Gay Paraders Opt for Safer Approach.

(From The Moscow Times)

Gay rights activists protested in defiance of a City Hall ban on Sunday, marching in front of the Moscow State Conservatory and unfurling a banner demanding greater rights for gays and lesbians from the window of an apartment on Tverskaya Ulitsa, just blocks from the Kremlin.

Dozens of activists from Gay Russia, led by organization head Nikolai Alexeyev, held a series of separate protests throughout the city to try to avoid exposing protesters to some of the violence that accompanied the larger gay pride parades in 2006 and 2007.

"We wanted to make this pride [day] different from the last two years," Alexeyev said in English. "We didn't want to have any more beatings in the street. We just want to show everyone that we are normal people."

City Hall rejected more than 100 requests by the group to hold their annual gay pride parade in May, citing security concerns. Mayor Yury Luzhkov is a fierce opponent of the parade and his office has denied every parade request since 2005, a move upheld as constitutional by the Moscow City Court in April 2007.

The protests were much more peaceful than in recent years, when anti-gay activists attacked protesters in full view of police. Despite the lack of violence, the mood on Sunday was hardly festive.

Screaming protesters threw garbage and rotten eggs at the apartment on Tverskaya. One woman was detained after lifting a banner that said, "Mr. President, stop these sodomites from leading us down to the path to death!"