Vile homophobic Russian politician challenges Elton John to a debate
An adamantly homophobic Russian politician has challenged Elton John to a debate on LGBT issues.
Vitaly Milonov, the architect behind St Petersburg’s anti-gay law on which Russia’s federal law is based, made the comments to newspaper Izvestia.
He said he was confident that, in the setting of a debate, he could prove that the presence of LGBT people is “harmful” to “traditional” society.
Going on, Milonov said he did not see a point in invoking religious teachings in order to make Sir Elton see the error in his ways.
“The clergy’s opinions would not be of any importance for this British singer,” Milonov said.
PR managers for the Rocketman singer have said he does not wish to engage in a debate with Milonov.
This comes in reaction to an Instagram post by the star, who said he had been contacted by Vladimir Putin in order to discuss LGBT issues.
Putin recently awarded Milonov – the architect of the country’s law banning ‘gay propaganda’ – with one of the highest civilian honours.
Milonov recently called for Facebook to be blocked in Russia – after the social network introduced a rainbow profile picture filter to celebrate same-sex marriage becoming law in the US.
He claimed: “Facebook has no age limits, it is impossible to control how many minors are there. That is why it would be completely normal to pull the plug on Facebook in Russia.”
The lawmaker has also called for Russia to withdraw from Eurovision, branding it the “Eurovision sodom show”.
In October, he said Apple CEO Tim Cook should be banned from Russia after he spoke publicly about being gay for the first time.
In 2013, Milanov said that gay people were not “normal” and compared being gay to living “with a dog, with a horse, with a sheep, whatever.”.
