21/07/2017
There is no love lost between the religious sect the Jehovah's Witnesses and the LGBT community. The Witnesses have if anything become more homophobic in recent years, with a series of bizarre proclamations, including a warning to teenage boys not to wear skinny jeans because they were designed by homosexuals keen to eye up teen botties. However, our histories have crossed several times. Jehovah's Witnesses and gay men have been suppressed by several authoritarian regimes as being subversive elements. Both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were brutal to both groups, and a lot of people don't realise that the Nazi's forced Witnesses to wear violet triangles similar to the pink triangles they made gay and bi men wear. Now a report from the dissident radio network Radio Free Europe reveals that an increasingly paranoid Russia is clamping down on Jehovah's Witnesses just as they have gay people. The religious sect's one hundred thousand Russian members have been viewed with suspicion by the authorities for their refusal to swear any allegiance to the Russian state or take part in its militaristic ambitions. Now, the government has given itself the power to close down Witness's Kingdom Halls and seize property and assets. The European Union and the International Religious Freedom Commission have sharply criticised the crackdown as a huge blow to civil liberties by the Russian state.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-jehovah-s-witness-ban-upheld/28621481.html
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/05/jehovahs-witnesses-showing-antigay-f...
