"Is Homophobia the New Anti-Semitism? asks Michelle Goldberg from The American Prospect. Goldberg was provoked by the latest violence against gay and lesbian people in Moscow. May 17 is the International Day against Homophobia. On this date in 1990 the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Moscow gay-rights activists had a small demonstration celebrating May 17 that was brutally ceased by the police and widely reported over the world. The march has been called by Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, "Satanic" and the homosexuals have been depicted as "weapons of mass destruction."

"Opposition to homosexuality in conservative countries is nothing new - says Michelle Goldberg - But right now, partly in response to the increasing visibility of gay rights in the West, we're seeing a ratcheting up of anti-gay demagoguery and persecution throughout the world." Goldberg compares the opposition against gay rights with the hatred and opposition to Jews. The main sources of "homophobia" according to Goldberg are the religious fundamentalists in West and East, mainly in the Arab world and Africa. In the conservative countries homosexuals are often viewed as conductors of dangerous foreign influence same as the Jews were viewed in the past, also in a similar way they are easy scapegoats, a kind of vent for the heaping social tensions.

Goldberg gives a number of examples showing the growing homophobia. She mentions Scott Lively, a key figure in the global anti-gay movement. His books The Pink Swastika and The Poisoned Stream, a kind of anti-gay Protocols of the Elders of Zion, have given him prominence in the conservative movements in Russia and Africa. Goldberg finishes her article with the words: "This aggressive, even obsessive homophobia, more than simple religious traditionalism, is the context for the violence in Moscow on Saturday. Anti-gay bigotry, like anti-Semitism, has its local particularities everywhere it surfaces, but it's also increasingly part of a bigger phenomenon, one knit together by overarching conspiracy theories." Read more >>>