Via Steve Gilliard…  If the Russian mob joined in the fight against gay rights, Randy Thomasson would applaud them as "shining models for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community" too…

For Gays, a Loud New Foe

Sacramento’s large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many.

SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.

The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.

Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.

"So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."

The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s "Lavender Heights" neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.

Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.

Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.

Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:

"Make a choice. It’s your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?’ "

In most instances, the Russian-speaking demonstrators far outnumber representatives from all other anti-gay groups combined. Anti-homosexual rallies that a few years ago attracted a few dozen participants now regularly draw hundreds and sometimes thousands, many with a heavy Russian accent.

It’s worth noting, and the L.A. Times article does note, that not all Russian communities in this country are as crazy bigoted as the one in Sacramento.  But this one community is different.  How?

The Sacramento community, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.

And I’ll just bet, relentlessly antisemite too.  Russia has had a problem with that for untold generations…the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Russia…and my understanding is that it is among precicely these fervent religious types in Russia, the kind that like their Christianity loud and gilded and glittering and all controlling, that the hatred of jews is the most vehement. 

Well…hating jews doesn’t gain you a lot of traction here in the United States, no matter how proudly you wear Christ around your neck…just ask Mel Gibson.  But you can still hate homosexuals and demand respect for your sincere religiosity…

Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.

"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

Behold a shining model…

Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.

Signs displayed by the demonstrators often equate homosexuality with pedophilia and describe the AIDS epidemic as a message from God. One of the common tactics of the demonstrators is to tap gays forcefully on the head and announce that they have been "saved."

"They’ve declared war on us for some reason," said Stand Up for Sacramento founder Nathan Feldman, a jewelry store clerk. "They got it into their heads that California is the land of sin and that it is their duty to cleanse the state, starting with homosexuals."

What Thomasson means is that they are more aggressive and willing to physically attack gay people then even Fred Phelps’ group.  Thomasson is a well known opponent of gay rights in California.  What he sees and values in the ethnic Russian community around Sacramento isn’t faith, it’s their willingness to bring fear into the lives of gay people.  Because of his new allies in the war on homosexuals, Sacramento Pride Days now require heightened security.  This is what brings Randy hope.  Or at least, satisfaction.