by Juliana Rincón Parra
The videocast created by the LBGT Labrys organization in Kyrgyzstan in response to the homophobic Russian Orthodox Church’s statements has been viewed more than 409 times within the first 15 hours of being uploaded and is now dubbed and subtitled into English.
As Adil Nurmakov mentioned last March 13th, Labrys, the Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Organization in Kyrgyzstan released a video speaking against the Russian Orthodox Church´s homophobic press release.
On February 14th, an event was organized and press was invited for Labrys’ four year anniversary, where they would talk about their past work, the direction they are headed for the future and God’s tolerant attitude to homosexuals, the last part spoken by Rev. Maksim Bratukhin. The following excerpt from Media and public reactions to 14 Feb press conference on the Labrys website.
Among the few, but very noted mass media that covered Rev. Maksim Bratukhin’s speech about God’s tolerance for homosexuals, are Strana.Kg web portal and Channel 5 (no link available.) The latter channel became the unintended culprit of a poisonous press release and press conference held by Russian Orthodox Church, of which we informed in the previous post.
This ’scandal’ was highlighted by kloop.kg news portal with an in-depth investigation at the heart of the argument between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Apostolic Orthodox Church, which Rev. Maksim Bratukhin represents. At the press conference and the press release, the Russian Orthodox Church calls homosexuals ’sodomites’ and names Labrys as the organization that works on protection of rights of ’sodomites’ – adding into the bundle offences against Reverend Maksim Bratukhin, calling him a ‘masked pervert’.
The March 3rd press release is titled “Russian Orthodox Church has never supported, does not support, and will never support sodomites” and can be found by following this link to Labrys’ site. In response to this press release, Labrys organized a video response addressing the points the church raised and defending their position and expressing their opposition to the church´s choice of words in referring to the LBGT community as “sodomites“.
From Genderstan:
The videocast was uploaded to Kyrgyz video portal and has been watched 409 times within the first 15 hours of being up. The video in Russian features Gulnara Kurmanova of AntiAIDS Association who is a strong LGBT ally, journalist Bektour Iskender, priest Maksim Bratukhin and head of LGBT Organization ‘Labrys’ Anna Kirey. Together they explore the view of religion on LGBT and discuss the possibility of opening a dialog on LGBT issues which most organizations are silent about.
Labrys has now uploaded the full length Russian videocast as well as a dubbed version and a subtitled one. They “will also prepare an open statement focusing on human rights of LGBT persons and affiliated groups, calling for non-discrimination and integration of LGBT into the general society as equal members”, as written on their blog. Following, the subtitled Labrys videocast.