Lady Gaga’s producer is fined in Russia for ‘propagating homosexuality’
mainMOSCOW — A St. Petersburg court has fined the organizers of last year’s local show by Lady Gaga for “propaganda of alcohol consumption and homosexuality.”
The city’s court #122 responded to a complaint by Nadezhda Petrova, a local resident, who claimed that during the show, her 13-year-old daughter was exposed to an imitation of sexual intercourse between women and advocacy of alcohol consumption. Full report here.
Your headline leaves out the “propagation of alcohol” aspect and thereby reveals an agenda.
Propriety about cultural developments is not a bad thing for a government. Not every type of personal abuse should be tolerated. Encouragement from abroad is not necessarily prudent. “Encouragement” in a church is most problematic to allow.
Our society is out of control, maybe the Russians are learning from watching us. It is difficult, for example, to get behind Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s case since she made the mistake of making her “point” in an open church. It is a pity she has decided to escalate her suffering even though she is halfway to achieving her goal, making her “statement” perhaps contrived.
The alcohol part seems (stereotypically?) ironic
Regardless of the irony about the alcohol, or one might say precisely because of it, it has to be considered the right thing for them to be concerned about.
I know that the Soviets were trying to use psychology to reduce the alcoholism they faced. For example, during the 1990s a Russian choir director I used to sing for told us in his choir that in the SU they were trying to get people to use nicknames less, as part of a tactic to reduce the over-familiarity that allows for on-the-job drinking.
Why would a mother allow a 13 year old to go to a Lady Gaga show?
I wish American parents still cared enough to complain when our pop culture becomes a detriment to wholesome upbringing of their offspring.