGOs and provisions of the family code, which define marriage as a union between a man and a woman,” the Ministry said in a letter to the board of the group.

“We asked today the Russian justice to reverse this illegal decision, and we will go all the way up the European Court of Human Rights if necessary,” the board said in a statement last night.

‘Marriage Equality Russia’ is backed by a group of Moscow and St Petersburg LGBT groups as well as individuals, including heterosexuals.

The campaign has been running since last May when the group helped a lesbian couple to register their union in Moscow.  After getting a refusual from the Civil Registrar, the couple travelled to Canada and were married last October in Toronto.

The couple is about to introduce an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights after the Russian justice twice upheld the denial.

“This campaign is not only about my marriage with Irina,” said one of the spouses, Irina Fedotova (Fet), a board member of ‘Marriage Equality Russia’.

“We want to bring our contribution to help opening the way to marry to other gays and lesbians and not only in Russia”.  

Nikolai Alekseev, spokesperson for ‘Marriage Equality Russia’ said that Russia is a country where you cannot hold a march in the streets if you openly advertise it as gay.

“This is the same with registering an openly gay organisation.  We could probably succeed in registering a NGO and remain discreet on its aim or organise a march without applying it as a gay march, but there is simply no sense in staying in the closet.

“Only the fight for visibility gets you in the media and helps, with time, to make more people open about us,” he said.

“Knocking at each door in secret and quietly explaining what is homosexuality is not going to take us anywhere in a country of 141 million”

In October, a group of UN experts found that the breach of rights of LGBT people in Russia is “systematic”.

 

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