ULYANOVSK, Russia--For possibly only the third time in a decade, the Russian marriage officials this week faced an application for a same-sex wedding.
The application by two gay rights advocates on 18 January was a rarity, and also something of an oddity. This was no would-be union of two men in love, but "purely a political initiative" by two men with no emotional relationship--aimed, they said, at "drawing public attention to the status of sexual minorities in Russia" and bringing a constitutional challenge to Russia's Family Code. Indeed, one of the would-be spouses says he is not gay and is expecting a child shortly with his common-law wife.
Edvard Murzin's partner, Olga, told Moskovskiy Komsomolets she had nothing against his entering into "marriage" with a man. "She knows that I am a champion of human rights," Murzin added.
Murzin, who is a member of parliament in Bashkortostan, has already tried unsuccessfully to change the Family Code in Bashkortostan and in the State Duma to replace the definition of marriage as a "union between a man and a woman" to "a union between two citizens."
The Supreme Court, where he filed a complaint against the Duma's rejection of his motion, suggested he should instead appeal to the Constitutional Court.
For that, he needed to make a precedent, prompting him to submit an application with Edvard Mishin, editor of the gay magazine Kvir (Queer) and the gay.ru website.
Mishin had already tried to organize a test case by advertising on his website for a fiance. Having failed to get a response, Mishin decided to try to get married to Murzin instead.
"I ask myself who, if we do not do so, will defend the interests of such people?" Murzin told journalists on 18 January.
"Some 5 to 10 percent of Russians are homosexual," MosNews quoted Murzin as saying. "In addition to being neglected by nature, they also suffer from their rights being infringed upon. There are all sorts of examples of them being harassed at work, being dismissed, being refused promotion."
Murzin went further, arguing that his and Mishin's application for marriage was an effort to help not so much homosexuals "as society itself."
In the registry office the couple had to write their application out on a blank sheet, as the standard blanks included the "discriminatory" pronouns "she" and "he."
Their application was swiftly rejected.
Murzin and Mishin will now take their test case to the Constitutional Court in an attempt to force it to make a ruling. If that fails, they are expected to appeal and could ultimately turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
'VICE' AND THE LAW
Their chances of winning a ruling in their favor in Russia look slim. Some politicians have already warned that making same-sex marriages legal would undermine society. "It is one thing for society simply to understand [same-sex marriages] … and another thing for society to permit it to be an equal part of itself," Duma deputy Aleksandr Chuyev told the BBC's Russian service on 19 January. He warned that society would begin to collapse after a ruling in favor of same-sex marriages.
"If the state moves in this direction, it will be a delayed-action mine," Chuyev said.
Over the past year, the Duma has shot down several bills targeting gays. One attempted to ban homosexuals (along with pedophiles and alcoholics) from taking up seats in the Duma. Another aimed to make gay sex illegal.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993.
In 1917, the Bolsheviks nullified laws banning sex between men and, although Stalin's rise to power curbed the revolutionaries' cultural liberalism, homosexuality remained legal until 1934. For nearly 60 years after that, however, homosexuals faced up to five years in prison for sodomy.
The first attempt to win legal rights for homosexual marriage came in 1994, when the writer and poet Yaroslav Mogutin tried to marry his partner.
Last year a gay couple was married in a church wedding in Nizhniy Novgorod. The Russian Orthodox priest was subsequently defrocked and the marriage annulled.
The Russian Orthodox Church has made clear its opposition to Murzin's and Mishin's initiative. The archbishop of Ufa, Bashkortostan's capital, denounced Murzin as "a devil's advocate" propagating "spiritual vices."
A PUBLICITY STUNT WITHOUT PUBLICITY
"Russia is unlikely to be among the first countries to allow same-sex marriages," Pyotr Shelishch, a member of the Russian parliament, told the radio station Ekho Moskvy on 19 January, a view most people would share. Murzin's and Mishin's trip to the registry office was "rather a certain way to sway public opinion."
If it was a publicity stunt, its success has been limited. Around 50 journalists gathered near the registry office but coverage was, ultimately, very limited or perhaps not as serious as the initiators would have wanted.
Natalia Shaten, a reporter with Ekho Moskvy, told gay.ru that her report would be "somewhat ironic," though she believed the problem is serious.
Alexei Kadashev of Ren TV criticized that approach. "We are not the country where you should trifle with it or mock it," he told gay.ru. "There is no place for irony."
Hate crimes, which have been on the rise in Russia in recent years, also involve gays. Gay rights campaigners report a number of murders each year.
In the opinion of gay.ru, fear was the reason only two gays came to the registry office to support Murzin and Mishin.
For the Russian population, this attempt at same-sex marriage went essentially unnoticed, almost completely eclipsed by the widespread unrest caused by the loss of free benefits for the elderly and disabled and rising utility prices. Only the Moscow media diverted its attention from the problems of pensioners to the problems of homosexuals for a while.
The case, though, may have won Mishin's gay.ru some unwelcome attention. It reported that its editorial offices were visited on 19 January by several police officers who informed Mishin that the premises were "not being used in accordance with their purpose." He was told to move out of the offices within a week.
The website and the magazine are "urgently looking for substitute premises," gay.ru reported.
Sergei Borisov is a TOL correspondent.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail