European court rules that Russia can no longer ban LGBTQ events like Pride

28th November 2018

Russia could no longer be allowed to ban LGBTQ events following a landmark ruling by a top European court.

Earlier this year, the country banned what would have been it’s first ever Pride parade within 24 hours of it being announced.

The government used its ‘homosexual propaganda’ law it introduced back in 2013 to shut down the Pride march before it even got going.

“I made a decision, there will be no gay parade,” Gennady Denikayev, the town manager of Novoulyanovsk where the Pride event was due to take place, said at the time.

“We intend to protect traditional family values and, foremost, our children from the propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.”

However, he could no longer legally be able to prevent the LGBTQ event from taking place thanks to this new ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

A group of seven Russian activists filed 51 applications with the court, claiming that Russia’s ban on LGBTQ events violates articles 11, 13, and 14 of the Convention of the court.

They argued that the decisions being made by authorities in Russia were violating LGBTQ people’s “freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association with others.”

In their ruling, the ECHR wrote: “The Court considers that in the instant case, the ban on holding LGBT public assemblies imposed by the domestic authorities did not correspond to a pressing social need and was thus not necessary in a democratic society.

“The Court also finds that the applicants suffered unjustified discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, that that discrimination was incompatible with the standards of the Convention, and that they were denied an effective domestic remedy in respect of their complaints concerning a breach of their freedom of assembly.”

The court did not, however, award the seven activists with monetary compensation that they had requested.

It comes a year after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia’s ‘homosexual propaganda’ was illegal on the grounds that it is discriminatory.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities refused to protect LGBTQ citizens from hate speech, saying that they don’t have a responsibility to.