MOSCOW, January 8 (RIA Novosti) – A controversial sitcom star-cum-priest asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring back a Soviet law criminalizing “sodomy.”
Not doing so would give “sodomites…a Constitutional opportunity to defile the young generation,” Ivan Okhlobystin said on his blog on Tuesday.
The actor praised Putin for last year’s ban on “gay propaganda,” but said it was not enough because the very existence of a legal gay community amounted to such propaganda.
The Kremlin did not comment as of Wednesday.
Okhlobystin’s post was deleted from TwitLonger blog platform for violation of terms of service, according to the Twitter of the site’s creator Stuart Gibson, who is openly gay.
But the statement caused a stir on the Russian blogosphere, and already earned the 47-year-old actor the label “faggot” from socialite and prominent opposition activist Ksenia Sobchak.
This is not the first instance of gay-bashing from Okhlobystin, who stars in “Interns,” a hit sitcom heavily deriving from US show “Scrubs.”
At a chat with fans in December, the actor said that he would “burn gays alive.” No repercussions followed.
Okhlobystin starred in some 50 film projects before “Interns,” Russia’s most popular TV show of 2012, according to state-run pollster VTsIOM.
He is also an Orthodox Christian priest suspended in service, the creative director of a cell phone retailer chain, a science fiction writer and an aspiring conservative politician.
“Sodomy” was punishable with up to seven years in prison in Soviet times, but the article disappeared from the Russian Criminal Code in 1993. Incidentally, no bans on lesbian sex were ever in place.
