Free Republic

Just over three decades after Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, three people have been arrested and charged under the country’s harsh new anti-LGBT laws and could face ten years in prison for membership of an “extremist organisation”.The arrests are a clear indication of how Russia has come full circle on its persecution of sexual minorities under Vladimir Putin.On March 21, the district court of Orenburg city in south-western Russia ordered the arrest of nightclub owner Vyacheslav Khasanov. The nightclub, which is called Pose, has never explicitly identified as a gay club – styling itself as a “parody theatre bar”, it...

Polticians from outgoing coalition say Likud chief's agreement to put Avi Maoz in charge of Israel's Jewish identity is a 'slap in the face,' could 'plunge Israel into the abyss' The prospect of a hardline, ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic, homophobic nationalist being appointed as the next government's head of "Jewish identity" was met with staunch rebuke from politicians from the outgoing coalition on Sunday, with lawmakers slamming the move by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as "insanity," "racist" and "unreal". Avi Moaz, the single lawmaker of the fringe Noam party, is one of the Knesset's most far-right politicians, holding non-pluralist Jewish views and...

The director of Islamic teaching at the mosque which President Barack Obama has chosen to visit is on record saying that Islam requires homosexuals to be despised and treated as “transgressors.”