Controversy Russia: the war for gay propaganda reaches the supermarket
A Russian family with gay members who was featured in an ad for a high-end food retailer left the country after receiving homophobic and hateful messages online that included death threats.
Images posted by journalist and YouTuber Karen Shainyan showed the family, in which the mother, Yuma, and her adult daughter, Alina, both have
female partners,
boarding a flight and leaving the country.
Shainyan, who speaks about LGBT issues on her channel, said she had agreed to broadcast an interview with the family only once they were outside of Russia.
A 2013 Russian law, denounced by Western countries as state-imposed intolerance,
prohibits the "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations with minors."
Many politicians in the ruling party are stridently anti-gay.
The ad from the food retailer
Vkusvill
showed the four women in the family in a kitchen and said they liked the store's Japanese rice balls with mushrooms and their hummus.
It initially appeared with an "18+" warning stating that it should not be read by children. The ad was later withdrawn,
enraging
both gay rights activists and opponents.
Yuma, the head of the family, said she could ignore messages from "enemies," but the
online comments directed at her eight-year-old granddaughter
had scared her.
"I was shocked by the comments to my granddaughter, where some people wrote that they wanted to rape her,
kill her,
stab a girl who was sitting and smiling in the photograph," she told Shainyan.
"I am more afraid for my granddaughter." Vkusvill declined to comment on the family's departure from Russia.
"The comments are just the tip of the iceberg," said Yuma, who described previous homophobic attacks in which
masked
thugs
sprayed her
with chemicals and were attacked by crowds threatening to stab her and set her on fire.
"I don't want that to happen, I want to protect my family," he said.
"I don't want to live like this. I'm tired."
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