“Not so much ridiculous as dangerous!”: Pen Centers in the capital on the ban on LGBT-propaganda

The cultural community continues to discuss a package of laws on “banning LGBT propaganda, propaganda of pedophilia, as well as the demonstration of LGBT information and information that encourages gender reassignment among teenagers,” recently adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation. For example, members of the St. Petersburg PEN Club and PEN-Moscow rightly point out in their joint statement that this kind of interference by state censorship in artistic creation is unacceptable, and the adopted laws themselves are not so much ridiculous (after all, it is simply impossible to “propagandize” sexual orientation), how dangerous, since they represent the basis for large-scale intervention of state censorship in Russian culture and literature:

“The new laws are formulated so vaguely,” the statement said, “that even the Great Russian Encyclopedia could be banned, as it explains the medical and social foundations of homosexuality in a neutral tone. Publishers may have problems publishing scientific literature, masterpieces of ancient and oriental poetry, works by Oscar Wilde, Mikhail Kuzmin, Nikolai Klyuev, Thomas Mann, Marina Tsvetaeva, James Baldwin and other classic writers, biographies of Tchaikovsky, Kolmogorov or Ranevskaya. The ban can even affect Shakespeare's sonnets and Pushkin's stylizations ("Dear lad, gentle lad ...") ... "

By the way, about Pushkin. The remarkable Russian writer Alexei Makushiisky, who has been living in exile for a long time, sarcastically remarks in his blog:

“I wonder if The Captain's Daughter will now be removed from the school curriculum?

“ I ordered to go to an unfamiliar object, which immediately began to move towards us. Two minutes later we caught up with the man.

- Hey, good man! the coachman shouted to him. Tell me, do you know where the road is?»

Can a gay be kind, huh? What are you teaching children, LBGT propagandists?

What about Goethe's "Forest King" in Zhukovsky's translation?“ Child, I was captivated by your beauty! Willy-nilly, willy-nilly, but you will be mine . Yes, it's just awful, dear comrades. And the original is even worse. " Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt, und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt." That's exactly what the damned pedophile, the forest king, says to the boy, they say, I love you, and if you don’t go of your own free will, I will resort to violence.

No, citizens, this cannot be tolerated!

My advice to you: ban everything. Take it all at once and ban it. And you won't have any problems...

Moscow philologist Lev Oborin adds:

“I remember, in one of the schools where I studied, high school students staged a scene from Mozart and Salieri and instead of “he is a genius, like you and me”, they said “he is gay, like you and me”, after which followed by a minute of rzhach..."

However, as in the same tragedy, there are much more “dangerous” lines:

“Are you crying? Salieri.

- those tears

For the first time I pour: it hurts and it's pleasant,

As if I had done a heavy duty,

As if a healing knife cut me off

Suffered Member!"

Commentators remind of the existence of other similar reasons for jokes, which, however, no longer seem like jokes:

- And what about "Gay, Slavs"?

- Then the Gay-Lussac law should be repealed.