May 17 is the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. It’s a particularly pertinent day for Russia, where life is rapidly becoming unsafe for LGBT children and adults.
‘I’m sad that there is so much hatred in the world toward gays,’ 15-year-old Dima wrote. ‘We are also people! I want to tell everyone [about myself], but it’s the physical pain that scares me, not the psychological pain. I live in a […] small town with many homophobic thugs.’
Dima was writing on social network group, Children 404 (Deti 404), created by a journalist, Elena Klimova, after she had written a series of articles about Russia’s federal ‘gay propaganda’ law in 2013. Soon after she began receiving letters from children in which they shared their stories of loneliness and abuse because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Children 404 tells the stories of how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) children are treated in Russia in their own words and offers suicide prevention counseling. Klimova has received death threats because of her work, she told me.
