- Title: RUSSIA: Bomb threat disrupts start of gay Open Games in Moscow
- Date: 26th February 2014
- Summary: VARIOUS OF YABLOTSKY SHOWING FIVE OLYMPIC RINGS
- Embargoed: 13th March 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Romania
- Country: Romania
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Politics,Sports
- Reuters ID: LVA43V71YEXV15V5BQ5CCYVB8Q8M
- Story Text: A bomb threat disrupts the start of the inaugural gay Open Games in Moscow as police search the venue, forcing organisers to meet the press on the street and throwing the opening ceremony in doubt.
A bomb threat disrupted the start of the inaugural gay Open Games in Moscow on Wednesday (February 26) as police arrived to search the venue shortly before the press conference ahead of the Games opening was about to begin.
The Open Games is a five-day long sports competition to be held in the Russian capital in the week following the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Founded by the Russian LGBT sports federation, it will gather more than 300 athletes from 11 countries who will compete in eight disciplines ranging from swimming and basketball to cross-country skiing and table tennis, organisers said.
"The Open Games is an international project aiming to send a positive message to our society and to our authorities that the LGBT community is a perfectly normal community, we are perfectly normal, not sodomites, not marginals, we keep healthy and enjoy sports. We want to be understood correctly by our authorities. We are ready for cooperation, for a constructive and positive dialogue," said Konstantin Yablotsky, the president of the Russian LGBT sports federation.
Yablotsky, who won gold in figure skating at the Cologne gay games in 2010, attracted high-profile guests for the first ever event of such kind in Russia.
"I'll be happy to support the LGBT community, show my support and just be here as an ambassador, as an openly gay man, and also as an Olympian," said Greg Louganis, an American diver who won four gold Olympic medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics in Los Angeles and Seoul.
A bomb threat threw the opening ceremony, due to be held at the same venue later on Wednesday, in doubt. It was unclear if it was going to proceed, organisers said.
Gay rights were in the limelight during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi after President Vladimir Putin signed a law last year banning the spread of "gay propaganda" among minors.
Some gay activists question its legality and others have called for a boycott of the Games in protest.
Homosexuality, which was a crime in the Soviet Union, was decriminalised only in 1993.
But Putin's increasingly conservative social agenda in his third term as president has boosted the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader has suggested homosexuality is one of Russia's biggest threats, and given more air time to anti-homosexual rhetoric on media outlets.
The nationwide bill that outlaws gay "propaganda" gives little detail on what exactly is banned and gay activists fear the possible proximity of children could be used to ban gay rights rally or even punish displays of affection.
Holding hands or kissing a same-sex partner in public, they say, might be enough to be hit with a fine equivalent to $170.
Russian lawmakers say the law is a reflection of the country's social mores, and that it is needed to protect minors. Putin has condemned gay unions for failing to produce children as Russia battles a demographic crisis.
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