Members of Moscow's LGBT community have applied to City Hall for a permit to hold a gay pride parade and rally in the center of the Russian capital, the GayRussia.eu website reported Tuesday.
The parade of up to 200 participants is scheduled to take place on May 30 along the central Tverskoi Bulvar, preceded by a rally of up to 100 participants in front of the Mayor's Office on Tverskaya Ploshchad, according to the report.
Similar requests have been submitted every year since 2006, but have always been rejected by the city authorities. In 2010 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the rejections violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
Attempts by gay rights activists to hold rallies in Russia are regularly broken up by groups of violent thugs and police officers.
In 2013 Russia passed a controversial "gay propaganda law" that prohibited the promotion of "non-traditional sexual relationships" to minors.
In a recent poll conducted by the Levada center earlier this year, 37 percent of Russians said that homosexuality is a disease, 26 percent called it a bad habit and 13 percent said it was a result of being corrupted by another person. Thirty-seven percent of Russians said gay people should be "cured," while 18 percent said they should be prosecuted.
The poll was conducted among 800 respondents with a margin of error not exceeding 4.1 percent.
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