Moscow mayor calls gay pride march 'Satanic'

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clipped from www.google.com "A gay parade... cannot be called anything but a Satanic act," Yury Luzhkov told an education conference, quoted by Interfax news agency. "We haven't permitted such a parade and we won't permit it in the future." Luzhkov called for gay marchers to be punished. "It's high time that we stop propagating nonsense discussions about human rights, and bring to bear on them the full force and justice of the law," he said. Luzhkov first called the gay pride parade "Satanic" in 2007, prompting gay rights campaigners to sue him for libel -- unsuccessfully. Organisers have never been granted permission to hold gay pride parades by the city authorities, leading to violent clashes with police and anti-gay protestors. In a public relations disaster for the city, Alexeyev and other campaigners were brutally dragged into police vans by riot police in front of a crowd of international journalists.

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