This week, the mayor of the city where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held, Anatoly Pakhomov said that there were no gays in Sochi. However, Nikolai Alekseev, the head of Moscow’s gay pride movement, begs to differ. — Ed.
The founder of Moscow Gay Pride movement Nikolai Alekseev commented on Kommersant FM on the statement of Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov who said that there are no gay people in his city.
“Oh, you know, they (gays) live all over the place. They live in any city, in any country, in any culture, in any historical period. This is the absolute reality of human existence. So, to say that somewhere there are no gays is just ridiculous, especially given the fact that we have all been through this, when such a well-known dictator as the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said exactly the same thing about his country during his visit to the U.S., when he met with students at a New York university. So, everybody just laughed at that statement,” said Alekseev, recalling the Sochi gay club “Lighthouse,” famous all over the country.
“Then it is not clear, who attends this club? Maybe, heterosexuals, or officials? Who hangs out there? So, of course, at least in February, during the Olympics, there will be a lot of gays in Sochi, because among the members of a number of sports delegations from various countries participating in the Olympic Games, there will be people with different sexual orientation. So, I think, for Mr. Pakhomov it will be a great opportunity to meet them,” said Alekseev.
Earlier, the Mayor of Sochi Anatoly Pakhomov said that in his city that will host the 2014 Olympics there are no people with non-traditional sexual orientation. “We just say (to gays), it’s your business, it’s your life. But this is not accepted in the Caucasus, where we live. There are none in our city,” said the mayor in an interview with the BBC.