Russia isolated over gay treatment

Not surprisingly there is rather a lot of outrage over Russia moving towards re-criminalising being gay for it's citizens. There's various condemnations going around, but this one looks rather significant:

Germany’s openly gay foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has told the Russian ambassador that his country’s draft bill banning ‘homosexual propaganda’ contravenes human rights and could harm the country's ties with Europe.

Catherine Ashton, the high representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs also voiced concerns and critique, today (30 January). 

In a meeting on Monday (28 January) evening between Westerwelle and Russia's ambassador in Berlin, Vladimir Grinin, it was made clear that in Germany's view the law violated the European human rights convention. 

An unidentified German foreign ministry official told Der Spiegel: ‘Such a law will hamper European-Russian relations and will harm Russia's image in Europe’. more

Once again the church influence (in Russia this time) shows itself to have barely moved out of the dark ages. Some of the stories coming out of Russia indeed sound like they're straight from the dark ages itself. Russia is IMO moving headlong in that direction.

I do wonder you know, could places like Russia where the church appears to rule with an iron fist, crumble once again as society did after the Roman Empire bit the dust? It took centuries and The Enlightenment for the human race to move beyond the straight jacket of religion. Now some countries are returning into the darkness.

I do feel for all the gay brothers and sisters over there who're being demonised for no reason other than their sexuality.