A recently married LGBT couple says that they hope their marriage will help change attitudes in Russia.
Alyona Fursova and Irina Shumilova married in front of family and friends at a registry office in St. Petersburg last month.
Despite Russia’s ban on gay marriage, the women were allowed to marry because Irina describes herself as transsexual rather than transgender.
“Yes, in my passport it says ‘male,’” she told Russia Today. “I am transsexual, meaning that despite having a XY-genome, psychologically I am a woman.”
“To be honest, it’s scary and uncomfortable, because we don’t know what to expect in the future,” Fursova told CNN this week. “We can get married now because I have female documents and Irina has male ones. But already we’ve heard that government officials are preparing a law to forbid this.”
St. Petersburg MP Vitaly Milonov, a vocal opponent of gay rights, called the union an “ugly insult to millions of Russian families” and vowed to pursue an investigation into its legality. Milonov’s 2011 ordinance banning the promotion of “gay propaganda” to minors inspired a nationwide law that led to calls for a boycott of the Winter Olympics held earlier this year in Sochi.
Shumilova told CNN that she hopes her marriage will help change attitudes in deeply conservative Russia.
“I really hope it helps people to understand that if they fight for their rights, they can get them,” she said. “I want this sort of reaction in the gay and transsexual community. But I also want regular people to be more tolerant of relationships. That would be really cool.”
by On Top Magazine Staff
Source – On Top Magazine
