LGBTQ+ Family Forced to Flee Russia
Last month, Russian grocery chain VkusVill featured a same-sex family in their advertising. After a vicious hate campaign, they were forced to withdraw it. Now, the family has been forced to flee Russia.
Following a number of death threats, the family posted on Instagram waving a rainbow flag, saying that they were safe in the immediate term. “We’re safe, we’re resting. We don’t have to hide our happiness to be a family,” Yuma - the head of the family - wrote. “It was a difficult ordeal for all of us; we’re all in an uneasy psychological state.”
Moving to Barcelona, the family have said they are seeking employment after having to leave Russia in a hurry - they had been left homeless and unemployed after the VkusVill adverts went out.
The advert was pulled after a week, and the grocer issued an apology for “hurting the feelings of a large number of our customers, employees, partners and suppliers”. The advert risked falling foul of Russia's "anti LGBTQ+ propaganda" law.
Despite attitudes in Russia towards the LGBTQ+ community warming in recent years, polls suggest over three-quarters of Russians still oppose gay marriage, and same-sex relations were only decriminalised in the mid-1990s.
President Putin has frequently painted himself as a defender of Russian traditional values against "Western liberalism", and attacking LGBTQ+ rights has been part of this strategy which culmianted in the 2013 LGBTQ+ Propaganda Law, which banned the "promotion" of LGBTQ+ people or themes to minors.
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